Working Words: "You work, Buddy. You work."

Excerpt of a poem by Ohio's Ray McNiece from Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams from Coffee House Press:

Grandfather’s Breath (excerpt)

You work. You work, Buddy. You work.
Word of immigrant get-ahead grind I hear
huffing through me, Grandfather’s breath,
when he’d come in from Saturday’s keep-busy chores,
fending up a calloused hand to stop
me from helping him, haggard cheeks puffing
out like t-shirts hung between tenements,
doubled-over under thirty-five years a machine
repairman at the ball-bearing factory, ball-bearings
making everything run smoother -
especially torpedoes. He busted butt
for the war effort, for profiteers, for overtime pay
down-payment on a little box of his own,
himself a refugee from the European economy,
washed ashore after “The War to End All Wars.”
Cheap labour for the winners.

Detroit poet M.L. Liebler, editor of Working Words, will read and perform some of his own poems and those from the book at 7:30 p.m. tonight at Cheyenne's Atlas Theatre. Tix are $5 for adults, $3 for students, military and seniors. He will be on stage with musician Peter Lewis, one of the founding members of Ground-breaking sixties rock group Moby Grape.

Here's how M.L. described the show (from wyomingarts):

"We'll do some of the songs that are sort of more or less poetic, songs we've written together and then Peter will perform acoustically some of the Moby Grape songs from his group, some of his own original pieces. We kind of have a nice little set where we're merging some of what we do together, some of my poetry in music, some of his Moby Grape and some of his original."

Wyoming Tribune-Eagle columnist: Public sector employees are "leftist ideological forces of evil"

Former government employee (U.S. Marine Corps) Bradley Harrington calls government employees "looters" and "leftist ideological forces of evil" in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. Unfortunately, you can't read it online as the WTE has a minimalist web site (nothing on it) so you have to go buy a paper. You can borrow mine. I'll bring it to today's rally at the Capitol.

BTW: Here's the column's header: "Public unions' bite could rot Wyo., too"

BTW: Wyoming is a so-called Right to Work State and its public employees union cannot be (and isn't) a closed shop. FMI: Wyoming Public Employees Association. I've been a member about 15 years. Here is its mission statement (the emphasis is provided by me):

It is the mission of the Wyoming Public Employees Association to serve as an advocacy group for state employees and Laramie County School District #1 by classified staff working toward introduction and passage of legislation positively affecting compensation, benefits, and working conditions of all employees. WPEA will work toward electing legislators and Laramie County School District #1 who might better support these goals. WPEA will support the rights and fair treatment of all public employees.

From WI People's House to WY People's House

Great photo of gathering of workers in the Wisconsin People's House. Wyoming workers will be outside the Wyoming People's House today showing solidarity with their WI colleagues. Rally is 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. See you there.

Toxic tulipmania in a Wyoming national forest?

Daily Kos going crazy with posts about Wyoming (see earlier one from today). This one is about the rush to obtain unobtainium and other assorted strategic stuff known as "rare earths" in the Black Hills National Forest. Strip mines are planned. Go to Toxic tulipmania in a Wyoming national forest?

Jackson Hole National Monument

Neat Daily Kos post on the Jackson Hole National Monument

Join us for the Wyoming Rally to Save the American Dream on Saturday in front of the Wyoming Capitol

Attend the Wyoming Rally to Save the American Dream on Saturday, Feb. 26, noon in front of the State Capitol Building, 24th and Capitol Ave., Cheyenne. You know the building -- the "People's House" where the legislature has been cooking up a strange anti-people brew for the past seven weeks.

In Wisconsin and around our country, the American Dream is under fierce attack. Instead of creating jobs, Republicans are giving tax breaks to corporations and the very rich—and then cutting funding for education, police, emergency response, and vital human services.

On Saturday, February 26, at noon local time, the Rally to Save the American Dream is organizing rallies in front of every statehouse and in every major city to stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin. We demand an end to the attacks on worker's rights and public services across the country. We demand investment, to create decent jobs for the millions of people who desperately want to work. And we demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.

We are all Wisconsin. We are all Americans.

This Saturday, we will stand together to Save the American Dream. Be sure to wear Wisconsin Badger colors—red and white—to show your solidarity. Sign up today to join in! Go to the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=200463373312615

This event is a project of MoveOn.org Political Action and sponsored by nogoodnik progressive union community organizers such as public employees, fire fighters, teachers, police, nurses and bloggers. My mama union, SEIU, is a co-sponsor. Others are Daily Kos and Media Matters, the prog-bloggers that drive Glenn Beck up a wall. What other reason do you need to attend?

Wyoming Democrats launch weekend with legislative reception at Deselms Fine Art in Cheyenne

Schmooze with legislators, contribute to a good cause and view fine art on Friday, Feb. 25, 6:30-8 p.m. at the Wyoming Democrats annual legislative reception at Deselms Fine Art. You can ask your Dem legislators for their first-hand experiences with some of the wacky Republican-sponsored bills that have come down the pike this year.

A $10 donation is requested.

FMI: 1-800-739-3367 or info@wyomingdemocrats.com

Deselms Fine Art is a great place for Democrats to meet. It's a place that invokes art and creativity and historic development and creative community, all solid progressive issues. Wyoming Democrats took a shellacking in the last election but it had nothing to do with the validity of the candidates and their platforms -- not to mention hard work. It was a surge of regressive politics funded by corporate money and Tea Party wackiness and Fox "News" scare tactics and a nationwide recession caused by Wall Street greed-mongers.

Now get out there Friday evening and have fun!

WI patriots and their impromptu late-night rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner"

From a story by Dan Simmons in the Wisconsin State Journal:

Shortly after 10 p.m. Monday, the drummers and other musicians on the rotunda's ground floor wrapped up for the night. A man grabbed the microphone and, without instrumental accompaniment, started singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Most of the protesters packed tightly around the first- and second-floor balconies, joining in the anthem. Police officers and firefighters — about 40 from various departments who spent the night on Monday — sang along, hands on heart. Elliott Tomaro, a union ironworker from Oregon, sang, too, holding his hard hat over his chest as he stood with other protesters.

"It's a moving experience to have so many people singing the national anthem inside the seat of the government," he said.

They knew the words, too.

Go to Singing together in Wisconsin State Capitol

The worst Wyoming legislative session in many years

The Casper Star-Tribune editorial board offered up a fine editorial today on this year's Wyoming Legislature, hijacked by corporate interests, right-wing think tanks, and Tea Party weirdos. Here's a great line:

It’s no wonder that some observers — including veteran legislators — are calling this the worst session in many years. It’s been discouraging. Accomplishments have been few, while so much time has been wasted.

Read the entire thing at http://trib.com/opinion/editorial/article_8eb63ebd-1d4e-53e1-a9a3-2ea56b8e90a8.html

Which Side Are You On?

Dropkick Murphys rock out an old union song. And remember the struggles of the Irish in America.

Working Words: Betsy Sholl and "Pink Slip"

Betsy Sholl's poem "Pink Slip" is in the new anthology, Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams from Coffee House Press. Anthology editor M.L. Liebler will be traveling to Cheyenne this Saturday to conduct a number of events for Wyoming Poetry Out Loud.

Betsy Sholl was named Maine Poet Laureate in 2006. She's published seven collections of poetry and was a founding member of the innovative small press, Alice James Books. She's published widely and won numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission. 

In "Pink Slip," Betsy explores the life of a woman fired after 20 years of hard work. In this excerpt, she gets her pink slip:

All you did was check your watch, all
you did was back me to the door,
where outside they were hauling my car,
a pirate company, so not even the cops could say
where it is. Is this America?
I've seen countries on TV where the natives 

give funny looks to the fat men they serve drinks to
on patios. "Bastard" would be
my translation. Or whatever the deaf woman is
banging onto the locked windows of cars jammed at
the on-ramp trying to leave the city....

Read the entire poem in Working Words. And many other poems and short stories and essays about working people.

Kevin the Climber, Part I: An ADHD Memoir

I’ve been blogging from Wyoming since 2005, but only a portion of my posts focused on our family’s experiences with ADD, ADHD, OCD and mental health challenges. This is fitting in a way because my blog is named hummingbirdminds after a description by Internet hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson. He said in Wired Magazine that people with ADHD have “hummingbird minds.” I always liked that. My blog, like my mind, flits from subject to subject.

Kevin the Climber, Part I

Our son Kevin was diagnosed with ADHD at 5. I guess you could say it was a pretty severe case because it was evident from the time he started walking at 9 months – maybe even earlier. Walking was too tame for Kevin. He was a runner and a climber.

He climbed out of his crib. He climbed out of his playpen. He climbed 100-foot trees. And that was all before he turned 2. Later he climbed cliffs and mountains and buildings. He was more interested in climbing on the top of playground swing sets than he was swinging on them. He liked to shinny up the metal bars that formed the arch that held the swings. Like an inchworm, he would creep along the poles until he was right over the heads of those kids below on the swings.  "Hi down there," he would say with a laugh.  Some kids greeted him; others just stared.  The parents had various reactions. Most seemed concerned for their own children, afraid that Kevin could slip and fall right on them. A falling body builds a tremendous velocity in a very short span of time. Broken bones could result. Concussions and worse.

One day I was at the playground with Kevin while my wife Chris worked. Kevin’s favorite park was three blocks from the university’s married student housing complex where we lived while I worked on my writing and my graduate degree at Colorado State University. When we arrived at the park, Kevin made a beeline for the swing set and climbed up the curve of the rusty red iron pole. Within seconds he was perched 20 feet up, poised over the head of a blonde five-year-old girl wearing a Minnie Mouse T-shirt.  Her mother looked worried.  I didn’t have to be a member of the Psychic Hotline to understand the look of concern that creased that woman’s face. She imagined Kevin losing his grip and falling through space for a collision with her daughter. I imagined a similar scene.  She was thinking: “Why doesn't his father say something to this menace of a boy.”  She pushed her daughter with both hands as she peered up at Kevin. What follows is the conversation as best as I can remember it:

-- Your boy sure likes to climb.
-- Yes he does.
-- He seems pretty good at it.
-- He is.
-- It's a long way up.
-- He likes heights. He climbs mountains.
-- Has he ever fallen?
-- From Mount Everest. But just that once.

Ha ha. I sort of regretted saying it. I just wanted to wound this mother slightly, to get back at her for thinking I might be a lousy father. I felt like it sometimes, that I was a terrible parent for letting my son climb on something that obviously was meant to swing on not climb on.

I felt guilty around these good parents. They all seemed so much more comfortable with their roles than I did with mine. They acted as if parenting is some snug undergarment that never slipped or became wedged in vulnerable bodily cavities. I used to think that parenting would be innate, that I wouldn’t have to learn a series of new dance steps to dance the parent waltz. I wonder if they had all received some sort of parenting gene from kind and loving parents that I did not.

But there was something else: their kids were classified as normal and mine was not. And I was constantly trying to deal with that fact.

Look for Kevin Climber, Part II, in upcoming posts. Also, find this post on the Easy to Love but Hard to Raise blog after Feb.22. 

Netroots Nation: In Wisconsin, Solidarity with unions AND with Bloggers

Great post by Netroots Nation on Daily Kos with info on Wisconsin protests and links to progressive bloggers in WI: In Wisconsin, Solidarity with unions AND with Bloggers

Is that a Robo-hummingbird looking in my window?

This was on Fox, so it must be true:

Pentagon researchers have taken robots for a science fiction spin, building a robotic hummingbird that's ideal for covert surveillance. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/18/robot-hummingbird-spy-drone-flies-minutes-spies-bad-guys/#ixzz1ESId5cZM

New Wyoming state motto: "etats ytilauqe eht"

Buzzfeed featured the 45 best protest signs seen at the worker rallies in Madison, WI. Here's my fave, and it could apply to WY as well as WI. The anti-gay marriage bill passed the WY Senate 16-14 on Friday. More cool signs at http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-protest-signs-at-the-wisconsin-capitol

The work is in the poem, the poem is in the work

This week's news on the international front has been about Bahrainis and Libyans and Yemenis and Iranians protesting their home-grown despots. News on the home front has focused on the world of work. The Wyoming Legislature refused to take federal money for unemployment benefits. Legislators also tried to take away teachers' collective bargaining rights. Rich Republicans in Congress want to cut budgets and the jobs that go with them. Wisconsin teachers and city snowplow drivers and fire fighters went on strike and staged a huge protest at the state capitol. They were outraged that their multi-millionaire governor wanted to eliminate their union rights and their jobs with it.

We're in the middle of a class war. The rich want to turn us into low-paid drones. Some of us are there already, if we have a job. 

I've had so many jobs in my 60 years. I had paper routes in grades 6-8. In high school, I was a busboy and dishwasher and grocery store bagboy. In college, I had these jobs: fast-food clerk and cook, mower of lawns, construction laborer, assembly-line worker building roof trusses, hospital orderly, cafeteria cashier, photographer's assistant, free-lance writer and a few other short-term gigs. After college, I was a bookstore clerk, reporter for a Florida construction trade journal, warehouse order-puller, editor of a journal for a Denver real estate developer, editor of a weekly arts and entertainment weekly, sports reporter, free-lance writer, telephone solicitor, corporate publications editor, tutor, junior high paper grader, college composition teacher and editor of a literary magazine. In 1991, I went to work for the State of Wyoming and, for two years in the mid-1990s, worked for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C. A public employee for 20 years. 

I know what work is. I'm a Democrat and a union member in a state with a shortage of each. I deeply resent the demonizing of public employees by Republicans. It must stop. If not, who will do the work?

This week, I'm featuring writing about work. Some will be mine, some will come from the anthology "Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams," edited by M.L. Liebler. M.L. is coming to Cheyenne this time next week for a performance, workshop and judging of the Wyoming Poetry Out Loud competition, which is co-sponsored by my employer, the Wyoming Arts Council. One of my short stories is in the "Working Words" anthology. You can buy the book and read that and other fiction and essays and poetry about the world of work. I'm glad to be in the book. My payment for my submission was two free copies. This is typical for writers. We tend to be lousy capitalists. But I am very pleased to be included with M.L. and Philip Levine and Wanda Coleman and the late Walt Whitman and the very-much-with-us Eminem.

Here's an excerpt from a poem in the anthology. It's entitled "Work Work Work" and written by the late Trinidad Sanchez, Jr. (1943-2006), who grew up in Pontiac, Mich., and became a Jesuit brother who worked with juvenile offenders and prison inmates in Detroit. The excerpt:

Work, work, work, not easy to define

   but easy to delineate

by those standing in line

to punch a clock

to buy a sandwich off the truck

to catch a bus / to catch a bus

to cash a check...

easy to delineate

by those standing in long lines of unemployed, underemployed and food

stamp lines

McCarter on Daily Kos: Koch industries orchestrating anti-union 'Tea Party' protests in Wisconsin

The pride of Idaho, Joan McCarter, uncovers the dirt on the Koch Brothers. Go to Koch industries orchestrating anti-union 'Tea Party' protests in Wisconsin

Wisconsin bloggers on the ground covering the Madison protests

Looking for some great progressive bloggers on the ground in Wisconsin? Go to http://www.leftyblogs.com/wisconsin/. And some fine pictorial satire at http://www.minimubarak.com/

I am a public employee in Wyoming. A union member, too. I'm a long way from Madison, but my heart and soul is with those workers whose livelihood and futures are threatened by by the new Republican Governor and his lackeys in the legislature.

BTW -- any of you Wisconsin Democrats who fled the legislature are welcomed to my home in scenic Wyoming. It's windier than Wisconsin, just not as cold.

Wyoming is not open for business for some of us

Rev. Rodger McDaniel organized a protest today against anti-gay-marriage bills in The Equality State Legislature. The rally, scheduled for 1 p.m. on the State Capitol steps, was initially supposed to feature a burning of Rodger and Patricia McDaniel’s 34-year-old marriage license. When that began circulating on the Facebook invite, there was a hint of concern but most thought it was a great symbolic act. Flashback to the draft card burnings of the sixties and the bra burnings of the seventies. As far as I know, not too many protestors of those eras were actually burned or harmed in any way. There were, to our disgrace,  self-

immolations of Buddhist monks in Saigon and at least one within sight of the White House in D.C.

We live in a different era. The Capitol Police, which are Wyoming Highway Patrol officers, said absolutely no burning of things on the Capitol grounds.

Bummer.

Rodger, always creative, found an electronic paper shredder and brought it to the Capitol along with a very long extension cord.

Turnout was 50-60 people, straight and LGBT. My wife Chris was there. We got married in a fever almost 29 years ago, and are still together through thick and thin. Our 17-year-olod daughter was there, too. She has many gay friends. She thinks all of this is so stupid she can barely stand it. A number of legislators were there, too, including at least one Republican.

What follows are quotes from my notes scribbled on this windy day in Cheyenne. I vouch for their accuracy. 

My commentary is noted in parentheses.

Jaren Artery, Wyoming Equality: I live in this city and this state. I want to fight for what’s right. Been here for three weeks (monitoring these bills). I ask: how does this legislation benefit anyone? Takes group of minorities and says, “You can’t have what everyone else has.” That is wrong. It’s real people that this will hurt. My friends ask, “How can you stand these personal attacks?” We’ve been called “dry rot,” “abnormal,” “unnatural.” Means the world to us to have straight friends stand up for us.

Rep. Stan Blake, Democrat, Dist. 39, Green River, Baptist: I spoke against this bill in the House. I looked up at the Great Seal of the State of Wyoming and said, “there should be an asterisk on it.”

Rep. Joe Barbuto, Dist. 48, Rock Springs, Democrat, LDS: Before I left for the legislature, people asked me about jobs and about health care. They asked me about natural resources and clean air and water. Not one asked me “how are you going to infringe on equality for all.” My religion has been discriminated a lot in the past. (Knows what discrimination is).

Sen. Cale Case, Republican, Sen. Dist. 25, Lander: I’m glad that you are here. It will all happen at 3 p.m. today. Urge you to reach out and find your senators and show we’re all real people and we deserve equality.

This is The Equality State. We will prevail. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow. But it will be by Friday.

Rev. Rick Vite, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church rector, Cheyenne: This is a civil rights issue. (Equated it to civil rights struggles by women and African Americans and Hispanics and Jews.) There is a great sign in the Holocaust Museum in D.C. as you go out the door: “Don’t Forget.” We forget, each generation, about civil rights. Love is love.

Rep. Cathy Connolly, Democrat, House Dist. 13, only openly gay member of Wyoming Legislature: I joke with my colleagues: For all of you heterosexuals in the room – I guess there are a few of you. (This gets laughter and applause.)

Rev. Rodger McDaniel: 

Under this law, our brothers and sisters would be marginalized.

(Tells story of his gay brother who passed away a few years ago.)

Grew up in this community and felt out of synch with this culture.

Spent 20 years in San Francisco in a committed relationship. (Still tormented by the fact that he couldn’t live in his home state.)

I’ve been around these halls 44 years, as legislator, lobbyist, government official.

I’ve never seen such a radical piece of legislation.

Yesterday, when Gov. Mead announced the new wind energy business coming to Cheyenne, he said, “Wyoming is open for business. Well, Wyoming is not open for business for some of us.

This is radical language against gay marriage.

I’m here to ask legislators: Do you want to create such a black eye for the state of Wyoming?

(Talked about visiting Mt. Sinai Synagogue web site. Quote from the Torah. Moses vs. Pharoah. Pharoah has a pre-disposition to bigotry. We all do. Bigotry stays alive because people benefit from it.)

Bigotry knocks down the value of others. HB 74 knocks down the value of others.

HB 74 creates for heterosexuals a benefit of bigotry.  Gives certain rights to us, takes it away from others. Marriage license is a tool for discrimination. My wife and I have been married for 34 years. We’re not accepting this.

There will be a vote this afternoon. Talk to your senator. Discrimination is not O.K. That’s what makes America great – diversity.

Pat, Rodger’s wife, shreds $13 marriage license.  (Much applause)

Following this, Rep. Connolly lead Chris, Annie and I up to the Senate Chambers lobby so we can send message into our Senators on this issue. I talked to Sen. Fred Emerich, a newly-elected Republican in Dist. 5, who says he is voting no. “I was the only one to vote no out of committee,” he told me before getting back to the Senate Chamber. (Note: He was the only Repub in the committee to vote no.)

Later in the day, I heard that the Senate vote was 17-12 for HB 74. Barnard didn't vote, thus the odd number. Nay votes were Burns, Case, Von Flatern, Emerich, Hastert, Esquibel, Rothfuss, Martin, Schiffer, Nicholas, Scott, Landen. Thanks to these senators. We have more work to do with the others.

Find contact info here.


Cross-posted on Daily Kos.

Seems to be a plague of "narrow-minded rubes" in the West's state legislatures

As I read Bob Wire's column in today's New West blog, I kept wondering if he'd been hanging out at the Wyoming State Capitol and not the one in Helena, Mont. Seems as if The Gem State The Treasure State is having its own troubles with right-wing knuckleheads.

“You’d better get your head wired to your ass or you’ll be standing tall before the Man.” That line, barked by a field general to Private Joker in the film Full Metal Jacket, needs to be whispered into the ear of every Republican Representative currently darkening the halls of the State Capitol in Helena. For we, the voters of Montana, are the Man. And if you narrow-minded rubes don’t acquire a measure of humanity and start doing what’s right by the people of this state, not by the special interests and GOP bosses and Tea Party hypocrites who hold your leashes, you will be out on your arrogant, clueless asses in twenty months.

Read Bob Wire's scorching "House GOP: Out There Where the Buses Don’t Run" in the New West Blog