Milton leaves waves in his wake

The waves are huge. Hurricane Milton is out there still. The waves at its core could be twice the size of those that show up at Ormond-by-the-Sea. Tourists gawk. Surfers ponder and wonder what tomorrow may bring. They know the waves will gobble them up, the currents sweep them along the beach. They can wait, maybe tomorrow. Maybe Saturday the wind will shift offshore and sculpt the waves. It will be worth the wait, days this observer guesses. He sits. Waits, with camera.

Hurricane night

Winds whip the palm fronds, the rain peppers the roof. Hurricane Milton, October 9. 2024.

Milton works his way across the Florida peninsula. Made landfall this evening near Sarasota with 100-plus mph winds. Inland on the Florida East Coast, we get the fringes of the storm. I am snug inside our friend Cathy's condo. It's almost new, built to the latest codes. Power still on. Watched Mets advance to National League finals. Interviewer snagged Cheyenne homeboy Brandon Nimmo. He was in Annie's elementary school class. I hope he was nice to her.

I go to bed with the sounds of Milton in my ears...

Fleeing Milton but I never did get to the end of "Paradise Lost"

We decided to evacuate to a friend's house further from the water. Tides on the beach are running high due to some troublesome hurricanes in the Atlantic and high tide may be really high. Watching hurricane news all day. Many press conferences by the governor and his minions. I almost hate to say this but I now find the voice of Gov. DeSantis quite soothing. It's quite a departure from the scolding uncle voice we usually hear when he's blasting "Woke" folks and supporting Moms for Liberty book bans. And cutting Florida arts funding due to a semi-nude character in a stage play. Big cuts, $160 million I think. No excuse for that but he found one. Maybe it was an R-rated "Paradise Lost." Milton -- get it?

I've seen fire and I've seen rain and still more rain

So, it's been raining for four days and a hurricane is coming. A trial by water. In Wyoming, a trial by fire. Many fires burning in the north part of the state. An hour of this Florida rain will put them out. It's the CFD rodeo and storm clouds come over the mountains -- you can see them coming 50 miles away -- and then there's some lightning so everyone takes cover. The rain last 10 minutes then it's back to bucking broncos. No problem if you get wet. The sun comes out and steam rises from your duds and the show goes on. Rain comes down here and swamps you and you will dry out just in time for the next rain. Maybe.

And what about that hurricane?

Homecoming, Ormond-by-the-Sea, Oct. 4, 2024

I returned home yesterday, Oct. 4. It was day 25 of my stay at Advent Health Daytona Beach. The fresh air was bracing, although the temp was a warm 85. It felt like heaven to me.

Chris was driving. It will be awhile before I’m confident enough to get behind the wheel. I have my Florida driver’s license and about 58 years experience behind the wheel. I just don’t have my wits about me. I just got over a nasty case of septicemia or blood poisoning. I read all the physician and nurses’ notes in my online chart. A potent staph infection from a leg would had entered my bloodstream and propagated until it caused my body to seize up and stopped my heart – twice. Due to quick action by my wife Chris, The ER staff came running, pulled me back from the brink, and I began what I guess I can call my healing journey. It really was a giant shit sandwich that’s still going to take a couple months to recover from.

First the good news: Here I am. I need a walker to get around but I’m getting around, slowly. Seems that when my body got whacked by microscopic bugs, it forgot how to take one step after the other. I’m one of the lucky ones. First, I will walk again probably with help. Second, I’m still on Planet Earth to do so. Maybe that’s first, I still get a bit confused by priority lists. When I first awoke in ICU, I had no idea where I was nor who I was. Well, I knew my name but that’s about it.

Nurse: "What month is it?"

Me: "Uh..."

Nurse: "Do you know the month?"

Me: "August?"

Nurse: "Close. September."

The last half of my hospital stay was in the excellent Advent Health Therapy Center which occupies the entire 12^th floor of Advent Daytona.  The staff is first-rate: physicians, nurses, techs, physical and occupational therapists. When you go to the twelfth floor, you sign up for OT and PT for four to five hours daily. You’re assigned exercises to do in your room. The nurses are always there to help and a more empathetic yet stern bunch would be hard to find. I love them all.

My first task after I got out was to round up a seafood meal that was on the healthy side and sit down with my wife at home and enjoy. My choice was the planked salmon dinner at Stonewood Grill & Tavern with shrimp and scallop skewers on the side. I didn’t so much eat it as swim through it. A pleasurable swim to be sure, one topped off by Key Lime Pie. It was a big deal because Chris and I arrived in Ormond Beach on August 24 and were busy getting organized until Sept. 9 when venomous bacteria came to call. I had not had a single seafood meal nor had I been to the beach. There was a big old ocean out there but it might as well have been Wyoming’s Red Desert.

So I’m home. Now what?

Welcome to Ormond-by-the-Sea which, surprisingly, is next to the sea

My new home is in Ormond-by-the-Sea, Florida. It is separated by the Inland Waterway from Ormond-not-by-the -Sea where most of the rest of my family lives. They just call it Ormond. As I drive A1A up the coast, I look out at the billions upon billions gallons of water in the omnipresent sea or Atlantic Ocean as some call it. It is so vast that I stand by-the-sea and gape.

It is a big change from Cheyenne-by-the-Prairie which is also a vast land that, coincidentally, was once an inland sea where plesiosaurs pursued prey under my patch of dry ground. A better name might be Cheyenne-pretty-close-to-the-mountains which is the Laramie Range and then the Snowy Range and if you travel south the Mummy Range and Rocky Mountain National Park. Beautiful, beautiful places where our family spent a lot of time and those memories will be forever lodged in my heart.

Vedauwoo was our favorite. Son Kevin learned to free-climb there and our daughter Annie loved to hike and camp. We watched UW’s Vertical Dance on a rock face of 1.5-billion-year-old granite. I’m pretty sure Florida will be underwater by then. I recently saw a map that showed Florida twice the size 18,000 years ago due to a 30 percent drop in sea level. Ormond-by-the-sea would have to move east to maintain its name and dignity.

Yesterday Chris and I drove to Flagler Beach. You can see the waves break from A1A. The day before, a stretch of this road was swamped by a monsoon rain and traffic had to be rerouted. Once we reached Flagler, we had to slow down for construction. The Army Corps of Engineers brought their massive equipment here to refurbish the beach and roadway washed away during the last two hurricanes. They are piping in beige sand from a huge barge. The current sand is red which has its origins in coquina rock and is a rougher sand that washes away easily. The beige sand is more stalwart.

After six or seven miles of construction, we get to the Flagler Pier and summer crowds. Surfers have arrived in droves to ride the waves which break better near the pier. My brothers and I surfed here in the 1960s and ‘70s. The crowds were smaller and the locals pretty welcoming unless you took off in front of them on a wave and then they would kick their board at you trying for some decapitation or maybe just a few bruises. We did the same thing at our beach in Daytona. All in fun.

Chris and I were on a mission to get our Florida driver’s licenses and tags and also register to vote. We didn’t want to miss out on the most important vote of our lifetime. We volunteered for election day duty. Some say it’s going to be a free-for-all but ruffians will think twice when they see this gray-haired man in a walker sent to keep the peace or die trying. It’s easy to come unglued at times like this. MAGA people and Christian Nationalists have followed Trump’s lead and issued threats. The other side (my side) tries to keep cool heads and say only positive things online. We often fail.

Chris and I accomplished two of our goals. The tags had to wait due to additional paperwork. We celebrated by taking naps and ordering take-out from Stavro’s, a fine Italian place just up the street and in sight of the sea. I should say by-the-sea.

I take my Wyoming Public Radio habit down south

I start my day listening to Wyoming Public Radio. Weekdays, it’s the old stand-by, Morning Music. I started hundreds of mornings listening to this show which, in earlier times, was the best way to hear new music and old. David Crosby’s birthday might prod the DJ to program CSNY, the Hollies, and his solo recordings. No better way to begin a cold January day than hearing “Wooden Ships” or “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.” Yes, I was 18 when CSNY released its first album.

I would never be 18 again, a fact I didn’t dwell on then but do now. There’s more music on WPR, from classical to jazz. They both now have separate channels which is wonderful. There’s the Saturday morning show, “Ranch Breakfast” that features country-western tunes and Old West favorites we used to sing around campfires.

There are cowboy traditions in Florida. In Orlando once, Chris and I skipped Disney and Universal to visit the Osceola County History Museum in Kissimmee. It features dioramas and displays about pre-settlement Florida and the cowboy era which still exists in the annual rodeo. There’s some bragging going on, with the boast that Florida used to be the second-biggest cattle-producing state. There are a lot of Used-to-be’s in Florida.

Cattle Country is now Condo Country. Sprawling senior communities such as The Villages have displaced cows and orange groves and acres of wild forest. I spent my formative years in Central Florida. I was a surfer but my fave pastime was canoeing on the Withlacoochee or Juniper Springs or a dozen other fresh water creeks, most fed by natural springs. You experienced wildlife first-hand as you can in Wyoming. That’s a beautiful thing.

I could decry the changes like the old codger that I am. But time is short. I want to be with my family and experience everything I can. “Be Here Now” as Ram Dass famously wrote. A wise man who probably never met a cowboy or a senior cruising the beach on his trike bike. But I have.

Be here now.

We say hello to Florida

 Let's get the preliminaries out of the way. It's hot and humid here. It's more crowded than I remember. The college football season starts today so the barbecues flare and the liquor stores are swarmed. The Governor did another stupid thing yesterday. The sunsets over the river are gorgeous and I hear the same thing about the sunrises. I've seen two Trump signs and two for Harris/Walz. So far, a 2-2 tie.

We almost got creamed by a pickup truck. We waited at a light in front of Sushi Fugu. That is a bit ironic as Fugu the pufferfish can kill you if not prepared by an expert chef (read the darkly humorous story "Sorry, Fugu" by T.C. Boyle). I thought about that and watched the couple on the Harley in front of us. I heard something and looked over just in time to see a pickup roar off the bridge, jump the curb, and come right at me. It was a nice truck and it was coming my way at a high rate of speed. Luckily, the truck wheels hit the median next to us and the driver steered by and raced away. 

I remember Chris screaming and the pickup passing a few inches away from my Nissan. I thought, "I can reach out and touch it." Time slowed and the truck took forever to blow by and continue down River Drive. "We were almost killed," Chris yelled. "You were almost killed." I acknowledged this but kept remembering my hand reached for the automatic window lever and I was ready to touch this truck as it flew by, inches away. It was a magical moment and I never felt terror. 

There is something wrong with me.

Police officer: "Son, you were almost killed by an F-250 driving crazy down the bridge. You escaped death by inches."

Me: "I just wanted to reach out and touch it."

They might have sent me to the county hospital's 1400 ward where I worked as an orderly when I attended the local community college in the 1970s. That's where certified insane people go. I could have been DOA at the Ormond Memorial ER. I was both blessed and lucky I could go on my way, cross the bridge to the other side of the river, and drive home.

Chris: "We were almost killed."

Me: "I just wanted to reach out and touch it."

Chris: "You're crazy, dear. I mean that in the nicest way."

Welcome to Florida.

We say farewell to Wyoming

After 33 years in Wyoming, my wife Chris and I are moving out of state. We chose to return to Florida, the place where we did most of our growing up, the place that dug its claws into us as teens and young adults and never really let go. My six surviving brothers and sisters live in Central Florida. Chris had one sister who died four years ago, and a brother-in-law who died earlier this year. Chris and I were married in Ormond Beach north of Daytona, famous for its races and shitfaced spring-break college kids. I keep track of what's happening in the area by subscribing to the Facebook Chat, "I Grew Up in Daytona Beach." I occasionally run across an old classmate at Father Lopez Catholic High School or one of the guys (guys mostly) I surfed with at Hartford Approach. Deaths, too, good people like my brothers Pat and Dan. They've both been gone over a decade and I just wish I had more time with them. We talked on the phone, visited when we could, but the miles separated us over the years and I wish I had done some things differently but did not. Chris regrets the passage of her sister from lung cancer. Her only sibling. I share mine with her.

I wish I could say that I am moving to a more sane place politically but, as everyone knows, Florida Man is a real creature and there are thousands like him, many in the state capital Tallahassee. When I retired eight years ago, colleagues asked me if I was returning to Florida and I said, heck no, don't you spend time on the Internet? If I wanted to move someplace half-sane, I would cross the border into Colorado, my birthplace and the place where I spent 13 years of my adult life. I love Colorado. So do my liberal friends. Most liberals I knew in Cheyenne greeted retirement with a one-way trip to Denver or Loveland or Greeley or Fort Collins or Paonia or Grand Junction. Are there unhinged people in the Centennial State? Of course. I met many while working in Denver. A serial killer lived two blocks away and the neighborhood rapist turned out to be the TV repair man. I'm not making light of this as I was out of town often for work. I left to drag my family to grad school at CSU which I regretted a few dozen times but realize now it was just another step along the path. I remember hikes at Greyrock and Horsetooth. Beautiful sunsets can be had almost every evening. I am sure there were gorgeous sunrises but I was never awake to see them.

What did I learn in Wyoming? Listen more than speak. Appreciate the wild landscapes and even wilder weather. Art is more than the paintings hanging in a museum. It's that too but also a fine poem or a stirring country song. Is taxidermy an art? I was asked this once by a board member from Ten Sleep. I think I said, "It can be." Saddlemaking and knifemaking are artforms in practiced hands. Every house has a piano or fiddle or guitar. Gives them something to do and you can wind up with a family band as did the Cowsills and the Osmonds.

I am out of here. Gone but not forgetful.

The night is rescued by the south wind

August Wind from the South

 

The setting sun turns the sky red the west wind

Pushes smoke from fires in Oregon and California.

Red haze settles over Wyoming mountain valleys and

The smoke burns the eyes catches in the throat.

 

The wind arrives after dark it surprises us all

it flows from the south the monsoonal flow

and its saturated air designed to douse the

fires sweep the sky clean send it all north.

 

Pull back the curtains open the windows wide.

I smell the rain or think I do but there are no clouds

no lightning no rumbles of thunder. The wind from the

deserts of Saguaros and scorpions and sweeps of sand.

 

I turn my chair to the open window tune out the ball

game the cell phone the gurgling kitchen noises.

Tonight it’s just me and the wind over the high prairie.

The high dry prairie. The rare south wind.

Long, hot summer is the perfect time to explore an active Hawaiian volcano in "Eruption"

I just finished “Eruption” co-written posthumously by Michael Crichton and prehumously by best-selling author James Patterson. It’s a wild ride to the imagined 2025 catastrophic eruption of Hawaii’ s Mauna Loa. I learned so much about volcanoes and about Hawaii. The book includes a map of the big island but I kept a big Hawaii map handy so I could follow the action. I looked at many videos of volcano eruptions around the globe that are mentioned by volcanologists in the book.

I have read some good books on volcanoes. Simon Winchester’s “Krakatoa: The Day the World Ended, Aug. 27, 1883.”  This is a nonfiction thriller about the world’s worst eruption witnessed by humans. Curl your toes it will. “Rising Fire: Volcanoes and our Inner Lives” by Colorado’s John Calderazzo explores the physical and spiritual aspects of volcanoes. He also wrote a companion children’s book. There are dozens of children’s books on the subject. Also, Harry Turtledove writes alternative histories and this one explores a future Yellowstone eruption: “Supervolcano: All Fall Down.” The map on the cover makes it clear that Cheyenne, Wyoming is toast. Thanks, Harry. We have a forest of nukes on one side and a supervolcano on the other. Yellowstone was in the news this week about a dramatic steam eruption not far from Old Faithful. Nobody killed or hurt but it left one hell of a mess.

While the volcano is the center of the action in “Eruption,” a slew of interesting characters move the story along. Dr. John MacGregor  (“just call me Mac”) is the crotchety focus of the story. Mac kind of loses his starring role when army generals show up to manage the toxic weapon cache stored in Mauna Loa’s ice cave. Sorry, this is a bit of a spoiler but a key element of the story.  It’s worth reading the book just to find out what kind of doomsday weapon the U.S. could devise if they had Dr. Strangelove as the designer.

The book is organized into short scenes – there are 109-plus chapters. They are short, punchy chapters. This rhythm kept me reading even though the narrative sometimes got bogged down into arcane details of vulcanology. That’s OK by me but some readers may be tempted to skip over the middle chapters to get to the eruptions.

Almost as interesting as the novel’s proceedings in its back matter. Michael Crichton was just 66 when he died from cancer in 2008. He was an author, screenwriter, and filmmaker who, according to his very long bio was “the only writer in history to have a #1 book, #1 film, and #1 television series at the same time, and he did it twice.” I might be a bit skeptical had I not participated in the reading, moviegoing, and TV watching of Crichton’s work. I read his first novel, “The Andromeda Strain” in 1971, ate up “Jurassic Park,” and now it is 2024 and I have read his last one, or at least the last one to carry his name. He left behind a mountain of research on volcanoes and the people who study them. Also, neat details of Hawaii’s volcano-carved islands. It was up to family members and James Patterson to piece together his notes and plan for the book. “Eruption” the movie is in the works and the web is buzzing with the casting of Keanu Reeves in the lead role. The acting and special effects should be spectacular.

The lone hollyhock in my garden

Lone Hollyhock

My version:

Only one stalk this year. Hollyhock rises among the bachelor buttons and coreopsis. Elbows its way up, beefy stalk, heart-shaped leaves as big as, well, a human heart, if the human heart was shaped like a valentine heart. A cluster of buds promise alcea rosea flowers in magenta, fuchsia, pink, and one I’d like to see, Queeny Purple, which promises a royal presence, a long reign.

Alcea rosea marched from Japan and China all the way to the Middle East and into my 21^st-century garden. Twelfth century crusaders made a salve from the pretty flowers. They rubbed it on their horses’ rear legs (the hocks) to relieve the soreness of many rough miles. Those few holy warriors who made it back to Merry Ol’ told tales of a beautiful flower that grew in the Holy Land that eased their horses’ hocks. It became Holy Hock changed by a monk to Holyoke and later given its present name. Hollyhock was born.

Hollyhocks are in the disjointed Mallow family that includes okra, cotton, hibiscus, and marsh mallow which found its way into s’mores, a staple of every summer campfire. Think of a mallow camp surrounded by hollyhocks, okra in your gumbo, shirts of cotton, hibiscus for your true love, and the dessert ritual of gooey s'mores.

My hollyhock is alone out there in the garden, blooming the magenta of nature, the magenta of the inkjet canisters on his laser printer. A storm is coming. West winds whip the hollyhock. It ticks like a metronome, the rhythm of a horse’s hooves on the hard rocks of Judea, the Cajun beat that rocks the fais-do-dos, that marshmallow smear my wife licks from her upper lip.

I asked AI to make mine more descriptive. This is what happened:

In my garden this year, there stands a remarkable sight: a solitary hollyhock stalk amid the colorful company of bachelor buttons and coreopsis. Its robust, heart-shaped leaves are as large as a human heart, and a cluster of promising buds foretell an imminent spectacle of alcea rosea flowers in vibrant hues of magenta, fuchsia, pink, and the intriguing Queeny Purple. This resilient plant, alcea rosea, has a rich history, journeying from Japan and China all the way to the Middle East before finding its place in 21st-century gardens. Legend has it that 12th-century crusaders used a salve made from these exquisite flowers to soothe their horses' sore legs during their arduous travels. Tales of a magnificent flower that grew in the Holy Land and its beneficial properties to the knights' trusty steeds eventually led to the transformation of Holy Hock into Hollyhock, a name that has endured through the centuries. It's fascinating to think of hollyhocks as part of the disjointed Mallow family, which also includes okra, cotton, hibiscus, and marshmallow – the very ingredient that adds sweetness to the timeless tradition of s'mores enjoyed around summer campfires. As the storm approaches, my lone hollyhock bravely stands, presenting blooms that mirror the vivid magenta of nature and the modern inkjet canisters. Exposed to the whipping winds of the approaching storm, it maintains a steady rhythm reminiscent of a horse's hooves tapping on the hard rocks of Judea or the infectious beat of a Cajun fais-do-do, elevating the marshmallowy treat enjoyed by my wife, licked from her upper lip.

The things that tickled me:

The knights’ trusty steeds

Colorful company of bachelor buttons and coreopsis

marshmallow – the very ingredient that adds sweetness to the timeless tradition of s'mores enjoyed around summer campfires.

A 21-century editor wouldn’t like the overuse of adjectives and adverbs. 

The AI version reads more like the style of a traditional 17^th-century poem. Without the rhyming couplets.

Legends of the fall, as told by a guy upside-down in his garden

My fall yesterday caused no lasting damage to my poor body. Strange. From the street, it must have looked like a comedy routine. A spider web had attached itself to the rain gutter and it stretched all the way to the mailbox. I was sweeping it away with my left hand when I lost my footing, bounced off my concrete porch, and landed head first in my garden adjacent to a clump of bachelor buttons (a.k.a cornflowers). My head was in the dirt and my legs rested on the porch edge and stuck up a few feet in the air. I could not move. My wife Chris heard me and ran out and shrieked in surprise. I was glad she was there because I might have stayed that way all day. But the preacher from the local church was walking his dog and he came over to lend a hand. 

Chris called 9-1-1 and we heard the siren right away. My wife kept asking if I was OK and I replied that I was upside down in my garden and feeling a bit embarrassed. I took a quick inventory of my moving parts and nothing seemed broken. The ambulance arrived and two EMTs scampered over to me. “You OK?” asked the guy EMT. “Well, I’m upside down in my garden.” Later, my wife said she thought I had brain damage because I kept repeating the same thing. Was it not the most obvious way to describe the situation? The EMTs were a short skinny guy and a tiny woman. 

I was thinking how are these little people going to get me out of this fix? I am a 255-pound, 6-foot-2 guy. I saw a fire engine drive up but the EMTs waved it off which, at the time, seemed like a big mistake. Meanwhile, the preacher asked if he could say a prayer and I said yes, of course, because right now it looks like I was need some divine intervention. The two EMTs found a way to get on either side of my and pull. At first, I didn’t detect any movement but slowly they got me upright. My wife Chris brought over my walker and I grabbed it and pulled it close and stood tall. 

She grabbed my arm and asked, “You OK?”

I replied, “Well, I’m no longer upside down in my garden.” Some dirt stuck to my face and hair and there was a small scrape at my temple. My rescuers guided me to the front door and I glanced over at the mailbox and saw that the spider web was no longer there. That was something, at least.

Thought I would give ChatGPT an opportunity to write a story on the theme "old man falls off of porch." Here's the result:

One sunny afternoon, an elderly gentleman was enjoying the fresh air on the porch of his house. As he reached for a fallen leaf, he lost his balance and tumbled off the porch. Thankfully, his family rushed to his aid and called for medical assistance. After a brief visit to the hospital, he returned home with minor injuries but a newfound appreciation for safety measures around the house.

That's good as far as it goes. In my story, this old man was trying to clear a spider web off his mailbox. But a "fallen leaf" would have worked. I did not go to the hospital or as the EMT guy wrote in his laptop: "Patient refused treatment" He handed it to me: "Sign here." I do have a newfound appreciation for safety measures around the house. From now on, spiders may spin as many webs on my porch and get no interference from me. Also, when autumn arrives, I will not reach for any fallen leaves. That is very dangerous. 

I am now hooked. Will have ChatGPT write all my stories. 

"Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books" brings comic relief to the book-banning hubbub

In several Wyoming communities, including Casper, Gillette, Lander and Sheridan, some members of the public have turned typically staid school board meetings into chaos by clamoring to have all LGBTQ-themed or sex-related books -- even textbooks -- pulled from shelves.--Kerry Drake, WyoFile, May 21, 2024

Add Cheyenne to the list.

Author Kirsten Miller's new novel takes its cue from the recent book-banning tide by Moms for Liberty and other right-wing groups. While whiney complainers go ballistic over books in schools and libraries that feature minority and LBGTQ characters, Miller's book provides us with some welcome comic relief.

“Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books” is a rollicking novel about this most timely of subjects. I cared for the characters – even the bad guys -- and I ploughed ahead to find out what happens to book banner Lula Dean and Little Library saboteur whose name I won’t reveal here because it was so nice to shout “Ah ha!” when that character is revealed. One of the pleasures of reading is anticipating what happens on the next page. Our protagonist finds a way to use Lula Dean’s library to get banned books into the hands of everyday people in the town.

If you have ever come across a Little Library in your neighborhood, it’s like finding a treasure. A Little Library is as quirky as the people who install these distinctive structures in their front yard and stock it with books. It might feature one topic, say astronomy or gardening or children’s literature. A little librarian who is a fiction fan might stock mysteries or cowboy romances or just a hodgepodge of novels set in 18^th century France, Mars of the future, or modern-day Manhattan.

In a county library, books are arranged just so by trained librarians. You want “Beloved” by Toni Morrison, you stroll to the fiction section and find it under M. If confused, you can look up the location on the library’s bank of computers. And, this may seem quaint and outdated, but you also can ask a librarian. They are very helpful.

In Lula Dean’s case, she is so outraged by some of the “filth” foisted on unsuspecting teen readers. ] Lula Dean stocks her library with hardcover books on wholesome subjects. Titles include “The Art of Crochet,” “Contract with America,” “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” and “Buffy Halliday Goes to Europe.” It won’t be long before a bored teen turns into a dedicated saboteur who will muck up Lula Dean’s efforts to invoke the tenets spelled out in Project 2025.

Crystal Moore is a textbook housewife until she sees her husband cheating on her with a cashier at the local Piggly Wiggly. Desperate, she goes to Lula’s library to find a way to win back her husband. She picks “The Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right.” Once she starts reading she discovers the book is “All Women are Witches: Find Your Power and Put it to Use.” The preacher’s daughter is shocked, at first, but starts reading and finds some helpful advice that might “keep Janelle Hopkins’ giant boobs away from my husband.” 

Well, first she wanders into the woods to pick up items for a love potion from the "Witches" book. She gets lost in the woods and unleashes a string of obscenities that might not win her Mother of the Year honors. She finds a pond, strips, and goes swimming. She dries off by the pond and is absorbed by nature. She’s still there when the sun sets and the moon rises. Next thing she knows, it’s morning and a search party is calling out her name. She returns home but life is never going to be the same for her husband and family or the town of Troy. Its residents find secret texts in Lula’s library and put them to good use.

The author, who grew up in North Carolina, sets the novel in a small community in  Georgia. Why not some little town in the Carolinas or possibly even Wyoming? Why not, indeed (see the intro quote). Georgia has featured heavily in the Christian Right’s effort to take away books from our kids and eventually (we know it’s coming) from adult readers and even crotchety old guy readers such as myself. Georgia is not all MAGA hats and smoke-belching pickups. It’s also home to liberal Atlanta with its thousands of curious readers as well as Tyler Perry’s groundbreaking movie studio. Georgia is also home to Athens which enlivened the independent music scene with R.E.M., the B-52s, and Widespread Panic. Georgia-based Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity practice the “woke” Bible with good deeds for communities across the globe.

We are reminded daily that not every burg wants to ban books. But there are too many that are. Ignoramuses with Bible in hand and a seething resentment they can’t explain serve on too many local school boards in every Wyoming county.  

This hubbub may eventually die down and readers decades from now may wonder what the fuss was about. I’m reminded of Carl Hiaasen’s book “Squeeze Me” and its predatory humans and Burmese pythons. The book’s only four years old and man what a fun ride it was. We had hoped that by this time the book’s main character, a certain human predator in South Florida, would be gone from the political stage. But he’s not. Someone should write a book about it.

Miller was inspired, finished the book in record time, and Harper Collins wasted little time in getting it into our hands. The publishing process is agonizingly slow so credit goes to Miller, her agent, proofreaders, and HC.

The big question: Do satires ever do any good? “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” is now 60 years old and me and everyone else in Wyoming’s Capital City are surrounded by nuclear missiles that could wipe out humankind at the punch of a button. Know-it-alls who want to tell the rest of us what to do and what to read have always been with us. The pungent film “Idiocracy” is now seen as a documentary. The brilliant “Catch-22” and “Slaughterhouse Five” did little to stop warfare. What’s the point?

The point is that fine books such as “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” “Fahrenheit 451,” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” have something important to tell us. People who read are more informed and more engaged citizens. Maybe that’s what Lula Dean and her crowd are afraid of.

That’s exactly what they are afraid of.

 

 

Finding a home for Grant’s tome

I’m having a hard time deciding which books to keep and which ones to give away. Why this comprehensive shelf-cleaning now? Is it time for the retirement home and everything must go because the young ones are not interested in any of our treasures? Not exactly. Chris and I are moving and selling our house. It is filled with 18 years of accumulating. I have bought and traded for many books in this time. I would put the count in the hundreds but Chris puts it in the thousands because that’s what it seems like to her.

Some might say I have book clutter. Chris is a reader (she just finished the second Abraham Verghese novel which is even longer than the first). So books are not the problem but their arrangement in the household is up for debate. I have swept clean three bookshelves, keeping only those volumes dear to me. We have moved out most of the bookshelves so the books have nowhere to go except out. Hey, I’m doing my best..

The other day, I filled a plastic bin with the section of the presidential library my father willed me in 2002. In the bin behind me, I see titles about JFK (“One Brief Shining Moment” by William Manchester, FDR (“Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants & Their War” by Eric Larrabee, and USG (“Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: Volume 1”) with Ulysses S. Grant holding the 1885 copyright and published by the Press of J.J. Little & Co., NY, NY. I also have the trade paperback on Grant’s memoirs (volumes 1 and 2) printed in 1952 by Da Capo Press. 

Buried among these was my slim paperback “JFK: Boyhood to the White House” (Crest Publishing, 50 cents). JFK and this book meant a lot to me. I was 10 at his inauguration and 12 almost 13 when he was assassinated. I had a tween crush on JFK and the whole Kennedy clan. It’s still sad to remember those times.

I am taking the presidents with me. It’s a darn heavy bin because nobody writes a slim biography of a U.S. president. Most are hardcovers which weigh in heavier than paperbacks. It will take a strong back or someone with a hand truck to carry this to our moving trailer. I estimate I will have ten of these monsters to take with me cross-country. My son will drive and I will be on one of those flying machines, you know, the ones with the extremely comfortable and spacious seats. 

I love to fly.

In Florida, I will reveal my presidential cache to family members with the hope they will put them on their shelves because I won’t have room in my new place. They are a legacy, after all, and deserve a place of honor and it will be up to my siblings’ children or grandchildren to decide where they go next. That’s the plan anyway.

House for sale boasts a full bank of rooftop solar and not a single commie (thus far)

Our house has been for sale for 16 days and it hasn't sold yet. Our realtor tells us to be patient. "It's a buyer's market," she says. Someone should just step up and buy our house. It would be the neighborly thing to do.

Our house is a small ranch house with four bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths. It has a basement where we wash and dry clothes, seek shelter from summer tornadoes, and cool off on hot days. My son's bedroom is down there. It's the biggest one in the house.

We own a big lot. It always took me an hour to mow that thing with your standard self-propelled lawnmower. Great spot for kids. When we moved in, a tire swing hung from the box elder tree. Our daughter loved playing on it. It fell down one miserable winter night. By then, my daughter had grown and lost interest. We used to host a Fourth of July bocce party. A bocce purist would have found our rules quaint or just plain wrong. Nobody ever got mad at a close call due to the ref being my very intimidating 5-foot-2 wife. When the kids were teens, they inevitably traveled to FireworksLand just south of town. They brought back rockets as big as the Saturn 5 which we let them illegally launch. We hoped they wouldn't burn down our neighbor's shed. They didn't.

We worked all winter and spring whipping the house into shape. I'm partially disabled and use a walker so I could beg off the big projects, ones that involved moving furniture and panting ceilings. I did help my son paint the bathroom, so there's that. I gave a lot of unsolicited advice but it just made my family angry so I stopped when they locked me out of the house.

One thing not mentioned in the real estate ads: we have a full solar array on our roof. It's saved us a lot in the last two years (and it's all paid off). My June bill from Black Hills Energy was 73.62. That all was natural gas, taxes, and fees as we used 194 kWh of electricity and generated 418 kWh. We have 448 available kWh in the bank. We would have a miniscule e-bill if we had an all-electric house which may not have been available in 1960. Each Wyoming Legislative session includes some lamebrain bill to punish solar users. They get defeated. It's a favor to the coal, oil, and gas lobbies who swear that solar will turn us all into communists. I have conducted a non-scientific poll of those who live in this house and no communists thus far. There's only two of us. But still...

I must talk to our realtor on Friday. Why isn't solar advertised with the house's other amenities? I'm curious.

Loneliness of a long-distance dress salesman, Wyoming, 1949

The opening paragraph of the opening story, "Roadkill," in my story collection, "The Weight of a Body:" 

The shapes grew out of the smoke and fog -- three pronghorn antelope, running hard. Matthew Kincannon mashed the car's brakes and swung the wheel hard left. He missed the first two, collided with the third on its white-tufted rump which rose like a balloon before its rear legs smacked the windshield, its hooves scraping the glass like sharpened fists.

I set the story in the summer of 1949 on Hwy. 189 just north of Kemmerer, Wyoming. The morning was foggy and smoky, the latter due to a stubborn forest fire in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. I hit the rear end of an antelope that came out of nowhere. It tumbled to the side of the road, creating a dust cloud. I pulled over and ran to what I thought would be a mortally wounded creature. Nothing. I searched up and down the shoulder and came up empty. It was just dawn so no traffic. I returned to the car and investigated the front bumper. Nothing. My first thought was, "Did I imagine this?" But it was just a mysterious encounter along a deserted Wyoming road, of which there are many. On my way to a noon lunch meeting with arts patrons in Jackson, I thought about my father. In the late 1940s, one of the many jobs he tried post-war was a traveling salesman selling women's dresses for a Denver clothier. He sold one dress. He quit when he returned to Denver. He laughed when he told us kids the story. I laugh about it now. Dad was no high-pressure salesman. Still, he kept at it, first as an insurance salesman in Denver's Five Points neighborhood and the he joined Armour Meat Company to sell beef. The first thing the company did was transfer him to their Albuquerque office. He sorted mail at the Denver post office when I was born in 1950. Mom said he woke up with war nightmares when we got into Korea thinking the army would drag him into the fight. He spent four years in the army in Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, and German occupation duty. After Mom died, we had drinks at his favorite watering hole and he said, "I always wanted to be a monk." I almost choked on my gin and tonic. "Too late Dad" I told the father of nine. As I drove the state for the Wyoming Arts Council, I often thought of Dad and his rack of dresses hanging in the backseat of his pre-war Dodge. He was engaged to my mom the nurse and just wanted to make good so he could marry her. I reckon that most of his thoughts were on Anna and not on sales tactics for dress store proprietors in Pinedale and Ten Sleep. I turned my imagination loose and came up with the fiction in my story. This blog is for you, Dad. 

Copies of "The Weight of a Body" are available on Amazon (book free with Kindle Unlimited membership). Tell them Father Tom, Father of Nine, member of the celestial monastery, sent you.

Purple Mountains Majesty, 1919

In my novel manuscript, “Zeppelins over Denver,” three sisters from Ohio travel west in the summer of 1919. Their first goal is to negotiate the rough roads to the Rocky Mountains and drive to the summit of Pikes Peak to see what inspired Professor Katherine Lee Bates to write the poem that became the famous song “America the Beautiful.” This excerpt is from Chapter 10. 

Colleen looked to the west. She was grateful for the hat brim that shaded her face from the afternoon sun. Wispy white clouds had gathered to the west but they didn’t look like the dark storm clouds of her home. Colorado’s July sun was relentless. A different sun than the one she was accustomed to. It came up lazy in Ohio, sometimes shrouded in river mists, and the trees were always a barrier. Here, it erupted from the east, announced itself as a glowing orb that shot out fingers of light to illuminate every living and non-living thing. The air seemed to crackle with the light.

Colleen noted that there was something funny about the clouds. They didn’t move. She sat in her flivver and watched for the landscape to change but it did not. And then she noticed the clouds’ irregular shapes that seemed to be propped up by a horizon which was darker than the sky above.

“The Rocky Mountains,” Colleen said.

“Where?” asked Pegeen.

Colleen pointed.

Ireen got out of the car. She looked west and shaded her eyes with both of her hands. “Those clouds…”

“Are not clouds.”

Pegeen hit the ground. Colleen switched off the motor and got out. “See,” she said as she joined her sisters. She pointed. “Those things that aren’t clouds are patches of snow and ice – glaciers. All the tall mountains have them.”

“In July?”

Colleen laughed. “All year,” she said. “Those mountains will be all-white in January. This whole place will be one big snow field.”

“Blessed be,” said Pegeen. “How do you drive in that? You’d need a sleigh.”

Colleen hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe they plow the roads.”

“Or people just stay home,” Ireen said. She looked over at Colleen. “Can we go up there? Do they have roads?”

“Of course they have roads,” Colleen said. “There are gold and silver mines all over those mountains.”

“Still? Even in these modern times?” Ireen asked.

“Yes. But we want to go up there to see what it’s like. I bet it’s grand.”

“Beautiful.”

“Just like Mrs. Bates' song.”

They stood and watched. Cotton ball clouds drifted overhead. A gentle wind rattled the cottonwood leaves. A hawk screeched.

Look for "Zeppelins over Denver" this fall from Hummingbird Minds Press.

Hey old guy, you might want to think twice about returning to 6,200 feet

WELCOME TO 7,220 FEET.

That's a huge sign on UW's War Memorial Stadium. It's meant to psyche-out teams visiting from lower altitudes, which is any NCAA Division 1 school.

My Ireland-born grandfather was about my age now when, in the 1980s, he traveled to the Mile-High City of Denver, the place he spent most of his adult life. The day after his arrival, he was hauled off to the hospital with breathing problems and heart pains.

A few days later, a physician told him to go home. He said Colorado was his home. He also had to admit he’d spent the last six years living in Bradenton, Florida, with his second wife.

The doctor explained that most of Florida was sea level and Denver was a mile high. Grandpas knew all this. He arrived from Chicago as a 19-year-old hoping that the dry climate would help him breathe with his one lung. It did. He worked for the railroad and was a bank guard. He spent a lot of time mowing lawns and shoveling snow for his neighbors. He loved mountain treks, often exploring unpaved roads that he and his ’57 Chevy had no business on. My brothers, sisters, and cousins loved those trips, jouncing unbuckled in the back seat.

So, at 75, Colorado had become the enemy.

Go home, old man!

My Uncle John had the same problem when he (at 62) journeyed to Denver from his Naples, Fla., home. Heart issues drove him to the hospital. The doctor there said basically the same thing: go home. He was a Denver native, who lived all over the Front Range and even up in Buffalo Creek and commuted to The Flatlands every morning.

Go home, old man!

Not a good thing to hear, that you are too old and decrepit to live in a place that meant so much to you.

I bring this up because in September my wife Chris and I will move to our new home in Ormond Beach, Fla., some 10 feet above sea level (for now). What is this Florida obsession of our family? The space program took my father and uncle and their families to the Sunshine State in the mid-1960s. Work and the military took some of my sisters and brothers and cousins away, but most of them returned. I did not.  

What was I looking for? Work, mainly. Why am I returning to Florida? Retirement, mainly. My remaining brothers and sisters live in Central Florida. Chris has friends from high school and community college in the area. We met in Daytona Beach and got married just north in Ormond Beach. Many more health care choices in the area. I am a heart patient and partially disabled. Chris is a diabetic and breast cancer survivor. Our new home on the aptly named Ocean Shore Drive is close to the beach and recreational activities.

I close by saying that as a 73-year-old heart patient, I probably will not return to 6,200 feet. I might push it a bit to come for a few days to visit my two grown children and any grandchildren that eventually arrive. But who’s to say where my 30-something offspring will be in one, two, even five years? And who knows where I will be.

Go home, old man!

There is much to be thankful for. But there are no guarantees, are there?

We Young, at Hospital

We young orderlies, CNAs, techs, nurses fresh from graduation. Voices blared from loudspeakers: code blue ortho, code red ER, code pink nursery. We razzed each other, lunched on cafeteria burgers, one fragment of attention listening for our color, our next emergency. The call came. Chairs abandoned, lunches half-eaten. We reveled in the action. Legs flexed in sprint, adrenaline pumped. We ran the corridors, took the steps two at a time, spurned the vators those were for old people like the ones in trauma. We aged as we ran, furrows formed on faces, arms and legs, brains. By the time we reached the coded sites, we were the elders in crisis who needed rescue by the summoned helpers, who ran to us, strangers who helped strangers. They ran, abandoned lunches, wondered will I ever stop running?  It awaits you around the next corner.