Learning to Breathe, Part IV

Read Part III here.

In Part IV, our concluding episode, the Hailie Salassie automaton comes to life and chases down some fascists. 

“Here he comes.” Bobby the cowboy pointed the front doors of the depot. They opened, and an entourage stepped out. Several photographers, three uniformed policemen and, finally, the lanky and lucky Mr. Lindbergh. He blinked when the sun hit his eyes. He was dressed in a gray suit. He didn’t look like a famous aviator. He didn’t look like a guy whose baby had been kidnapped and killed. He didn’t look like a guy who was Hitler’s buddy.

“Let’s go boys,” said Doherty.

He stepped forward and others followed.

Weaver had rigged the truck’s tailgate to serve as a lift. He and Doherty rolled the Lion of Judah to the tailgate, Weaver hit a lever on the side of the truck and Ras Tafari dropped slowly to the ground. They rolled the statue off of the tailgate onto the pavement.

Weaver always referred to his creation as Halie Selassie, Lion of Judah. He had tried and failed to get his statue to walk. But he did figure out how to make him move. Doherty didn’t understand it all. A coal-fired boiler turned some gears that turned other gears that powered wheels on the bottom of the statue. Smoke escaped out of an exhaust pipe at the back, which added an ominous fire-and-brimstone element to the scene. Weaver had also rigged a phonograph which played a recorded version of Selassie’s League of Nations’ speech from speakers on the truck cab roof. Not a bad set-up, and effective as long as the automaton didn’t get too far ahead of the truck. He and Weaver had even used their sound system to play music at hobo jungles and tent camps. One night Weaver tried to get Ras Tafari to spin with the music. He played with the gears but the best he could do was get Ras Tafari to stop and go in four-four time. That was at an encampment near Des Moines. They had a fine time that night with the dancing and the moonshine. And Weaver had his reefer.

Weaver walked next to his contraption, making sure it kept on course. Ras Tafari had his eyes on the fascist Lindbergh. Doherty stood in the open door of the truck. He waited for Weaver’s signal. Their goal was to drown out Lindy’s speech. And to cause a commotion. Lindy now stood behind a microphone in front of the depot. He and his entourage had certainly by now seen the coal-powered Selassie coming their way. The automaton’s exhaust added to the day’s haze caused by dust from farmers’ fields hundreds of miles away. A fire burned in Cheyenne. It joined thousands of other fires burning all over the world. And this was just the beginning.

Lindbergh stepped up to the microphone. “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’m Charles Lindbergh.” A smattering of applause. Two men held up signs that read “Defend America First” in big black letters. A group of women dressed in old-fashioned black mourning attire huddled by the microphone. One held up a sign that read “Mothers Against War.”

Weaver turned, grinned and smartly saluted Doherty. That was the sign. Doherty dropped the phonograph's arm on the record. Scratching noises erupted from the truck-top speakers. Lindbergh paused. Some in the welcoming crowd turned to see the truck. Their gazes alighted on Ras Tafari chugging toward them. Doherty thought he heard a gasp.

“It’s OK, ladies and gentlemen,” said Lindbergh. “Just a stunt. Communists try to interrupt me all of the time. They fear my message.”

Hailie Selassie addressed the League of Nations in Geneva on June 20, 1936. He told them that “God and history shall remember your judgment,” just as his automaton told the crowd in Cheyenne three years later.

Doherty now could hear only Selassie – the distant emperor was doing a terrific job of drowning out the words of America’s heroic aviator.

“What answer shall I take back to my people?” Selassie said.

Lindbergh talked on. Some in his entourage glanced nervously at the mobile and articulate Ras Tafari. A man in a suit walked over to a policeman and had some words with him. The policeman nodded. He gathered two of his officers and walked toward Weaver and Ras Tafari. Doherty had seen this happen before in other towns. Officials become alarmed and attempt to stop Ras Tafari as he delivers his message. Smarter ones go to the truck and tried to interrupt the broadcast by confiscating the equipment or smashing the record. After this happened twice, Weaver and Doherty got wise. Doherty now locked himself inside the truck cab. The cops would stand outside and stare, not knowing what to do. One enterprising cop in Grand Island, Nebraska, ripped the speakers off of the top of the truck. They got wise to that and, next time someone tried that, Doherty sent a jolt of electricity along the wires. The cop screamed and went flying off the truck, landing on his keister on the asphalt street. He then took out his billy and broke the truck window and then the phonograph. They got arrested that time.

But here in Cheyenne? The cops walked over to Ras Tafari. The burly police chief barked orders at his minions. They stood in front of Ras Tafari. They put up their hands and yelled, “Halt.” Ras Tafari must not have understood because he kept on rolling. It’s tough to tell the Lion of Judah to halt. The automaton reached the cops’ hands but kept right on going. The cops tried to lean on Selassie, but were finally pushed back and then parted, each moving to the side of the automaton. The one closest to Weaver grabbed him and his compatriot came over and grabbed Weaver’s other arm. Weaver didn’t resist – he knew better. One of the officers said something to Weaver. He shrugged, pointing over at Selassie and shaking his head no. The police chief came over. He barked at Weaver who shook his head again and probably said, “There’s nothing I can do Mr. Police Chief sir.” Meanwhile, by the depot, Lindbergh continued to speak and here at the truck, Doherty chuckled.

Then, the unexpected. Ras Tafari, obviously impatient to meet Lindbergh, sped up. Lindbergh didn’t seem to notice but his entourage did. They began to drift away. One man in a dark suit walked up behind Lindbergh. The man whispered something to Lindy, who looked up to see the automaton closing on him fast, not at running speed exactly, more like a brisk walk. Lindy shook his head and returned to his remarks. The crowd made a path for Ras Tafari. The police chief now walked over to the truck. He banged on the closed driver’s side window with his fist. Doherty had taken all precautions. Windows up, doors locked.

“Come out of there now,” the police chief said, “or you will be arrested.”

Doherty did what he always did. He put his hand to his ear and said, “I can’t hear you.”

“Turn it off,” yelled the police chief, pointing at the photograph.

“What?” yelled Doherty?

The police chief had a decision to make. He looked at Doherty and then over at the automaton. He saw that America’s hero was in danger of being run over by the emperor. Doherty knew that the man would love to smash the window and then smash his face. But he also knew that police chief’s don’t let Lindbergh get killed in their town. It wouldn’t look good and it wasn’t the right move as far as job security. Fuming, the police chief took one final look and yelled, “I’ll get you” and then sped off toward the depot.

The two photographers on the scene were having a field day. They were lined up and ready to snap the moment when Lindy got run over by the Lion of Judah. This would be big news and they’d get paid well for their shots.

But Lindy was wise to the situation. He let Selassie get to within two feet and backed away from the microphone. Ras Tafari was still moving and closing fast. Lindy shook his fist at the automaton. The automaton kept coming. Weaver looked over at Doherty and smiled. This was the best yet. Lindy backed up. The automaton advanced. The photographers were getting their shots. The crowd murmured. The police chief came to Lindy’s aid. He inserted himself between the aviator and the emperor. He and Lindy both gave way. The police chief wore a determined look. He wasn’t sure about the look on Lindy’s face. It wasn’t anger. More of a bland acceptance. He just backed slowly while Selassie chugged. The police chief barked at Lindy. He took one more look at the automaton, turned and walked quickly for the depot doors. He disappeared inside. Now it was just the cop and the statue.

“It is us today, it will be you tomorrow.” Selassie ended his speech and applause rang out from the august body sitting on their asses in Geneva. They would do nothing, of course. They would congratulate the dark-skinned emperor on his fine speech and then adjourn for lunch. Selassie would return to the safety of England. Italians would continue to gas illiterate tribesmen. Franco killed Basques in Spain. Japanese raped and killed women in Nanking. Hitler put Jews and communists in concentration camps.

The automaton collided with the depot wall, tilted slightly and then changed direction. It was hard to say how far he would go. The fire would go out, eventually, the smoke would dissipate. Selassie would once again be a big mute mass of metal. He and Weaver would spend at least one night in jail. He’d call one of his old union buddies to bail them out.

Lindbergh, meanwhile, would be on his way to Laramie and Rock Springs and Ogden. Maybe they’d catch up with him, there. Maybe not. But they would, somewhere along the line. He had his mission, they had theirs.

Doherty unlocked the truck and stepped outside. The cops had cuffed Weaver and marched him toward the truck.

“I’ll go peacefully,” Doherty said.

The cowboy returned. “Can I take care of the statue while you boys are being detained?”

"Sure,” said Weaver. “How do we get in touch?”

The cowboy’s grizzled face beamed. “I’ll know where you are.”

“OK,” said Weaver.

The cop urged Doherty forward. “You’re in trouble, boy,” he said.

“No, you are,” said Doherty. “You just don’t know it yet.”

#          #          #

On Monday, Jan. 30, the author talks about the roots of this story. 

Learning to Breathe, Part III

Read Part II here.

In this episode, Doherty and Weaver wonder about the motives of the three cowboys hanging around outside of the train depot. 

Three cowboys stood across the street, eyeing Doherty and Weaver. They spoke to each other briefly, and then set off toward the truck.

“Might want to get out that billy club,” said Doherty.

“You get the tire iron.” Weaver nodded.

It had come to that, more than once, in their journey from New York into Wyoming. Sometimes it was fists. Sometimes billy clubs and tire irons. They knew where their weapons were stashed and moved toward them. Doherty and Weaver were not harbingers of peace but of war. They brought sad tidings to the heartland.

Two of the cowboys looked like brothers – tall and thin, youngsters. The third cowboy was older, short and stout, with a dark beard and mustache. They all wore dungarees and battered cowboy hats. They didn’t say anything, not at first.

“Hello,” said Doherty.

“Howdy,” said the older cowboy. “What ya got here?”

“Hailie Selassie, Lion of Judah.”

“He’s putting up a fight against those fuckin’ fascists, the Italians. They’re using poison gas.” He tapped his chest with a calloused hand. “I got gassed in France by the Huns.”

“We’ve both been gassed,” said Doherty.

The older cowboy looked him up and down. “You been in the fight, ain’t ya?”

Doherty nodded.

“You too,” said the older cowboy to Weaver. “You got iron in your face.” He turned his head to spit a stream of tobacco into the dusty street. “These two boys,” he said nodding first at one of his companions and then the other. “They ain’t been in the fight. You’ll be good hands when the next war comes, won’t you boys?”

They both nodded.

“They don’t say much,” said the older cowboy. “What you got planned for that pansy-ass Lindbergh?”

Doherty gestured at the statue and then the banner. “That’s our message,” said Doherty. “It’s aimed at Lindbergh and his appeasement pals. We usually get some pushback from crowds. We always get other people who know we are facing a mess and have to do something about it.”

The cowboy reached over and grasped Doherty’s left hand. “Fights?”

“Sometimes.”

“This black fella,” he said, nodding at Weaver. “He can hold his own?”

“Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek,” Weaver said. “Sometimes you run out of cheeks.”

The cowboy laughed. “True enough.”

“He’s also one hell of an artist,” Doherty said.

“He do that statue?”

“Made from spent Italian artillery shells.”

“No shit?” He walked over to the truck bed and ran his hand along the statue. He peered closer and looked over at Weaver. “I see numbers from the shell casings. That is something. Come over here, boys.”

The young men joined the older cowboy. All three of them eased their way around the truck bed, looking at the statue. When they rejoined Weaver and Doherty, the older cowboy asked: “How can we help?”

“Well,” said Weaver. “We want Lindy out here where he can see our message.”

“He coming out?”

“We don’t know,” said Doherty. “We just knew he was coming into the station for a stop on his speaking tour.”

“Let’s see if we can get him out,” said the older cowboy.

“I can go into the depot and yell fire,” said one of the younger cowboys.

“No, boy, we’d have a stampede then. The cops will come and the first to be arrested will be our Negro friend here.” The cowboy pointed at Weaver.

“I’m not a Negro anymore,” said Weaver. “I’m Rastafari.”

“Huh?”

“Jamaican,” Doherty said. “It’s a religion they have down there.”

The cowboy nodded, but Doherty could tell that he didn’t understand.

After a moment of silence, the cowboy asked, “So how are we going to get Lucky Lindy out here?”

One of the young cowboys said, “Maybe somebody could go in and ask Mr. Lindbergh nicely to come outside.” He gave a tentative grin.

Everyone stared at him. The older cowboy sighed. “These boys are still wet behind the ears. You going to ask those Nazi dive bombers to nicely stop bombing you when the war starts?”

“No,” said the young cowboy.

The older cowboy spat a stream of tobacco juice into the street. 

“What if we go inside and announce that there’s an air show?” That was the other young cowboy. He smiled.

“Sure, why not,” said the older cowboy. “Lindbergh flew into our airfield when I was a kid. Didn’t get to meet him but saw his plane. I bet he loves air shows.”

Doherty looked at Weaver. “What do you think?”

“Might work. Lindy is an airplane guy.”

“He is that,” said the older cowboy. “That’s a fine, idea, Bobby. You surprise the hell out of me sometimes.”

Bobby beamed. His brother looked down, scuffed his right boot against the pavement.

But Lindy didn’t have to be lured outside. That’s where the cameras were, and Lindy liked the cameras. The sun pushed back the dust cloud, brightening up the day. 

Doherty surveyed his impromptu group. The future was a dangerous place, He would walk into it with a black sculptor from Detroit and an odd trio of cowboys. So many of them, all over the world, regular folks tired of being stepped on. Bullies like Lindy and Hitler and Mussolini and Franco and the bosses of industry. Their time was done. He had witnessed their deeds in Madrid and San Sebastian. Doherty was angry. He often was up nights, awakened by visions of shell bursts and open wounds. He was surprised to be 28 and alive. He’d been a paid soldier for the capitalists and a piss-poor mercenary in Spain. He had to laugh at that. Yes, he had a satchel filled with his book of poems. He gave one to each person who put two bits or more into the collection box. It was his cry for justice, no matter how small. All he knew was that the world’s bullies needed a shellacking and he was here to start the payback.
To be continued...
Read Learning to Breathe, Part IV, on Friday, Jan. 27. Next week, the author talks about the background of this story. 

"Sailor off the Bremen" shows that punching Nazis is nothing new

It's only a movie -- or is it? Indiana Jones punches a Nazi in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

USA Today offered its summary of the past weekend: "Analysis: One weekend, two Americas. Are we falling apart?" It examines this past weekend in the U.S., in which Trump was inaugurated as president and concerned citizens protested millions-strong around the the U.S. and the world.  

The article leaves us with chilling words from pollster Frank Luntz:

"We've never had as many people who don't trust the media, don't trust the politicians, don't trust economics, don't trust business," Republican political consultant Frank Luntz said on CBS' Face the Nation. "I think we're going to remember this weekend for a long time to come as not the end, not the campaign being over, but this is the beginning of the most tempestuous ... awful conflict between left and right, between men and women, between young and old." 

He warned, "I think we are breaking apart."  

Luntz works for Republicans. As a pollster, he interviewed scores of potential voters leading up to the election. I watched many of those segments on CBS This Morning, back when I was watching TV news. They were illuminating and scary. Give credit to Luntz for showing us the inklings of the cataclysm that was to come. 

What's next?

Punching Nazis. U.S. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer was punched in the face Saturday during D.C. inauguration activities. It was filmed, and the vid went viral. The #punchingnazis hashtag became a sensation.  Facebookers posted old cartoon panels of Superman punching Nazis during WWII. Hitler memes were big. 

Liberals had a big laugh. Conservatives were silent. Nobody wants to be on the side of the Nazis, even though we thought that this abbreviation for German's National Socialist Party had been consigned to the dustbin of history. Now we call these people alt-right or purveyors of white pride or white identity or white nationalists. They shouted "Hail Trump" at their post-election rally. 

So why not punch Nazis? Because Trump will use public violence as an excuse to clamp down on public protest. One of the reasons we peacefully gathered out in the streets this weekend is that we fear that very thing. Vice President Pence has already stated that it is time to curtail protests. We knew this was coming. 

Punching Nazis is nothing knew. One of Irwin Shaw's best short stories is ":Sailor Off the Bremen." In it, Nazi sailors off the ship Bremen attack anti-fascist demonstrators on the New York docks. One demonstrator is so injured that some of his compatriots decide to punch Nazis.

Shaw has always been one of my favorite short story writers. He lived during the golden age of short story writing and publishing. Yes, short story writers got paid to write in the 1930s. Shaw was featured in some of the best mags of the era. He wrote for radio. He went off to war and kept writing. Many of his novels became best-sellers. One was made into a Brando movie, The Young Lions. Two were made into blockbuster TV miniseries, Rich Man, Poor Man and Beggerman, Thief. Shaw lived in Paris. For the most part, he is not studied in M.F.A. writing programs due to his potboiler novels. A shame, really. Many of us could learn storytelling skills from this master.

"Sailor off the Bremen" serves up a pre-war cast of Nazis, communists and tough guys. Nobody really comes off as a hero. A young communist activist gets beat up at a protest against the Nazi-flag-flying Bremen. He loses his eye. His football-playing brother avenges the crime by beating a Nazi almost to death on the streets of New York. Nothing gets solved. The war will begin in September. The beatings and killings will commence on a global scale.

A white nationalist gets punched in the face in D.C. We cheer. White nationalists in Whitefish, Mont., target the Jews in their community. How do we respond to that? Peaceful protest may be the answer. Until it's not.

Lawrence Block included "Sailor off the Bremen" in the 2008 anthology he edited for Akashic Books, Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics. It's a good thing. Shaw's stories are hard to find these days. 

I leave you with a quote by James Fallows from the latest issue of Atlantic Magazine Online. Fallows recently spoke at a conference in Cheyenne. In the Atlantic article, he mentioned Laramie as one of the many places where local citizens are transforming their communities. At the same time, they hold a jaundiced view of national politics.

Fallows wrote this:

And now we have Donald Trump. We have small-town inland America—the culture I think of myself as being from—being credited or blamed for making a man like this the 45th in a sequence that includes Washington, Lincoln, and FDR. I view Trump’s election as the most grievous blow that the American idea has suffered in my lifetime. The Kennedy and King assassinations and the 9/11 attacks were crimes and tragedies. The wars in Vietnam and Iraq were disastrous mistakes. But the country recovered. For a democratic process to elevate a man expressing total disregard for democratic norms and institutions is worse. The American republic is based on rules but has always depended for its survival on norms—standards of behavior, conduct toward fellow citizens and especially critics and opponents that is decent beyond what the letter of the law dictates. Trump disdains them all. The American leaders I revere are sure enough of themselves to be modest, strong enough to entertain self-doubt. When I think of Republican Party civic virtues, I think of Eisenhower. But voters, or enough of them, have chosen Trump.

How many of our fellow citizens do we have to punch to make this right? If you punch, are you prepared to be punched back? Or worse?

Learning to Breathe, Part II

Read Part I here.

April 1939, Cheyenne, Wyoming. In Part II, anti-fascists and their Hailie Selassie automaton prepare to confront fascists arriving on the afternoon train.

The door groaned as Doherty pushed it open. He stepped out and walked to the rear of the truck. The statue was tied securely to the bed. Six feet tall, about his height, although that was taking some liberties with the subject who reportedly topped the five-foot mark only when wearing thick-heeled boots. Still, the ruler of a mighty kingdom. Doherty had to hand it to Weaver –- the man had done a fine job sculpting Hailie Selassie out of the metal from expended Italian artillery shells that he found in piles across Ethiopia. The serene face, the mustache and beard, eyes that seemed to come alive.  

Doherty walked to the driver’s side. In the cab, the driver was toking on a spliff. “Jeez, Weaver,” the white man said. He knocked on the window.

The black man rolled it down. “What is it, Irish?”

“You have to smoke that now?”

“Calms me, man. And it’s part of my religion.”

“I know. But now? You are a black man in a city that’s 110 percent white. We are waiting at the train station to do a number on a hero of the white race. Is this the right time to be doing your drug?”

“No problem, Jim.” The black man held the spliff like a cigarette. “How they going to see my ganja cloud when the sky is brown with dust already?”

“They can smell it.”

“Smells like burning weeds.”

The train whistle blew.

“That’s our train,” Doherty said.

Weaver inhaled one more batch of smoke and tamped out the spliff on the truck floor. Doherty didn’t understand Weaver’s so-called religion. He worshipped Selassie, a.k.a. Ras Tafari, as the second coming of Christ. Smoked leaves of a weed like Doherty smoked cigarettes. But when Doherty wanted to dull life’s pain, he turned to whiskey. Calmed him down. That’s what Weaver said ganja did for him. When they camped out at night, Weaver lit up and the stuff smelled a bit like the sage he and his father burned for cooking fires while hunting in the Red Desert. A bit sweeter – not unpleasant. When Weaver was not driving and smoked, Doherty could swear that the smoke got to him. He felt mildly elated, even imagined shapes crossing in front of him on the road. At Weaver’s urging, he’d smoked it a few times but felt it made him lazy. A guy couldn’t afford dreaminess when fighting fascists.

Weaver opened the door and stepped out of the truck. He was a few inches shorter than six-foot-tall Doherty. He wore Army boots, denim trousers and a blue work shirt. He had the hands of a workman, calloused and cut-up, a blue-black bruise on the knuckles of his right hand, souvenirs of a bar brawl in Omaha. Doherty’s left hand still hurt from that same fight. This Rastafari religion might profess a love of peace, but he’d never seen anyone fight like Weaver when the chips were down.

Doherty inspected the truck. Statue was OK. The banner wrapped around the outside walls of the truck bed read: “It is us today. It will be you tomorrow.” That’s what Selassie had said in a warning to the rest of the world.

Nobody seemed to be listening.

Doherty and Weaver met on the New York docks. Longshoremen refused to unload the Bremen, a German cargo ship that flew the Nazi flag. A riot erupted and the two men ended up taking shelter in the same waterfront bar. After a few drinks, Weaver invited Doherty to a warehouse in Brooklyn to see the Salassie statue. Doherty was impressed. Weaver, an art school grad from Detroit, built the statue. He went overseas to fight for the world’s only black monarch. He stayed for the art.

The two met in January. In March, they loaded Ras Tafari onto Doherty’s beat-up truck and they were off.

 “Think he’ll come out the front door?” said Weaver, eyes on the depot.

“Where else?”

The train depot was built of stone with a large clock tower. They could see the train’s passenger cars as they eased to a stop in back of the station. Their target was in one of those cars. They planned a surprise attack on their fascist opponent. But, there were limits to violence. One often got better results with theatre. He had seen enough of human behavior to know that drama was a handy form of persuasion. He had seen the National Socialists of Germany at work. He had watched the Spaniards and Italians. They all loved the movement of large casts of actors against decorative landscapes, whether that was the mountains of northern Spain or the deserts of Eritrea.

“Maybe he’s just going to talk inside the depot and then get back on the train?”

Doherty thought about it. “Can you maneuver your statue into the station?”

Weaver smiled. “It could be done, depending on the size of the doors.”

Doherty saw the glint in Weaver’s eyes and knew his friend was conjuring. The man was good at improvising. Good with his hands, too, whether it was fighting or sculpting statues from old artillery shells.   

People were arriving at the station. First thing they did when getting out of their cars was look at the two strange men and the big statue in the back of the truck. None came over, at least not at first. Two young couples got out of a sporty yellow coupe and walked over to the truck.

“What’s this?” asked a pretty girl whose brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She stared at Weaver. “Are you the artist?”

Weaver nodded.

“Who is the statue of?” the girl asked,

“Haile Selassie, Lion of Judah,” Weaver said.

“Must have taken a long time to make,” said the girl.

“I know who Haile Selassie is,” said the boy next to ponytail. “Ethiopia, right?”

“Right,” said Weaver.

“Did he say that?” said the other girl, a long-haired blonde. “On the banner?”

“Yes,” said Doherty. “He said it in a speech to the League of Nations.”

“Oh,” said the girl. “They’re a bunch of communists aren’t they? That’s what my dad says.”

“The U.S. is in the League of Nations,” said Doherty.

“Commies,” said the boy with the blonde. “C’mon, guys, we got to see the speech for Mr. Lain’s class.”

The ponytail girl took one more look at Weaver before being pulled away by her boyfriend. Doherty and Weaver watched them go.

“She liked the cut of your jib,” said Doherty.

Weaver shook his head. “Kids,” he said. “Those are the boys America will send off to fight. Think there’s any hope?”

“Those two guys don’t look very promising,” Doherty said. “But ponytail? I could see her with a carbine. She’s feisty like those Spanish Republican women. Some were damn good shots.”

Weaver looked at Doherty. “You still writing that Spanish woman, what’s her name?”

“Anna – she’s Basque.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheets of folded paper. “Took this letter a month to find me. She’s safe in France now.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. It surprises me. She was a tiger.”

“In bed?”

Doherty chuckled. “You kill me, Weaver. Yes, in bed and on the field. Her husband and brother were both killed in Guernica. She took no prisoners.”

“Except you?”

He slapped Weaver on the back. “I went willingly, chum. Like a lamb to the slaughter.”

To be continued...

Tune in to this same channel on Jan. 25 for Learning to Breathe, Part III.

Wyoming Women's March and Potluck draws big crowd to downtown Cheyenne

Me: We had 5 million people in Cheyenne yesterday for the Wyoming Women's March.
Other person: No you you didn't.
Me: Yes we did.
Other person: Impossible. Only 65,000 people live in Cheyenne. The crowds would have stretched all the way to Chugwater. We have photos to prove you wrong.
Me: Photos, schmotos. If I say we had 5 million, we had 5 million. That's all you need to know in Trump's America.

OK, some 1,200 people attended Saturday's Women and Allies March on Wyoming. How do I know? I don't. I am relying on guesstimates from the Cheyenne Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Office. That number was repeated in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle which featured the march on the front page. At one point, I ventured that several thousand had attended. My proof? My own bias and buoyant enthusiasm at seeing such a large group of enthusiastic people gathered to protest Trumpism. So, I am as much a reliable source as Trump is reliable with estimates of attendance at his Jan. 20 inauguration.

No matter. The crowd exceeded expectations, and may have been the biggest ever to protest anything in The Magic City of the Plains. It was organized by a coalition of liberals that included the Laramie County Democrats, the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition and Wyoming Equality. Organizers were Sara Burlingame and Lori Brand. Speakers included Cathy Connolly, the first openly LGBT state rep, Rev. Rodger McDaniel, and a host of others from faith communities and activist organizations. Many, many people volunteered as parade marshals, cooks, servers and for anything else that needed doing.

I'm a member of the Grassroots org's fund-raising committee. As such, I was tasked with making chili and baking brownies. In my Crockpot was a big serving of Mike's NASty Man/Woman Beef and Bean Chili. The N-A-S in NASty is the abbreviation for No Added Salt, a battle cry of mine since salt helped bring down my heart a few years ago. Actually, I helped bring down my heart. Modern medicine, science, a refugee cardiologist, great nursing care, and my own hard work aided in the return of my heart. My mission, as a home gardener and a cook, is to make low sodium foods from scratch. It is almost impossible to find low sodium canned chili, one of my favorite remedies for Wyoming's long winters. So I make my own without salt and expect people to eat it.

They did. It was gone by the time I went through the serving line. 30 other Crockpots awaited my attention. Organizers don't know that so many hot dishes would show show up at Cheyenne's Historic Depot. We put out the word on social media and e-mails and even phone calls. The people responded with chilis, stews and soups. I would have liked to sample them all, the vegetarian minestrone. the white chicken chili. the vegetable soup. I sampled Sherryl's beef and sausage chili which featured salt but was oh so good (I had a small bowl). I ate my post-march meal with some friends from Fort Collins and some strangers from Laramie and Centennial.  A congenial group, impressed by the hospitality. I was impressed too, even though I was part of it. The warmth of the crowd had all the markings of a church social or grange hall potluck. You don't see many pussy hats or artistic uteruses at the grange hall. But you get my meaning. A group of like-minded people gather for an event, chat, eat well and then go on our way.

All the Crockpots and soup pots plugged into a limited number of outlets caused a short circuit. Latecomers to the food line had a limited selection of lukewarm dishes. But I heard no complaints. There was, after all, plenty of cookies and brownies. The homemade cupcakes were gone, as were Ray's Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies. You have to get there early for those.

What about the march itself? Were the speeches good? What else did you see? Were there any riots?

Short answers. I couldn't hear most of the speeches due to defective sound system. I ran into my one-time work colleague Katie and her four-month old baby and her handcrafted uterus sign. I also like the big banner unfurled by women from Laramie: "Wild Wombs of the West." No riots, although I did have to serve as bathroom monitor at the depot when the women staged an uprising at the long women's restroom line and marched over to the men's room looking for equal time. We graciously took turns.

Read today's WTE's story on the march here. Google "women's march" to get scads of stories about protests all over the globe, even in Park City, Utah, and Antarctica. And four other Wyoming locales: Casper, Lander, Pinedale and Cody.

See you next time.

Afterburn, a post-march transition meeting, will be held at 3 p.m on Sunday, Jan. 29, at the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1630509583917589/

P.S.: If you came here looking for part two of "Learning to Breathe," I will post it tomorrow.

Learning to Breathe, Part I

When I read my work, I usually don't say much before I launch into a story. To explain something and then read it is counter-productive, or at the very least, annoying. I will have plenty to say once you have read this story about an imagined historic incident in 1939, when the U.S. was confronted with another fascist threat. Comments are welcome, as always.   

Learning to Breathe, Part I
Fiction in four parts
By Michael Shay

Until we meet again, my friends.

I breathe for you.

--James Doherty, 1938, In Spain, I Learned to Breathe

In April 1939, Ras Tafari blew into Cheyenne wrapped in a mighty dust cloud.

He rode in the back of a battered westbound Model T Truck. He stood tall, bound to the truck bed by thick ropes. His steady gaze looked to the east, back to Addis Abbaba and to Bath in England, his recent home. His hair was cut close and beard trimmed. A royal robe draped his shoulders and fell all the way to the metal bed, hiding his feet. The dust cloud swirled around him, swabbing the metal skin that stood in for Ras Tafari, Haile Selassie the First, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Emperor of Ethiopia.

The beacons of the truck’s headlights poked through the afternoon gloom. The black man at the wheel -– his name was Weaver -- strained his eyes to keep the vehicle on the two-lane highway. He drove slowly, expecting some devil to rear-end him at any time. He’d passed bigger trucks all day before being swallowed by the churning Dust Bowl cloud. Now he just hoped that he got to Cheyenne before one of those heavily-loaded behemoths plowed into him.

 James Doherty rode shotgun. His sandy hair was cut short. He wore a jagged five-inch scar on the right cheek of his freckled face, making him look older than his 28 years. “See OK?”

“Hell no,” said Weaver.

“Want me to take a turn?”

“Hell no,” he repeated. “We stop and bim-bam-boom, we get hit in this dust storm.”

“I see what you mean,” Doherty said.

“Can’t be too far, right?”

Doherty nodded.

Weaver grabbed a cloth and wiped it across the fogged interior of the windshield. “You breathe too much.”

“In Spain, I learned to breathe,” Doherty said.

“One of your poems?”

“Want me to recite it?”

Weaver laughed. “I like your poetry as much as you like my driving.”

Doherty laughed. “OK,” he said, “no more driving tips.”

“And save the poetry for the enemy.”

“Sure.” Doherty pulled the cloth out of the driver’s hands and swiped it across the glass. He was new to poetry. One of his comrades in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Marcus Riddle from California, saw Doherty scribbling by candlelight. A poet himself, he took an interest in Doherty’s words. He taught him about meter and rhyme and stanzas. He got better, thanks to Marcus, who was killed at Guadarrama. There were bad days in Spain but that was the worst. He grieved for Marcus by writing a poem which he recited now to himself:

In Spain, many were without breath.

I learned to breathe for them.

Richard of London, lungs collapsed by pneumonia.

Marcus of Sacramento, heart pierced by a fascist bullet.

Paolo of Guernica, disappeared in the night.

Richard, Marcus, Paolo – hundreds of others.

I breathe in, breathe out.

Clouds form in the chill Pyrenees air

as I walk to France.

I see their faces as they were, scared, laughing, angry, numb.

With each breath, they float up and out over the sea.

Until we meet again, my friends,  

I breathe for you.

He began to see poetry as a tool, much like a rifle or a hammer. Anna, his woman, was the real poet. Around a fire, she selected words from the air and recited her poems in Basque and, sometimes, in stilted English. Doherty hoped she still was safe in France.

He tossed the cloth on the seat. He saw through the clean windshield that the gloom was beginning to lift. Doherty saw the outline of buildings against the lowering sun. “That’s it.” He pointed. “Maybe we’ll be able to meet the train after all.”

Weaver grunted and sped up.

Traffic increased. Gray shapes passed the old truck through a brown cloud. The gaunt faces of children pressed against windows, gawking at the Lion of Judah in the rear of the truck.

They reached the outskirts of the town. Doherty knew this place – he’d been a union organizer here. Another high plains cow town and railroad burg, this one bigger than most as it was the capital of the big square state that was his birthplace. Doherty gave directions to the driver. Left turn here. Go five blocks. Right turn, pass a stop sign.

The sun appeared by the time they reached the train station. A yellow orb floating in a vast sky. Off to the left was the tall spire of the station. The driver pulled into the parking lot and stopped.

“How’s our passenger?” said Weaver, gesturing to the rear.

Doherty peered out the truck’s tiny rear window. “Still there.”

“Take a look.”

Doherty looked at driver. “He’s there, I tell you.”

“See if he’s secure.”

Doherty shrugged. In the past decade, he’d worked with all kinds of people: American Negroes, Ethiopians, Jamaicans, Basques, Italians, and Jews -- his world had opened up considerably since his Irish-American boyhood in the hardscrabble mining town of Rock Springs.

To be continued...

Look for Learning to Breathe, Part II, on Jan. 2223. 

Writers, welcome to The Resistance

Denver's East Colfax Avenue has no "Cowboy Crossing" signs.

But I stopped anyway to let two cowboys cross in the middle of the street. It was growing dark, snow spat from the Colorado sky. As the two cowboys in black hats sprinted across the street, one limped along and one waved his thanks.

I returned the wave and motored to my destination. It's Stock Show time in Denver. Cowboys from Hugo in Colorado and Greybull in Wyoming swarmed the town. By day, they rodeoed and exhibited prize bulls and spectated. At night, they hunted down good eats on Colfax.

Cowboy: Where can I find a good restaurant?
Denver person: Try Colfax. But beware of the hipsters.
Cowboy: What's a hipster?
Denver person: You'll see.

I saw a few hipsters at the Writers Resist reading at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop just off of Colfax on Race Street. No cowboys, though, at least none wearing cowboy hats. As one of the readers pointed out, it was good to see all of us introverts out and about on a winter Sunday night.

Some in the 100-plus crowd in the basement grotto were writers. Some were not. We attended because we objected to what was happening in our country during the third week on January 2017. A demagogue was getting sworn in an president. We never dreamed we would see this day. Maybe that was part of the problem. We never dreamed, as Martin Luther King, Jr., did. We complained. We wrote. We blogged. Many of us, but not all, voted. Somehow we didn't work hard enough to keep a guy like Trump from being president.

Writers Resist was formed after the election by writer Erin Belieu who teaches in the M.F.A. program at Florida State University. I am a product of an M.F.A. writing program (Colorado State University) and have a weakness for MFAers, especially when they are social activists. Writers tend to be liberals. So do Liberal Arts academics. Maybe that's why the wingnuts hate us so much and want to send us all to re-education camps. We are products of a liberal education system, in my case, a series of community colleges and land-grant universities most of which feature football teams subsidized by citrus barons (my Florida Gators) or by robber barons such as the Koch Brothers. If you look at a list of alumni of any land-grant university, and you see names of military leaders and corporate CEOs and Republican politicians, you might be tempted to wonder why universities aren't hotbeds of rabid wingnuts instead of breeding grounds for social activists. As it turns out, most campuses include righties and lefties and people who don't give a shit. College students voted for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and anyone else who managed to get on the ballot. You can just as easily blame Trump on the Sigma Nu at CU as you can the laid-off factory worker in Wisconsin.

I digress. Writers Resist in Denver was one of more than 100 similar events happening all over the world. I was in Denver because I was taking my daughter Annie to some medical appointments. I'm retired so I have the time and inclination to do these things. I drag my kids to these events, just as the young Hispanic couple who sat in front of us did last night. Two young parents, two well-behaved children. An all-American family.

The writers were a diverse bunch. Teow Lim Goh read from her first book of poems, Islanders, from Conundrum Press. I listened to her poems and they spoke to me. Not because I am Chinese but because I also come from immigrants. They also had to go through an island -- Ellis Island -- to be admitted to this country. In the case of the Chinese, it was Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Chinese immigrants faced additional barriers that my Irish forebears did not -- color and language (some Irish spoke Gaelic). The writer addresses this issue in the poem "Daydreams." In it, a white bureaucrat walks to work every day "past a sea of yellow faces,/their worries creased into their brows." At work, he looks at immigrant files, "the tales inside just words to him." Yet, as he looks at the photograph of a potential Chinese immigrant, this happens:

In her eyes he sees his mother
fleeing a homeland plagued by famine,
huddled on Ellis Island.

That hurts. Irish-Americans worked hard to assimilate. The first generation born in the U.S., such as my own mother, spoke English like a native and, with her all-American good looks, rarely ever was called a dirty Mick or a redneck Catholic, all terms Denver Nativists flung at Irish-Catholics. Even though my family name was changed from O'Shea to Shay either at Ellis Island or in my great-great-grandfather's attempt to fit in, we Shays eventually blended in and could become suburban Republicans who look on people of color as "the other," people to be feared and possibly banished.

Why I love poetry, good writing of all kinds. It makes me think and feel. I can become the other. If that is true, can I imagine myself as the other, that guy driving the big black pick-up with the Trump bumper sticker I followed today down the snowy interstate? I hope I can. Our future as a nation may depend on that.

Meanwhile, the writers stood up and read at Writers Resist. David J. Daniels wrote about growing up gay. His book, Clean, is published by Four Way Books. Emily Perez read a long poem, "My Father Quotes Jaime Escalante," from her book Backyard Migration Route. Khadijah Queen read June Jordan's "Poem About My Rights." and a poem about sexual harassment from her new book, I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men &and What I Had On. Army combat veteran Seth Brady Tucker read a selection from Claudia Rankine's Citizen and a short piece about his struggle, as a soldier, to take a college course that meant he could become the "educated other" in his unit. Alejandra Garza wrapped up the night with a presentation about her organization, the Colorado ACLU, and why it is important for these times.

Annie and I each bought a book and had it signed by the authors. We drove home on the lookout for cowboys, but saw none crossing the road in the dark city night.

To contribute or volunteer for the Colorado ACLU, go to http://aclu-co.org
To contribute or volunteer for the Wyoming ACLU, go to https://www.aclu-wy.org

Past and present meet in my old Aurora neighborhood

Last week, I stood on the disappeared foundation of my old house in Aurora's Hoffman Heights. I thought about the past but gazed out upon the future.

First, the past. I was a pre-schooler when my father bought his first house in 1954 for $8,000 with no money down and a low interest rate. Like thousands of other World War II vets, he received benefits from his grateful government. He was a college grad, thanks to the G.I. Bill. My dad had a job as Denver's businesses boomed, thanks to an influx of GIs who trained in Colorado and had discovered its possibilities.

Hoffman Heights was one of Denver's first suburbs. First called Hoffman Town, after developer Sam Hoffman, it consisted of 1,700 houses on 44 acres between Colfax and Sixth avenues. Many Baby Boomers were born in the neighborhood, flooding into new schools such as Vaughn Elementary, which is still there and looking much as it did when I started kindergarten in 1956. In September 1955, residents were excited because the President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, recuperated from a major heart attack at Fitzsimons Army Hospital across Colfax from the neighborhood. You could walk out on your front lawn, if grass seed had sprouted during your first summer, and see the lights of Room 8002. The president was in the house! The supreme allied commander who had led us to victory over the Nazis and now was whipping up on the commies. You had a job, a house, a car, and a growing family. Your neighbors were white like you with similar backgrounds. There were exceptions. The guy next door was kind of a redneck. He kept rabbits in a backyard hutch and slaughtered them while children watched in horror. We shared a fence with the mother of Jane Russell, the Hollywood star. My mother's hospital co-worker, Jeep from Alabama (I swear that was her name) didn't come over any more because my mother insisted on being civil to the black nurse who recently joined the staff. There was a "funny" kid in the neighborhood, an older kid who our parents didn't want us to play with. He insisted on hanging with us little kids, which made him more creepy than funny.

Memory is an odd thing. Only some parts of this may be true/. My memory center is aging and isn't what it used to be. My parents are both gone. My brother Dan is gone. My sister Molly doesn't remember much, as she was a baby during most of the years we lived on Worchester. The Internet helps me look up old stories about the neighborhood. But there is no section in Cyberspace called "Mike's Memories." I'm on my own.

What can I say about growing up the 1950s suburbs in Middle America? I felt safe and loved. I walked to school with a zillion other kids. I walked the neighborhood with the same kids on Halloween. We collected candy and the parents collected cocktails and were pretty looped by the time we all got home. Nobody thought of taking X-rays of the collected candy. Christmas brought coonskin caps and hula hoops. Summer brought games of tag and kick the can.

Memories are similar for millions of American Baby Boomers. I am retired, alas, and many conversations I have with fellow Boomers at the YMCA or the coffee shop, harken back to those halcyon days. They are mostly white, too, as Wyoming is overwhelmingly Caucasian and conservative. Many of them voted for Donald Trump in an attempt to "Make America Great Again."  What they wish for is a return to the reality that exists only in their flawed memories.

Cut to the present in Aurora. Some of the houses, including mine, and old strip malls have been leveled for hotels, such as the Hyatt Regency Conference Center and Springhill Suites at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.. The latter is the one we stay in when visiting our daughter, who lives in an adjacent neighborhood. Across six-lane Colfax is the medical campus, which employs 21,000 people. It is home to one of the country's premier children's hospitals, the CU Medical Center, and a number of research facilities. Located in their midst is the old Fitzsimons Army Hospital, now the complex's administration building. At night, you can look to the east and see the lights of a new RTD light rail stop that spans Colfax and is adjacent to I-225. Also to the east, on the fringe of the old neighborhood, rises the skeleton of a brand new condo complex that features an interior parking garage. Nearby brick apartment complexes, other relics from the 50s and 60s, now bill themselves as "apartment homes" and advertise "move-in specials." Houses in the old neighborhood are again selling, a relief to the old-timers who thought that they never would sell their houses in this now-seedy enclave. The city of Aurora even offers grants for fix-up and clean-up projects in the neighborhood, getting it ready for future resident who may even be hospital residents or physicians or nurses or researchers. They come from all over the world, so the new neighborhood will also be a mix of Kenyans, and Syrians and Chinese and Brazilians. The multi-ethnic mix that makes up any American city.

Aurora is not Denver, where only 18 percent of residents voted for Trump. Aurora is more suburban and conservative, but still part of the Denver metroplex, which is blue, and Colorado, also blue. As a state, it will be an outpost for resistance to Trump's extremist agenda. It will be a battle in a state known for its legal marijuana and craft beers but also for its Sagebrush Rebellion and long-time distrust of big government.

Wyoming is what Colorado was. Some Denverites have had enough and are moving to Laramie and Cheyenne. Or even north along the I-25 corridor to Loveland, Greeley and Fort Collins. Cheyenne is growing. Many Wyomingites refer to it as "north Denver," consider it way too liberal for The Cowboy State. Our county will soon be home to 1000,000 people, about one in every six Wyoming residents. The legislature meets annually in Cheyenne. Legislators are here now, crafting regressive bills that embarrasses us progressives and makes our fellow Dems in Denver shake their heads.

A rural Republican from Baggs, Sen. Larry Hicks, offers SJR 4 which would roll back equal protections for people based on "their race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin." You could call this resolution "Make Wyoming White Again" which, of course, it already is. But just across the border in Colorado, swarthy liberals wait to snatch your state job or your entrance slot to the University of Wyoming Law School. This effectively closes the border to all of those well-educated ethnic minorities who energize Colorado's economy. Hicks and his Know Nothings' co-sponsors also want (in SF 71) to "penalize electricity providers if they continue to sell power to consumers that is generated by wind or solar energy in Wyoming," according to a staff editorial in this morning's Wyoming Tribune Eagle. It goes on: "To suggest charging utilities...a penalty for using renewable energy where the sun shines more than 300 days a year and the wind blows constantly is just insane." Yes it is. My subtitle for this bill: "Make Coal Great Again."

Monday, of course, is Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. It is a national holiday. Wyoming must not be part of the nation as the legislature insists on working this day while it recesses for Presidents Day on Feb. 20. This not surprising in an august body that turned down Sen. Liz Byrd's bill to recognize the MLK holiday eight time before finally caving in, but only if "Wyoming Equality Day" was added to the title. Even then, our rural legislators were concerned about hordes of ethnic minorities streaming across the border and claiming seats in the Capitol that properly belonged to white folks.

Other rural Repubs are offering bills to allow people to carry guns everywhere, even into college classrooms and sporting events. It would allow guns into all government meetings including those of the legislature. Rep. Biteman of Ranchester is point man on these efforts. I suppose he will be the first one to carry a sidearm into a legislative committee meeting next year, as these people never seem to be voted out of office.

I am used to reporting on the nutty things that Republicans do in our one-party state. You can read some of my earlier columns by going here and here. Now I have to keep up with happenings on the national scene with the dawn of Trumplandia. This story is from the New York Daily News:

A conservative Arizona lawmaker, Rep. Bob Thorpe, is proposing a far-reaching law in Arizona, House Bill 2120, banning virtually every college event, activity or course which discusses social justice, skin privilege, or racial equality. Violating the law would allow the state of Arizona to levy multimillion-dollar fines and penalties against universities. 

A few years ago, Arizona enacted a law that eliminated ethnic studies courses. I blogged about that here. And now this

Just the beginning, folks.

When Ike had his heart attack in 1955, coronary care was still in the dark ages

Building 500 on a January afternoon.

Coronary Q & A

After a short visit to the eighth floor of Building 500 on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora

Q: If you had a heart attack in 1955, what was the likely outcome?

A: Death.

Q: You're kidding, right? I said 1955, not 1855, or 1755.

A: I kid you not. The most common nickname for a garden-variety heart attack in 1955 was "the widow maker."

Q: "Widowmaker" is what my Syrian refugee cardiologist called the heart attack caused by a total blockage of the Lateral Anterior Descending Artery or L.A.D. The kind of heart attack I had to welcome in the new year of 2013.

A: Times change. So does the language.

Q: In 1955, what was the most common prescription for the usual heart attack symptoms such as chest pain, numbness in the left arm, shortness of breath, chronic gastrointestinal problems?

A: R & R. Some time on the beach. A few rounds of golf. A relaxing day fishing by a bucolic Colorado trout stream. That was for men. Women? They didn't have heart heart attacks in 1955. It was probably hysteria. Or penis envy. Freud was in vogue.

Q: Forget Freud. Didn't doctors use electrocardiograms in 1955?

A: Not often. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower complained of chronic gastrointestinal pain. His doctor, U.S. Army Major General Howard McCrum Snyder, conducted a month-long physical of Ike without once doing an EKG. He told Ike to relax by going on a vacation and play some golf.

Q: What did Ike do?

A: He flew off to Colorado and played some golf.

Q: Why Colorado?

A: Ike's wife, Mamie Doud, was from Denver. She and Ike usually stayed at the Doud family home in what is now the Seventh Avenue Historic District. He had a heart attack on Sept. 23 after playing 27 holes of golf at Cherry Hills Country Club. According to the Encore newsletter I picked up at Building 500, once known as Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, Ike "complained of chest pains, but but continued to play, assuming it was heartburn."

Q: But it was a heart attack?

A: Right. One of the symptoms the American Heart Association warns you about.

Q: So he went to the hospital?

A: He went back to the Doud's home. "He awoke the next morning at 2 a.m. from chest pains that were not subdued by Milk of Magnesia."

Q: Even I, a layperson and not a doctor, can see the difficulty of subduing a full-blown widowmaker with Milk of Magnesia.

A: Exactly. It wasn't until that afternoon that the Fitzsimons docs administered an EKG to POTUS and "announced that Eisenhower had a coronary thrombosis condition that would be best treated at Fitzsimons."

Q: Don't docs now say that "minutes means muscle," that time is of the essence in the treatment of any heart attack?

A: They didn't know that in 1955.

Q: What did they know?

A: From Encore: "While the American Heart Association was founded in 1924, little was known about heart disease. Doctors knew that death could occur, but provided no causes, symptoms of treatment for coronary thrombosis.... Since the 1920s, heart disease has continued to be America's number-one killer."

Q: That's progress. So the President of the United States, the man who whipped the Nazis, received no treatment for his heart attack? No oblation? No stent? No blood thinners? No pacemaker? No bypass? No weeks of painstaking rehab on the treadmill and weight machines?

A: Those were all treatments of the future. The good news is that the president's seven weeks of rehab in Denver alerted the world to a dangerous killer. When you had your heart attack, the medical establishment had almost 60 years of research behind it.

Q: I could have died.

A: But you didn't. You walk around with a machine in your chest that regulates atrial fibrillation (A-fib) and will shock you back to the present should you ever experience catastrophic heart failure.

Q: One of my earliest memories is from Aurora, Colorado. I was four. We lived in the neighborhood across Colfax Avenue from Fitzsimons. My father pointed out the lights of Room 8002 and announced that the President of the United States was recuperating from a heart attack in that room. Memories are funny things. I'm not sure why I remember it. It's possible that my father told me about it later. He was a good storyteller.

A: When you were in Denver last week, did you get to tour Room 8002 at Fitzsimons, now known as The Eisenhower Suite? It's been lovingly restored by the University of Colorado Hospital, an entity that obviously cares about history and science. It now looks like it did in September of 1955, when the leader of the free world and his wife and a secret service detail lived there.

Q: It was a quick visit. I was in town to take my daughter Annie to some medical appointments. But I will be back. It may have led to my own recovery from coronary artery disease. In Eisenhower's Heart Attack, Clarence Lasby, M.D., states: "The eight floor became, in a way, the nation's first coronary care unit... where shifts of cardiologists, nurses, technicians, medical corpsmen, dietitians, cooks, and security staff were present on a 24-hour basis to serve the patient and his family."

A: I love historic sites and museums. I'm curious. Alive and curious. Thanks, Ike.

Readers can still find an epiphany in this post-truth world

Remember the impact of The Matrix when it debuted in 1999? The "Matrix" was the false reality created by machines. Humans lived in this manufactured reality. The scary truth is that humans lived in pods where their bodily fluids and brain waves were farmed as power sources by the machines. Neo (Keanu Reeves) suspects there is something wrong in this world. He gets the lowdown when he joins with Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and other rebels to upset the status quo.

The film boasted a cool cast and neat-o special effects. But its core was an old theme: Things are not what they seem. People are not whom they seem to be. In Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train  Shadow of a Doubt , Charlie is not the kindly uncle that his niece Charley thinks he is. In Chinatown, detective Jake Gittes finds out once again that things are not what they seem in Chinatown or San Pedro or anywhere else.

A well-worn theme. As in our recent presidential election, things are not what they seem. This liberal voter thought that his country of birth was a rational place that would elect the experienced person. As I told my sister Molly, who works in Italy, there was no way that Trump would be elected. Molly was telling me that Italians thought that Trump was a buffoon, an idiot, a flim-flam man. He was -- and is. But somehow, enough voters bought the act to make him president. They bought the fact that Trump was Professor Harold Hill and not, well, Donald Trump. Does that make them stupid, gullible or hopeful?

I have read many columns explaining the 2016 elections. The best are thoughtful examinations of the national psyche. They come from reputable sources such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, Salon. The gap between Republicans and Democrats is unbridgeable. It was a battle between urban liberals and rural conservatives and the latter won. The working classes hate privileged liberals such as Obama and Clinton, even when they come from (as Obama did) modest roots. Sen. Bernie Sanders contends that the Democrats sold out to the moneyed elites and forgot the middle class, even though many middle class voters in Rust Belt states voted for a member of New York City's moneyed elite. Go figure.

Although our new president doesn't read, I do. I guess I will keep reading until this all makes sense. Or not. I am a bit tired of reading critiques of the election. Most of my reading from this point on will be in fiction and poetry. Today is the feast of Epiphany, or as we called it in Catholic school, that day we get off after Christmas vacation. I learned in religion class that epiphany means "revelation." This according to the Fish Eaters blog:

As described on the page on Twelfthnight, this Feast -- also known as the . "Theophany" or "Three Kings Day" -- recalls Christ revealing Himself as Divine in three different ways: to the Magi, at His Baptism, and with His miracle at the wedding feast at Cana.

I learned today on Writer's Almanac that Epiphany also figures heavily in a James Joyce story:

James Joyce’s famous short story “The Dead” is set at a party for the Feast of the Epiphany. The story ends: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Joyce also gave us a secular meaning of “epiphany,” using the word to mean the “revelation of the whatness of a thing,” the moment when “the soul of the commonest object [...] seems to us radiant."

I just finished Colson Whitehead's radiant novel The Underground Railroad. An incredible book. Does it help me understand the state of the U.S. in 2017? Our country's history is complicated, much more complicated than Lynne Cheney or Bill O'Reilly would have us believe. U.S. history is messy. Brutish and transcendent. The Underground Railroad pulls no punches when it comes to slavery's realities. But Whitehead adds some magical-realism elements that makes it much more than an anti-slavery screed. I can't give away the ending. That wouldn't be fair to millions of people who have yet to discover the book. Here is one tiny clue. The author is also interested in Manifest Destiny. Important to all Americans but especially to those who live in the Rocky Mountain West. Manifest Destiny leads us right to Wounded Knee and Little Bighorn and broken treaties and North Dakota's Standing Rock protests. Current events. And the timeliness of great fiction.

And poetry? More about that in my next post.

Which side are you on, boys?

I admired Len Edgerly's column Tuesday on Medium: "Dalton Trumbo: 'It will do you no good to search for heroes and villains.' " It's notable in its restraint, a parable for our times. It's about screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the 2015 film that portrays his run-in with the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s. Len is a fine writer and someone I worked with in the arts for many years in Wyoming. His post includes excerpts from a speech Trumbo delivered in 1970 that looked back upon the blacklist era. It's notable that he delivered this speech during another time when young men were once again trying to sort heroes from villains.

The blacklist was a time of evil. And no one who survived it came through untouched by evil. Caught in a situation that had passed beyond control of mere individuals, each person reacted as his nature, his needs, his convictions, and his particular circumstances compelled him to. 

It was a time of fear. And no one was exempt. Scores of people lost their homes. Their families disintegrated. They lost — and in some, some even lost their lives. 

But when you look back upon that dark time, as I think you should every now and then, it will do you no good to search for heroes or villains. There weren’t any. There were only victims. Victims, because each of us felt compelled to say or do things that we otherwise would not, to deliver or receive wounds which we truly did not wish to exchange. 

I look out to my family sitting there, and I realize what I’ve put them through. And it’s unfair. My wife, who somehow kept it all together, amazes me. And so what I say here tonight is not intended to be hurtful to anyone. It is intended to heal the hurt, to repair the wounds which for years have been inflicted upon each other and most egregiously upon ourselves.

I know a few things about Trumbo. He was born in Montrose, Colorado, grew up in Grand Junction, and went to school for two years at CU-Boulder where the "free speech fountain" is named after him. That namesake fountain sometimes inflames the passions of CU conservatives and, yes, conservatives are allowed into Boulder just as liberals are allowed to dwell in Cheyenne. For now, anyway.

Trumbo was a commie or at least a fellow traveler. Those terms were used to brand liberals or progressives during the Cold War. Baby Boomers know the sting of those labels. Most people didn't lose careers after being publicly branded a communist, as did Trumbo. He resurrected his career by using aliases, even earned two Academy Awards, one using a fake name and one using a "front." When he openly won scriptwriting Oscars for Spartacus and Exodus in 1960, the blacklist was officially over.

But he paid a price. Was he a hero? Maybe not. Hero, of course, is used indiscriminately these days and has lost its meaning. Ditto for villains. I volunteer for Cheyenne's Old-Fashioned Summer Melodrama. The plot is a fiction wherein the hero rides to the rescue and rescues the damsel in distress who has been tied to the railroad tracks by the mustachioed villain in the black cape. We cheer for the hero and boo the villain.

Were it only that simple.

Len and I and many others were college freshman in 1969 trying to sort friend from foe. My U.S. Navy ROTC commandant at the University of South Carolina was a Marine colonel whose son had been killed in Vietnam. He told me that the Viet Cong were the bad guys which was why us -- the good guys -- had to fight and possibly die in the jungles of Southeast Asia. President Nixon, my future commander-in-chief, said the same thing. So did the members of the "best and brightest" brain trust who designed the foolproof Vietnam War strategy. Many of them were Harvard grads.

The SDS, at Harvard and on my campus, said that the U.S. was waging an immoral and unjust war and soldiers were baby killers. Some young women on campus thought that we midshipmen looked dashing in our uniforms. Others would not give us the time of day. Some campus longhairs spurned us buzzcut guys. Others were happy to share a joint with us, even friendship.

Most of us felt we had to choose sides. That was difficult if you planned a military career. Your military leader said do this and you did it. Our civilian leaders said do this and you should do it but was it the right thing? Our fathers were all World War II veterans, guys that had saved us from the Nazis. These guys were our heroes. Wasn't it our turn next?

"Which side are you on?" That's a famous union organizing song by Florence Reece, wife of union organizer Sam Reece. The chorus asks a key question, one that many of us have been asked over the years. We may be asked again, here in 2017:

"Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on, boys?
Which side are you on?"

If you were organizing for the union in 1931 in Harlan County, Kentucky, whose side would you be in? When mine owners sent the sheriff to arrest Sam Reece, he fled to the hills. Union organizers sometimes ended up dead in mysterious circumstances. Who were the good guys then? Many musicians have sung "Which Side Are You On?", including Pete Seeger and Billy Bragg. This rousing song urged audience to take a side, whether it was during a union battle, the civil rights struggle or the Vietnam War. Or now.

In his column, Len writes that his father sat him down and told him that he would cease to pay for college if his son became one of those campus protesters. My father, formerly a Democrat, had become a "Southern Strategy" Nixon man in 1968. That year, my father sat me down and informed me that he had lots of kids to feed (nine including me) and that I would have to figure out my own way to get to college. He urged me to go to Annapolis or get an ROTC scholarship to the university of my choice. Become an officer, said this former Army dogface, sail the ocean blue and stay far away from Vietnam.

I was only an alternate for the U.S. Naval Academy but my book smarts helped me land an ROTC scholarship. In January of 1971, the government took away my scholarship for some bad choices I had made. I could say I was the victim but that's not true. Several cultural waves broke over me and I got swept up in the currents. As a surfer, I should have known the dangers. Losing my scholarship would have forced me to drop out and instantly be eligible for the draft. My father, who'd just lost his job, borrowed a semester's worth of tuition from his parents. "No son of mine is going to Vietnam," he said.

I chose a side. My father chose a side. We all do. Even not choosing a side is making a choice.

Many years from now, someone might ask this grizzled old guy: Who were the good guys and bad guys during the chaos created by a Donald Trump presidency? My answer may be this: "It will do you no good to search for heroes and villains."

The questioner might persist: Which side were you on? Did you choose?

I chose.

Will Radio Free Internet survive?

Great to see the return of fellow prog-blogger Jeran Artery of Cheyenne. For years, Jeran served as the public face of Wyoming Equality, the interviewee you often saw on TV news when LGBTQ rights were being debated in Wyoming. A passionate spokesperson for the gay community, he also is my friend. Is he upset about the impending Trump presidency? Go to Out in Wyoming and find out. You also can find a link to his blog on my sidebar.

What will blogging bring in 2017? Those progressives pissed off about the political turn of events will have plenty of blog fodder. Late-night comedians, bloggers, political junkies all have plenty to joke about. None of the really cool music groups want to perform for the Trump inauguration. Ha, ha. None of Trump's appointments to top cabinet posts have the required experience. LOL. Trump daily shows his ignorance on Twitter. Ho ho ho.

As we discovered during the campaign, none of that matters. We live in a post-factual world now in the U.S. Trump lies, Liberals chortle merrily and point this out, and nothing happens. Trump believes all of the stuff he said to those sign-waving supporters at rallies from Dallas to Detroit. He plans to do it all. That's not funny.

But humor is a weapon. So are words. Will Radio Free Internet survive? Hard to say. Part of Trump's success was the viral spread of fake news and lies and half-truths. Can he shut down the prog-bloggers without shutting down the wingnuts? Will we be forced off the web and into an era of samizdat? Keep those printing presses handy!

Vladimir Bukovsky, one-time Soviet dissident and no liberal (he's a senior fellow at the reactionary Cato Institute in D.C.), summarized it as follows (from Wikipedia): "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."

Self-publishing and self-distribution are all the rage in our DIY society. Perhaps samizdat will catch on in Moscow, Idaho, as it once did in that other Moscow.