Daytona Bike Week has passed but we all have motorcycle memories

Daytona Bike Week goes for ten days each March. It’s an extravaganza for motorcycle buffs from all over North America and even all over the world. It’s a loud week, Harleys in full roar beginning in late morning t about noon and lasting well past midnight. 

You get the full treatment along Main Street in Daytona and out by the speedway where the races, concerts, and big-time vendors are. Chris and I ended up surrounded by bikers on Thursday when we went to lunch after a medical appointment and wandered by a famous tattoo business on U.S. 1 that hosts beer and autograph sessions with Playboy models, strippers, and assorted women in skimpy outfits despite the un-Florida chill. If you go further north on U.S. 1, you pass biker bars aplenty.

For us Ormond-by-the-Sea dwellers, we hear bikes all day and night. We’re located between Hwy. A1A which promoters now call the Jimmy Buffett Memorial Highway and John Anderson Drive which locals call the street where the rich people live. The bikers ride A1A along the coast to Ormond, Flagler, and St. Augustine. They can find nice beaches if they want to dismount but more likely will end up at one of the many saloons and tourist attractions that line the way. Bikers also use that route to go to the Highbridge Exit which will take them to the Tomoka Loop, a favorite winding tree-lined route. John Anderson also takes you to Tomoka along a winding tree-lined route by riverside houses you can't afford.

BTW, you do have to have some cash and credit worthiness to buy a new motorcycle. They start at about $25,000 and goes up to $40,000. You also need a good pickup and a trailer to haul the bikes that once zoomed freely on I-95 in the 1970s and now old bones and joints need a little assistance to get to the hoopla. There’s still lodging and food and such to buy. And don’t forget your two- or three- wheeled vehicle's maintenance costs. 

Guys like my old Wyoming neighbor worked on his own Harley. He had the technical skill, tools. and big garage to do the work. One night he blasted down the street before he rolled to his driveway. Then came a knock on our door. My neighbor needed my help. I walked with him to behold the downed bike. He seemed embarrassed that his Harley was this helpless thing lying powerless on his driveway. Drunk and high, he needed my aging muscles to get the machine upright. I helped of course, the neighborly thing to do.

I have plenty of friends with motorcycles and many that used to have motorcycles. When attending Daytona Beach Community College in 1973, I shared a house in Holly Hill with a roommate who fled the north country to Florida. He helped me rebuild the engine in my 1950 Ford truck. He was a biker without a motorcycle which he had to leave behind for a reason he wouldn't talk about. He did talk motorcycle. He dressed biker too. Probably dreamed it. He moved to Orlando and the last I heard, he was riding again. 

My brother Dan rode a Harley until leukemia took him away. An air traffic controller, he ran an Internet biker-oriented side business, Daytona Gear. He loved his motorcycle. When he and our friend Blake trailered their bikes to Sturgis, Dan invited me up to ride bitch on his bike and I did. Our daughter Annie has a treasured Biketoberfest photo with her and her Uncle Dan on his Harley. She even bought me a Biketoberfest T-shirt which I wore proudly around Wyoming and I often was asked how I liked Biketoberfest and said, “Just fine, I liked it just fine.” I had Sturgis T-shirts too.

In the 1960s and '70s, I rode dirt bikes through the Florida woods and on the beaches. They belonged to friends, little Hondas and Yamahas and Husqvarnas. I covered motocross races as a correspondent for the Denver Post. A girlfriend once dumped me for her old boyfriend, a motocross racer. I responded by mailing her a verse about love and longing that I pulled from Kahlil Gibran. Didn’t make me feel any better but I hoped she read it and thought about me for a little while.

I guess we’re all motorcycle people in America. Daytona has a special claim on big motorcycles so I guess I can claim a little slice of that. Still, I like the quiet.

I wasn't able to say this when I lived in Wyoming, but Liz Cheney now speaks for me

I'm a life-long Democrat who has voted against Liz Cheney and for her. And, yes, I was a Wyoming resident at the time. I voted against her when she successfully ran for Wyoming's lone House seat. She was considered an outsider (resident of Virginia), despite her name. And her name -- Cheney -- was an issue. She is daughter of Wyoming warmonger Dick and Uber-patriot Lynne who writes books glorifying America and neglecting its faults. Lynne once chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities and then worked with GOP colleagues to try and dismantle it (which Trump & Co. are doing now). When serving on the Equality State Book Festival planning committee, I voted against Lynne Cheney as keynote speaker for our first event. That led to me and my colleague L (you know who you are) being labeled "liberal twits" by the Casper College librarian. Liberal Twit is my handle on the site formerly called Twitter.

But Liz speaks out about Trump, especially his idiocy when he and Vance and the Trump Corps of Bullies ambushed Ukraine President Zelenskyy. Here's what Liz posted on Facebook (reposted by wonderful novelist Connie May Fowler):

All I can say is "Right on, Liz." I know, a term from long ago when we used to say "Right On" only for cool rebels. Now Ms. Cheney is the kind of rebel we need. I know that the Cheney name carries with it a heavy weight. But one also has to acknowledge that Dick Cheney has influence in GOP politics and the energy biz. Wyoming buildings at UW and in his hometown of Casper carry his name. The Natrona County High School football field carries his name (the field but not the stadium). Dick and Lynne are both NCHS grads. The energy sector powers Wyoming. Cheney was chair of Halliburton, for goodness sake. I traveled throughout the state for my job and if I didn't see a Halliburton truck on the road, I might think I was somewhere else.

Republicans in Wyoming have a rich tradition of mainstream conservatism. They have recently abandoned that for what's called the "Freedom Caucus" in the State Legislature, a body of right-wing wackos who spend more time banning books and pronouns than they do caring for Wyoming's people. I am scared for the state because I lived, worked, and retired there before moving to Florida. Florida, of course, has its own crew of wackos led by its blustering governor. I'll find time for them in later posts. 

Meanwhile, I have to ask: where are the Democrats? Why aren't our former presidents and legislators speaking out? This is no time for timidity, no time to contemplate your legacies. There will be no legacy if Trump is not stopped. 

Dear Florida Legislators: Don't monkey around with our state parks

The Sunday Outlook section in the March 2 News-Journal included an editorial by the USA Today Network-Florida Opinion Group. Header: "Support legislation to restrict future development in Florida's parks." An excerpt: "Floridians don't want to see their state parks spoiled by excessive clearing, paving, and building." There was an outcry last year when someone in state government leaked a plan "to put hotels, golf courses, pickleball courts and other development in nine targeted state parks." That plan disappeared but now there's a bill threatening state parks in the Florida Legislature. So USA Today staff requested letters, op-eds, and photos "to remind lawmakers that they should vote to protect some of our most prized assets."

They asked. I responded with this op-ed:

Save Florida State Parks

The road known now as The Loop was uncrowded when our family first visited Tomoka State Park in September 1964. Two adults, eight kids, and a dog crowded into a Ford Falcon station wagon and made the drive along a tree-shrouded road to the park. We grew up in Colorado where you drive to a park through wide-open vistas until you get to your mountain destination where the trees were. This was a different kind of experience, almost magical. It was jungle full of snakes, alligators and armadillos.

We were kids on that first visit 61 years ago, We romped around the park. Mom warned us about snakes and we didn’t hear anything she said because we were busy playing. We went down to the Tomoka River and looked for rocks to skip along the shore but found none. But we saw turtles and imagined giant gators around the bend in the river. We knew there were creatures called sea cows under the tannin-infused river water.

What a place. “The Legend of Chief Tomokie” statue was still in fine form in ’64. Built by noted sculptor Fred Dana Marsh in 1957, the legend was based on one invented by the daughter of the founder of The Halifax Journal. I thought it was amazing, impressed that Florida had Indians too, most of them long-dead from the civilizing effects of white explorers and settlers. Over time, my brothers and I camped with our father in Tomoka and we ventured out there with our Boy Scout troop that met in Ormond’s First Methodist Church. We eventually saw many snakes and gators. Florida wildlife was amazing. The following summer, when my brother Dan and I went to our first Scout summer camp at La-No-Che near Paisley, we were told to watch out for water moccasins dropping into our canoes from the Spanish Moss-draped cypress trees. To a teen, what could be cooler than that?

Over the years, I’ve camped in Juniper Springs, O’Leno, and Sebastian Inlet state parks. I’ve floated the iconic Ichetucknee, canoed the Withlacoochee (Crooked River), and cruised the Wakulla. We spent our honeymoon on a scuba trip to John Pennekamp Coral Reef. It all fed my love of nature. When I graduated from UF and returned West for a job, my wife and I spent all of our spare time in Colorado and Wyoming state and national parks. We shared these experiences with our children; they are stored in memories and photo albums.

My wife and I returned to Ormond Beach in August. One of our first trips was to Tomoka State Park. Retired and disabled from a bad fall, I get around on an electric scooter. Much of Tomoka was accessible to me. I rode my scooter down the road to the dilapidated Tomokie statue but then got stuck in the sand. Two young mountain bikers pushed me out. They were there to ride the trails. We retreated to The Outpost near the boat launch area and drank lemonade. We listened to the birds and watched boats navigate the river. We enjoyed the day and vowed to return. We will continue doing so as long as it remains a state park and doesn’t morph into some raucous Disney-style resort.

Our daughter moved to Ormond Beach in January. A Wyoming native, she’s already explored Tomoka, viewed the manatees at Blue Spring State Park, and taken a scenic cruise on the St. Johns.

I send an appeal to the Florida Legislature. Do not despoil our great state parks with golf courses, pickleball courts, and tourist lodges. We have enough of those elsewhere. Leave us the Great Outdoors, our sacred spaces.

"All the President's Men" meant one thing in the 1970s and an absurdly different one in 2025

I watched "All the President's Men" on TCM Monday night, and not for the first time. A fantastic political thriller in which the good guys win.

In 2025 Trumplandia, "All the President's Men" seems, well, how do I say this? Quaint? Outdated? Just more Boomer nostalgia?

Yet, the GOP's 1970s illegal activities against the Democrats were both real and disgusting. 

But when compared with Trump's 2025 crimes against America, well, the old depredation looks mild.

Nixon and pals took great pains to cover up their misdeeds. All the lying tied them in knots of denial. They couldn't keep it quiet because real journalists from real newspapers and networks kept doing their jobs. And elected Democrats AND especially Republicans remembered their oaths of office.

The difference with Trump and his MAGA minions? They tell us their misdeeds and do them openly. Trump and Musk brag about them. Their backers spent millions outlining their plans in Project 2025. It was all there for us to read. Journalists were not around to awaken the slumbering multitudes. The New York Times could not do it alone. The Washington Post was a lost cause. Metropolitan dailies had been run into the ground by hedge fund babies. And the GOP was not in thrall to "Fearless Leader."

I was a young man of 21 when the Watergate break-in happened. That November was the first time I voted in national elections at a little church on Boston's Beacon Hill. I voted for McGovern as did many in Massachusetts that day. 

Fat lot of good it did us. Draft-age men were turning out to vote for The Peace Candidate in the hopes that this rural Dem from the West would stop feeding us into the Vietnam meat-grinder. It was odd that this heroic World War 2 veteran would be the peacenik on the ticket but that was the case. Nixon served but he wasn't piloting a B-24 bomber dodging flak and Messerschmitts over Germany. In ATPM, the 1972 elections play out in the background on TV screens.  During that campaign, Nixon worked behind the scenes to manipulate the Paris Peace Talks. His skullduggery extended the war.

But Nixon and his henchmen came tumbling down, thanks to media and the actions of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. This didn't cause us to run for Congress but it did cause many of us to go into journalism. Up-and-coming Woodwards and Bernsteins were everywhere. 

I was an English major during my years at UF but I did take a journalism course and worked for UF Information Services and The Independent Florida Alligator student paper. We knew that the truth could bring down warmongers and slimy political operatives

But America is a big place and soon we learned that the whims of the populace are unpredictable. And here we are now. Old, disabled, and stunned. That describes me. 

But Americans are waking up and speaking out. We donated to Josh Weil, the Democrat running for the House in Florida District 6, a post held previously by a Trump flunky. We donated to the Democratic Party's campaign to stymie Trump's Project 2025 rampage. 

I will not shop on Amazon on Feb. 28 because of Bezos's collaboration with Trump (damn I've spent a lot of money on Amazon). Other businesses are being boycotted for the day. Money is what MAGA understands so hit 'em where it hurts.

The Irish keep defining dark comedy in books and movies

Blame my errant imagination.

As I read "Glorious Exploits," a new novel by Irish writer Ferdia Lennon, I kept hearing Roddy Doyle. Not that Lennon is copying Doyle's distinctive Irish patter, but the way the two main characters spoke and approached life conjured Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy, specifically "The Commitments." Jimmy Rabbitte's mission is to bring the soul music of Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding to 1990 working-class Dublin. The mission is doomed from the start but boy is it a fun ride. 

In "Glorious Exploits," unemployed potters Lampo and Gelon want to stage a Euripides play in 412 BCE in  Seracuse, Sicily (Syracuse now. in both Sicily and N.Y.). They decide to enlist a cast of starving Athenian warriors whose invasion has been defeated and the captured, starving, warriors imprisoned in a dismal rock quarry. Why starving Athenian players? Because the duo's favorite poet is Euripides of Athens and these Athenians are the only ones in Seracuse and they just happen to know The Master's latest work that includes Medea and The Trojan Women. Their quest is doomed, of course. But boyo, it's a fun ride, no bollix.

Irish writers tingle my Irish genes. I have never been to my grandfather's country nor to his rural county of Roscommon. But I've read their best writers and they live in me. Doyle, Yeats, Maeve Binchy, Flann O'Brien, James Joyce all tell wonderful stories grounded in Irish wit and lore. The Irish story is riven with heartache. The latest Irish-set movie, "The Banshees of Inisherin," focuses on a long male friendship that breaks up for unfathomable reasons and leads to tragedy in 1923. There are laugh-out-loud moments, a dose of charm, memorable Celtic music, and then the ending when doom shows up. Meanwhile, the Irish Civil War, where neighbor kills neighbor, wages across the newly-formed country. These two friends' relationship is doomed. But the telling is marvelous. 

It's the voice, nurtured over the centuries. Lennon has found it. In an interview, he says that he wanted to make sure that the book did not have that Merchant Ivory voice of serious dramas of the Classical Age. He succeeded. Lampo and Gelon are  Sicilian-Irishmen on a lark, spending most of their time chatting over flasks of suspect wine at Dismas's place. Must hand it to Lennon. Many sickening things going on in Seracuse. Wine is the only answer. But the author describes in detail the wine they drink and you will thank Dionysus for the local Tiki Bar (we have several here in Ormond Beach). It's illuminating to hear lines of Euripides from the lips of emaciated Athenians, all wearing leg shackles, dressed in ill-fitting costumes and gowns. There is a performance and I won't tell you how it ends once the curtainless stage is cleared. And there is a surprise ending which is very sweet.

I have to admit that the book's cover grabbed me. It's a traditional bust of the historian and philosopher Herodotus with googly eyes. 

Lennon was the subject of a Q&A interview in the Aug. 31, 2024, Observer. I include an excerpt here because it speaks to Ireland’s rich literary tradition and info about how contemporary Irish writers are supported by their Arts Council. I worked with writers for 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council and for two years assisted with creative writing fellowships at the National Endowment for the Arts in D.C. It’s instructional in a time when the NEA, the NEH, and the Institute of Museums and Library Services are under the gun by Trump, Musk, and their techie minions who wouldn’t know James Joyce unless you wacked them on the head with a hardcover edition of “Ulysses.”

The Guardian's book critic wrote a review of "Glorious Exploits." Header: "Uproarious am-dram in ancient Sicily." I had to look up am-dram and it's British slang for amateur drama, those plays put on by your local community theatre.

From the Guardian:

Q: How do you explain the current wave of successful Irish novelists? 

A: I remember that when I was a student, James Joyce’s house was five minutes up the road: just seeing that plaque, there’s something nice about having that literary history celebrated around you. On a practical level, the structures in Ireland make it easier for writers. An Arts Council grant helped me write this book. I wasn’t in any way established, but you could submit a work in progress to a panel of your peers and if you’re lucky, you might get money that will give you a couple of months that could be the break. I feel part of the burgeoning moment in Irish literature has to do with the financial crash. A whole generation was devastated, in Ireland maybe more than most. There were no jobs, so you felt freer to do what you wanted, even if it made no money; I started writing in Granada [in Spain] while unemployed.

The Nomad anthology wanders from the western wilds to my fog-wrapped Florida mailbox

The first anthology of The Nomad literary magazine landed in my mailbox yesterday. Unassuming cover with lots of goodies inside. Last summer Ken Waldman, one of the Nomad founders, asked me to send in two pieces of my work, one that I was proud of and had been published and another that I liked and hadn't been published. He tasked me with writing a short essay on my choices. So I sent editor Rachel White one story that had been published several times, "The Problem with Mrs. P," and one I just finished in June, "That Time We Got Married at a Tent Revival." The first story is set in Wyoming and the second in Florida and South Carolina.

I spent 46 years in Wyoming and Colorado, did a lot of my growing up in East Coast Florida and spent my first two years of a not-very-successful university stint in South Carolina. I've also written speculative fiction that takes place off-world and in an Earth future that I imagined. I have returned to Florida which has its own otherworldly aspects. 

I am in such good company with this anthology. My long-time friend Ken Waldman has two poems, one set in the Alaska he calls home and a villanelle set in New Orleans. New Mexico's Lisa D. Chavez includes a poem which turns the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale on its head and a nonce sonnet, the meaning I had to look up. Detroit's M.L. Liebler weighs in with "Flag" which dissects yet "another dark chapter in American history" (the one happening now) and "Decoration Day" about Vietnam.

Wyoming friends still talk about 2002-2003 poetry and music performances featuring M.L. and Country Joe McDonald. Buffalo, Wyoming's David Romtvedt explores "another past life" and a childhood dream in his selections. I was undone by the images in Amy Gerstler's poem "Siren" which opens the anthology. Paul Fericano made me laugh with "Still Life with Mormons in My Living Room." Amy and Paul are from L.A. Paul published some of my prose poems on his Yossarian Universal News Service site (yunews.com). New Zealand's Michael McClane got my attention with the long title and World War 2 theme in "On the Disembarkation of Sergeant Nathan E. Cook in Auckland, 13 June 1942."

That's just the beginning. Lots of great selections. You can get a copy of the book by subscribing to The Nomad. It's $25 for one year and $40 for two. You can also donate to this "non-for-profit labor of love by two writers." New submission guidelines are up for 2025. See the web site for the Bountiful, Utah, mailing address.

Remembering Paul Fussell’s great book on the Not-So-Great European War of 1914-1918

I subscribe to the New York Times Online. Because I now live in East Coast Florida, I could also have the print copy delivered. But I already get the Daytona Beach News-Journal delivered before dawn (usually) in a plastic bag at the end of my garage. I fetch it in my e-scooter, braving whatever elements might exist including niceness, wind, humidity, and – occasionally – rain. I pick up the paper with my handy grabber and roll back to the house. I read local news, the sports page, some national coverage. I read obits, especially on Sunday when there are pages of them.

But the NYT has the writers and global coverage that I need, now especially, as we try to survive assaults on reality by Trump, Musk, and their GOP bullies. Also, arts reviews, especially of new and some old books. A few months ago, I read about John Dufresne’s new novel, “My Darling Boy.”  It sounded so good and personally relevant that I bought the e-book on Kindle (and wrote my own review here). I read a Style-section article last June by Alyson Krueger about Miranda July and her “rethinking of marriage and family life.” It also took me to a review of her book. I bought and read it and indeed it is a more-than-spicy take on monogamy. I didn’t post a review on my blog but I did come across a finished piece in my blog files which I was too skittish to post.

This morning I read a Feb. 13 “Critic’s Notebook” piece by Dwight Garner about the 50^th anniversary of Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory.” I read the book 40-some years ago and discovered the dirty truth about The Great War of 1914-1918. Fussell explored the war I the trenches through the eyes of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, two combatant-writers who wrote the truth about their war. Garner writes that it changed his view about how nonfiction should be written. It allowed me to find those voices that I barely knew. In high school, the only poem of the era I remember is “Rouge Bouquet” by Joyce Kilmer, poet best known for “Trees.” Kilmer died in combat and is remembered for his formal rhymes and is considered as one of the last poets of the Romantic era. He was swept away by the honesty and rage in works by Sassoon and Owen and other poets of the so-called Lost Generation.

Garner urges readers to return to Fussell’s book to find the real story of this war that is no longer a living memory but lives on in the work of so many powerful writers. My grandfather was a cavalry officer in France and my grandmother a nurse with Maryland 42^nd Field Hospital. The dismounted cavalry officer spent a limited time in the trenches and my grandmother repaired the wounds of tr5ench warfare. Neither recalled for us war’s horror. Neither did my World War 2 vet father, who saw action in France, Belgium, and Germany. They left that up to their children and grandchildren in wars-to-come. Those wars have given us great literature and have very little to do with stopping the slaughter.

For me, I have written two novels about the aftermath of the Great War in the U.S., mainly Colorado. I am publishing them myself. I know nothing of war except what I read and see in movies and what I conjure in my imagination. Draftees of Vietnam have done their best to tell it like it is. We read about the senseless slaughter of what Robert Stone called “a mistake 10,000 miles long.” Maybe we learn and maybe we don’t. But books such as Fussell’s can give us glimpses into humankind’s dirtiest business.

What does fog sound like in a place known for noise?

February in a place known for its noise. Race cars that roar to grandstands of screaming fans. The pounding noise of motorcycles on every city street. Crowds of collegians arrive in March, their music and noise rise from beachside hotels, their cars parade A1A. On this morning wrapped in fog, I rolled outside, watched and listened. Birds sang and I didn’t know what kind of birds but it didn’t matter. The tap-tap-tap of a woodpecker. What does a bird hear? Fog doesn’t caution the noise nor does it enhance it. It just is. A carpenter saws and pounds nails next door. I live between two north-south main roads and cars hiss on wet pavement. An SUV’s headlights glow as it drives down my street which connects the two main roads. A train blares on the Ormond mainland a mile away, a train that stops traffic daily on the main east-west road that’s a hurricane evacuation route. Neighbors pass, quietly walking their dogs. They say nothing but wave. One sound I can’t hear – the sounds of surf slapping the beach. That came through my bedroom window last night but the day’s fog stole it away. A plane flies and it’s hidden by the fog and I wonder what fog looks like through the windshield of a small plane. In ten years, will I hear any of this? Will it be lodged in my memory, that foggy February morning when I skipped the TV news and cellphone screens and just listened? Will it be a molecule among my ashes swirling in the Atlantic? Where will these moments live?

Discovering obscure maladies just one of many reasons to read John Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy”

Reading contemporary fiction has many rewards.

First, you get a whopping good story.

Second, when the writer knows their stuff, you feel it in your bones. This writer can write!

Third, you never know when you might run across a mysterious malady that might be one that you could have, really, personally. Alerted, you check it out.

Since Dufresne obviously delights in the odd, let’s talk about Dupuytren’s Contracture. In “My Darling Boy,” protagonist Olney Kartheizer mentions this malady of the hands as he contemplates a character in a story he might write for an imaginary family.

I thought, “I might have that.” As Johns Hopkins describes it on its web site:

Dupuytren contracture (also called Dupuytren disease) is an abnormal thickening of the skin in the palm of your hand at the base of your fingers. This thickened area may develop into a hard lump or thick band. Over time, it can cause one or more fingers to curl (contract) or pull sideways or in toward your palm. The ring and little fingers are most commonly affected.

Hopkins includes a video and photos. The contracture makes it hard to cut steak, hold hands with a loved one, and write a thank-you note. People over 50 from a Northern European background (it’s sometimes referred to as “Viking’s hand”) are the most susceptible. I viewed the video and thought, “I definitely have that.” So I’m calling my primary care physician to refer me to a hand doctor.

Dufresne is a writer who does his research so it’s hard to imagine he just pulled this out of thin air. There’s a reason to mention an infirmity that makes it hard to write or type with all fingers. It’s hard to write, period.

After many novels, story collections, and writers’ self-help books later, Dufresne has his craft well in hand.  

“My Darling Boy” is funny as hell and it will break the heart of any parent. It broke mine.

Olney’s mission is to rescue his son Cully from an opioid addiction. He might want to swim the Atlantic Ocean or fly to the moon instead. If you have experience with addicted children or any addicted loved ones, the first message you get at an Alanon meeting is “you have to let them fail.” That comes from AA too. At some point, there is nothing you can do that won’t take you down too. Tough love, I guess.

Olney won’t listen. He may be made of sterner stuff (offspring of Vikings?) but he isn’t. He loves Cully. Olney’s job at the Anastasia (Fla.) Daily Sun has been downsized from staff writer to book reviewer to copy editor to obit writer and then out the door. He is divorced and Kat, his wife, is remarried and in another town. He is the Elwood P. Dowd of Anastasia, stopping to talk with strangers and befriend them if possible. They become his cohorts in the search for Olney that takes him through the underbelly of Florida. And if you don’t think Florida has an underbelly, you ain’t looking out the window as you crisscross the state. Seedy motels, junkies on street corners, abandoned mini-malls with weed-choked lots. Oh, and street corner kiosks for time-shares. All there if you look. I always looked for underbelly when I traveled across Wyoming. I found plenty (no time-share kiosks in Rawlins though).

Dufresne has so much fun noticing. Maybe that’s why his work is included in the “Miami Noir” anthology (1 & 2) edited by Miami resident Les Standiford, a Ph.D. grad in creative writing from UU and once a seasonal park ranger in the Beehive State. Dufresne can be noir but he has so much fun with word play. The proprietor of a rundown motel uses malapropisms which wordsmith Olney shows mercy and only occasionally corrects.

The names of his small towns are wonderful. Melancholy is where his ex-wife lives and is the scene of much of the novel’s second half. At book’s end, Olney and his pal Dewey are off to find Cully. They come to a crossroads along one of those pine-straddled secondary roads. One way takes them to Gracious and the other to Whynot. come to a crossroads for Gracious and Whynot. Guess which one he takes?

Dufresne’s not Southern-born but he got here as quick as he could. He teaches creative writing at Miami’s Florida International University. He keeps company with Florida’s riotous writers. He shares the pages in “Naked Came the Manatee” with “Florida’s finest writers,” so says the New York Times Book Review. In it with Dufresne are Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan, Dave Barry, and Carolina Hospital.

I read Dufresne stories before I tackled this novel. Dufresne’s name often comes up with other Southern Gothic fiction writers such as Lewis Nordan who grew up in Itta Bena, Miss. I once worked with Nordan and, after hearing him speak to a group of writers, realized I had to read all his books. He blends the tragic with the hilarious which doesn’t seem possible until you read “Wolf Whistle,” a novel of the notorious Emmett Till murder. Read it and see.

But first, Dufresne’s “My Darling Boy.”

The ballad of Baba the Thin Man and the Good Ship Cameronia

My sister sent me a packet of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. I took it from there.

My maternal grandfather, Irish immigrant Martin Hett, boarded the S.S. Cameronia on a late May afternoon, 1915. He was 15. The ship was five years old. Spiffy little vessel, the Anchor Line, flew the British flag, built in Glasgow. 10,963 gross tons, 515 feet long, 62 feet wide. Top speed 17 knots. Two masts and two funnels, steel hull with four decks. Carried 1,700 passengers, 250 in first class, 450 in second class, and 1,000 with Grandfather in third class. Port of departure: Liverpool. Port of arrival: New York City. Arrived with all hands June 7, 1915.

RMS Lusitania: First British four-funneled ocean liner, called an “ocean greyhound” by the Cunard Line, six passenger decks carried 2,198 including almost 600 in sumptuous first-class compartments, Launched June 7, 1906; sunk on its voyage from New York by Germany’s SM U-20 on May 7, 1915 with loss of 1,197 souls, some bodies found floating, some washed up on Irish beaches, some just disappeared into The Deeps. A Vanderbilt was among the dead. 

Grandfather was originally booked on the Lusitania along with more than 1,000 other third-class passengers. Now shipless, Grandfather had to hang around the Liverpool docks looking for an alternate booking. Apocryphal family stories have him booking steerage on another ship that is also torpedoed and sunk. We like this because we can tell listeners that our teenage Grandfather tempted fate during the war but made it to America after all. Grand tale, no?

I don’t know why I keep calling him grandfather. As a precocious American toddler, a future English major and writer, I called him Baba so everyone else did. My cousins called him Gramps. My father, his son-in-law, called him Mart. Mom called him Dad.

Not sure what Liverpool looked like in spring 1915. My guess is that it looked a lot like the post-war city of 1919-1920 in the first episodes of “Peaky Blinders.” The Great European War was wrapping up its first year with hellish fights in France and Belgium and the Battle of Gallipoli in far-off Turkey. The war in what we now call the Middle East doesn’t get much movie time except for “Gallipoli” and “Lawrence of Arabia” but it was crucial to what came after and the fate of The Good Ship Cameronia.

Baba made his way from Ellis Island to Chicago and in 1917 worked on the El with his brother.

In 1919, David W. Bone’s book “Merchantmen-At-Arms: The British Merchants’ Service in the War” was published. An experienced merchant seaman and author, Bone explores in great detail the war at sea. He relives the April 15, 1917, sinking of the troopship Cameronia in Chapter XII: 'THE MAN-O'-WAR 'S 'ER 'USBAND'. The ship carries almost 3,000 troops to Egypt. You can read the full text at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/31953/31953-h/31953-h.htm#. It features drawings by Muirhead Bone, an etcher and watercolorist who was a war artist in the First and Second World Wars. Here are excerpts:

An alarmed cry from aloft—a half-uttered order to the steersman—an explosion, low down in the bowels of the ship, that sets her reeling in her stride!

The upthrow comes swiftly on the moment of impact. Hatches, coal, shattered debris, a huge column of solid water go skyward in a hurtling mass to fall in torrent on the bridge. Part of a human body strikes the awning spars and hangs—watch-keepers are borne to the deck by the weight of water—the steersman falls limply over the wheel with blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. . . . Then silence for a stunned half-minute, with only the thrust of the engines marking the heart-beats of the stricken ship.

*****

Uproar! Most of our men are young recruits: they have been but two days on the sea. The torpedo has gone hard home at the very weakest hour of our calculated drill. The troops are at their evening meal when the blow comes, the explosion killing many outright.

*****

Many of the life-boats reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the tackles—far beyond their working load—is too great for all to stand to it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights, disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We can make no attempt to reach the men in the water.

*****

It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the gallant service of the destroyers.

*****

We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last buoyant breath of Cameronia is overcome. Nobly she has held afloat to the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly, steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she goes down.

Many of the troops were rescued by destroyers Nemesis and Rifleman.

Baba loved his ice cream. The Thin Man died at 90.

P.S.: There was another S.S. Cameronia built by the Anchor Line that sailed on its maiden voyage in 1921. It too was requisitioned as a troopship at the outbreak of World War 2 and took part in the 1942 invasion of North Africa, was torpedoed and towed to Algiers for repairs. She was the largest troopship to participate in Operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. She carried passengers to Palestine in 1948. Scrapped in 1957.

Breaking: Daytona Evening News 08/16/1972: All heck breaks out in Miami

Reading the Daytona Beach Evening News: City Final. Price 10 cents.

Some interesting headlines:

Youthful and Elderly Protesters Join in ‘Gripes’ on Nixon Policies

After Haggling Aplenty, Campsite Finally Slated to Open Thursday

Askew Orders 15 Pct. Increase in Welfare

Argentine Leftists Stage Wild Jailbreak-Hijacking

Speaking of Hijacks…Airlines Find Subject Less Than Amusing

Display ad placed by a consortium of local banks in bottom left corner has an illustration of a man reclining in an easy chair in front of a TV set. He is smoking a cigar and holding a highball. The text: 

Pro and college football, the World Series, coming up. This little guy has it made. How about you? We’ll finance your color TV. Fact is, we’ll finance the adjustable lounge chair. You finance the cool drink. Have a nice day – have a colorful fall.

Dateline: August 16, 1972

It’s going to be hot and sticky with a high temp of 88 and humidity at 82. Ocean temp: 78.

Welcome to Daytona Beach 53 years ago.

The newspaper is yellowed but you can still see the track marks on the margins from the printing press. It’s a big broadsheet, a size you no longer see. Newspapers have downsized and disappeared.

I was 21 and hitching across America with my girlfriend. We were in Utah or Colorado – I didn’t keep a journal then so I can’t be sure. Wherever I was, I probably wasn’t reading the morning or evening papers. I was reading “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck who wrote it to reconnect with America. “I did not know my own country,” he wrote.  I was aware that Republicans were conventioneering in Miami and there were protests going on. I didn’t know that Vietnam Veterans Against the War members were there and we would be hearing more from them later. I didn’t know that a gonzo reporter named Hunter S. Thompson was covering the fracas and would be famous for his “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72.”

As were so many others, I was out there looking for America. I found it too. It was wonderful and exciting. My favorite summer. I had no clue who Ron Kovic was and what he was experiencing in his heart and on the streets of Miami. I didn’t yet know the name of Scott Camil and the Gainesville Eight were not yet named the Gainesville Eight. I thought I knew a lot but I knew nothing but how much fun it was to be 21 and traveling with a beautiful woman and free of the Selective Service Draft. We met and partied with other young people on the road. It was glorious.

I did read part of this morning’s Daytona Beach News-Journal. I skipped the headlines because I didn’t want to see them. Yes, it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, a day which I used to spend marching for Martin. It also is another day that I am ignoring. I would rather read above the cute Welsh Corgi named Taco that Palm Coast police take along as a therapy dog. Nice photo – one lovable dog. I did look at the weather. It’s going to be cold, folks, surprisingly cold for Florida. I looked up at my big TV. It’s a nice one, Roku HD4. I am not turning it on today. Not protesting in any park but I’ve done that many times. We put on some fine Inauguration Day protests in 2017 and 2018. More than 1,000 people came to our Jan. 21, 2017, Wyoming Women’s March protest in tiny Cheyenne, Wyoming. People I knew from Laramie and Casper and Fort Collins were there. I made my famous almost-salt-free chili for the post-protest feed. We plugged in so many crockpots at the Cheyenne Historic Depot that the power went out. Despite the downer reason for the protest, a fine time was had by all. Local TV and newspaper covered the event. Lots of photos on our cellphone cameras. I will share one with you if I can find it in my photo cache.

I’m returning to my newspaper. In 1972, Volusia County had six A&P stores and now there are none. In 1972, I could buy a loaf of white bread for 22 cents and a pound of coffee for 69 cents. A pack of frozen waffles was 10 cents and a big box of Sugar Frosted Flakes sold for 55 cents (Everyday Low Price!). No prices are listed for eggs but they were cheap, I know that, maybe as cheap as they’re going to be starting today. I can’t wait.

P.S.: You might wonder why I was reading a 1972 newspaper. It was included in a packet of stuff sent to me by my sister who is downsizing and cleaning decades of storage from her house. She knows I’m a history buff who writes about arcane stuff.

This aging M.F.A.-trained writer vs. Copilot's A.I. mind

This is my version of a prose poem that I dashed off late last night. Maybe it's not a prose poem. A ramble, maybe, or just a burst of words that flew out of my head. I've been doing that a lot lately. Words bursting from my mind with very little rewrite. It's fun, really, just to let the words flow. Freewriting is what I used to call it when teaching college composition. I would tell my students just freewrite for 10 minutes and then let's see if anyone wants to read their pieces. Don't think about it -- just write! Do as I do. And I would write for 10 minutes about any darn thing I wanted. Things like this:

So what do you think of Florida my old friends ask. I think what is it they want me to say that I find it the most magnificent spit of land in the U.S. of A.? They are friends so I can't lie. I find it confusing after 46 years elsewhere many elsewheres. Warmer than my recent home Wyoming but confusing. Old landmarks no longer exist or they exist in puzzling forms. The beach seems less magnificent maybe because it’s so managed. The 60s and 70s we drove the wide low-tide beach any time day or night. We drove high tide too with all the attendant risks. Mostly we were pushing Yankees out of the soft sand and sometimes they paid us because they were so grateful that their 1968 Buick LeSabre did not get gobbled by the salty-sea. We surf as the sun peeks over the flat line of the horizon. A tortoise surfaces beyond the breakwater and we hope it’s not a shark. The waves are surfable but just barely and it’s OK because there always is tomorrow and tomorrow after that. My old rental west of the interstate is now a development and the beat-up two-lane road is now named for a gated community called Tymber Creek and yeah that Tymber with a Y and all the timber cut down for new houses says thank you alphabet. On Hartford Ave my father is not out by the street, dressed in shorts and flapping button-down, with beer in hand, yelling at the surfers to slow down. I go to a funeral for a high school friend last week and the widower a guy who was my classmate and teammate and relies on a wheelchair post-stroke looks up and says, “You look just like your old man.” And I take it in stride because I do that’s a fact and I’ve heard that the old friend is incapacitated and it is not true not true at all. We share quips about our conveyances, him his fancy wheelchair and me my fancy spine-assisting e-scooter. We are a fine pair of ballplayers 1969 and we make scholarship choices and it works out for him and he returns hometown and I’m cast off into the cold and I don’t regret it now but I did hundreds of times. Our links to past lives are pulled until they almost don’t exist. I tell my new friends: Yes, this place is too crowded and this is a voice from the Capital City of the nation’s least-populated state. It’s a place where newcomers my students from Torrington and Hanna and Meeteetse say THE CROWDS!!! THE TRAFFIC!!! and we city-born ones say it will grow on you boys and girls it will grow. So what do you think of the new Florida my green-eyed senior citizen? I open the bedroom window, hear the waves breaking at night. The waves. 

MS Copilot rewrite: 

My old friends ask what I think of Florida now. After 46 years elsewhere, I'm confused. It's warmer than Wyoming but different. Old landmarks have changed or vanished, and the beach feels less magnificent because it's so managed. In the past, we drove on the wide low-tide beach anytime, even at high tide with risks. We helped Yankees stuck in the sand, sometimes for a fee. We surfed as the sun rose, hoping to spot tortoises, not sharks.  

My old rental is now a development, and the two-lane road is named after a gated community called Tymber Creek. Hartford Ave has changed too; my father no longer yells at surfers. Last week, I attended a funeral for a high school friend. The widower, a former classmate now in a wheelchair, remarked that I look like my father. We joked about our conveyances, reminiscing about our scholarship decisions from 1969.  

Living here in Florida, I tell my new friends it’s crowded, especially compared to Wyoming. But I hear the waves breaking at night, and that remains unchanged. 

MS Copilot is not wrong but it's bland is it not? It just doesn’t get some things. Surprisingly, it does get other things. I thought about breaking up my big block of type into separate paragraphs. Copilot detected the change and did exactly that. AI scares me a bit. There are times, usually late at night when I am writing things down, when I wonder why I write at all. Really, why?

Ormond museum features art from the war in France and the war at home

(Continued from Jan. 13)

I spend a lot of time at Malcolm Fraser’s “The Soul Escaping Death” painting flanked by a framed spread of many medals earned in World War 1. He served in the French Blue Devils unit and was wounded five times. He also was an officer with the Red Cross on the frontlines.

Chris wanders off. She knows that I may be awhile. 

That’s what you do at a museum, right? Wander. Or roll, depending on your mobility.

If you look up Fraser at New York City’s Salmagundi Club web site, you find that Fraser was a member. I had to search for him and the screen listed 56 items in the file. But the link does not go to the artwork but you can see some in person at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens, 78 E. Granada, Blvd. The Salmagundi club is dedicated to representational art so it’s natural that it drew Fraser who painted portraits of the living and the dead, angels, soldiers, and John the Baptist among them.

“The Soul Escaping Death” shows a dead soldier on the ground in front of blasted battlements. He is wrapped in a U.S. flag that he apparently was carrying on the staff he grips in his dead hands. An angel has one hand on the body and another on a robe stripped from what’s supposed to be the soldier’s soul rising into the gilded heavens. The spirit looks free and happy, the vestments looking as if they are morphing into angel’s wings. The soul’s naked body looks female with long curly hair and the possibility of breasts and any genitals hidden under a triangle of pubic hair. It could be that this is Fraser’s vision of the angelic form, one that is human but intersexual, one that represents a brand-new being that we become after death. The exposed flesh of the dead soldier and the angel is rough and brown as if they were connected to the ground like old oak trees. The soul’s flesh is the pink of life, a representation of new life in the soul.

I looked at this painting a long time. I couldn’t decide if it was a work of hope in the face of death or a memoir of an artist who has witnessed slaughter on a grand scale. He was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Verdun Medal. “Verdun” was symbolic of the war for the French, a battle cry and also a memory of defeat. Verdun was the longest battle of the war, lasting 11 months. Casualties were enormous for the French and Germans, with 700,000 dead, missing, and wounded. The site’s towering Douaumont Ossuary contains the bones of more than 100,000 soldiers never identified, French and German dead intermingled. You can view them through little windows.

Fraser was an accomplished artist. Not sure he took many risks. The 20^th century was about to explode and the explosion was captured by poets and writers. The so-called “Lost Generation” gave us exciting and troubling masterpieces.

Charles Humes Jr. is a living artist from Miami who has much in common with this creative breed. Humes lives in the present and creates in the present. As an African-American, he has an endless array of subjects, many taken from daily newspapers. Lest we miss his messages, he uses newspaper clippings in his mixed media work.  The museum’s handout for the new year shows Humes’ “Gentrified” on the cover.

“Gentrified” is a loaded word in the black community. It often means that a black neighborhood is being turned over to developers and the mostly-white gentry who will inhabit the condos/townhouses that will replace independent businesses. Artists figure in this, too. They often are the first to occupy rundown urban neighborhoods because they can afford them. Then the city (I’m looking at you, Denver) becomes known as an arts hub and young people swarm in and then smart developers who saw this coming and bought rundown buildings kick out the artists and renovate them into condos and before long you have ranks of techies wandering the streets looking for art for their walls by artists who once lived in their building but now can only afford the prairie exurbs or some quaint rural village in the foothills that soon will swarm with newcomers seeking real estate in artsy quaint rural villages.

It's not the fault of artists. Hey, I just wanted a place to paint! It’s life in America. Not sure what it’s going to look like in Trumplandia.

Oh yes I do. I truly do.

Humes’ work will be on exhibit through Feb. 9. Next up are Colombian sculptor Felipe Lopez and collage artist Staci Swider. Accord to the handout: “Her [Swinder’s] work is a meditation on aging, memory, and the unseen forces that guide us.” Sounds intriguing and timely. Opening reception at the museum gallery is Feb. 20, 6-8 p.m.

Malcolm Fraser flies with the angels at Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens

What makes a 49-year-old artist abandon his paints and go to war?

That’s the question I pondered when visiting the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens.

Malcolm Fraser was a Canada-born professional painter and illustrator who had graduated from the Sorbonne and attended Heidelberg University. In 1917, he left the U.S., steamed to Europe, and joined, after some intense training, the French “Blue Devils” unit at the Front. He was wounded five times and received France’s Croix de Guerre for his heroics. Later, he joined the A.E.F., was promoted to captain, and served with the American Red Cross on the front lines.

Fraser ended up spending most of his time in Ormond Beach. Toward the end of his life, he looked for a place to feature his artwork and one that was dedicated to veterans. A $10,000 endowment by Fraser in 1946 got the ball rolling and led to this impressive place.

Its priorities are clear when you leave handicapped parking and roll through the jungle. As Credence sang:

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Whoa, don’t look back and see.

I roll on my electric scooter and Chris walks. A beautiful space, and peaceful. I can barely hear the traffic zooming by on one of Ormond's busiest intersections. We enter the sheltered labyrinth and follow the lines on its painted multicolored surface decorated with butterflies and hummingbirds. It was designed by by Joan Baliker and the late Carol Bertrand and refreshed by Mack Sutton (artists must be named). This one is within a big gazebo and is a great play place for kids. I think about the outdoor stone labyrinth at my hometown Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, now covered with snow. 

Along the walkway is a monument by Mark Chew to veterans of the Korean War. Its streamlined silver surface reaches for the trees and beyond. It's the shape of a flame but cold as the Chosin Reservoir. Around the next turn is a bronze for Vietnam veterans by Gregory Johnson. On what looks like an old kitchen chair sits a helmet and canteen. Dog tags and a uniform shirt hang from the chair back. Its legs straddle beat-up combat boots.

I linger. This was my generation’s war, not mine physically, but it's lodged in the memories of any guy of draft age from that time (December 1968 passed Draft physical Jacksonville FL, high school deferment; December 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery #128; Navy ROTC midshipman 1969-71; two months served on USS John F. Kennedy as midshipman, summer 1970; released from the Draft on Jan. 1, 1972). I once read this about those times: "Vietnam sucked the soul out of an entire generation."

Memories remain. 

Johnson's statue is homey, I think, the things a grunt might leave behind when he changes into civvies. Or it could be a family's reminders of a GI whose psyche never made it back home. Think of war stories: Krebs in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” or Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Billy Lynn in Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (whatever happened to Ang Lee’s 2016 movie based on the book?).

We emerge from the jungle and its memories. The sun shines on a colorful "Can Do" sculpture by the late Seward Johnson, part of the public art display on Grenada by the Ormond Beach Arts District. Also on the ground is the "Embracing Peace" sculpture celebrating the famous Times Square kiss on VJ Day. Inside the museum, a bronze plaque lists more than 200 residents who served in WW2 (updated in 1999 to list African-American veterans) and one dedicated to WW1 veterans. A WW1 Doughboy helmet rests in a glass case by Malcolm Fraser’s photo and bio that greet visitors. This is a decorated soldier, and we are here to see his artwork.

(To be continued)

President Biden signs the "Jackie Robinson Ballpark National Commemorative Act"

President Biden signed the "Jackie Robinson Ballpark National Commemorative Act" on Saturday. It designates Daytona Beach's 110-year-old Jackie Robinson Ballpark as a commemorative site and "makes it a part of the African American Civil Rights Network," according to a story in Monday morning's Daytona Beach News-Journal.

The article caught my eye because it was headed by a big photo of the ballpark's statue of Jackie Robinson handing a baseball to two young fans. Robinson's jersey said "Royals." This isn't news to locals as Robinson first played here for the Triple-A Montreal Royals on March 17, 1946. That was more than a year before his April 15, 1947, MLB debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Robinson is celebrated every April 15 on his namesake day at every MLB park. He is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He broke every record worth breaking. He died way too young in 1972. He's idolized by millions.

But the 1940s were no picnic for a black big-league ballplayer. He was all alone in Daytona and Brooklyn and every ballpark he played in. He got death threats and hate mail. He was yelled at by hateful whites. Some players refused to play with him. 

It was hell playing in Brooklyn, Cleveland, and Chicago. Imagine how hard it was to play in Deep South Daytona. Some will say that a beach town in Florida was different, say, than Selma or Little Rock. There was prejudice but it was a more laid-back wastin'-away-in-Margaritaville kind of racism. But it was in the air and on the ground. And in some dark hearts.

When my family moved to Daytona in 1964, blacks were not permitted on the beachside after dark. They had their own beach named for the Bethune family of educators, a family so esteemed there is a college named in their honor and Mary McCloud Bethune's statue was installed in 2022 in the Florida display in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol Building, the first statue of an African-American in that hall. Many whites in Daytona called Bethune Beach "N-words Beach." The first black surfer I surfed with appeared at our beach in 1969. Coaches at my Catholic high school recruited black players for our football and basketball teams which made us the only integrated high school among the four in Daytona (the rest weren't integrated until the 1970s).

But worse things happened in this part of Florida:

From a "Freedom Never Dies" special on WUCF, a PBS station at University of Central Florida in Orlando: 

By 1930, four thousand blacks had been lynched nationwide by white mobs, vigilantes, or the Klan. Most of these occurred in the Deep South, many with law enforcement complicity. And while Alabama and Mississippi had more total lynchings, it was Florida, surprisingly, that had the highest per capita rate of lynching from 1900-1930.

"Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore" documentary debuted on PBS stations nationwide 24 years ago Jan. 12. Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee narrated. Sweet Honey In The Rock and Toshi Reagon performed original music. Here's some background information from the WUCF web site:

Combining Murder Mystery, Incisive Biography and an Eye-Opening Portrait of Jim Crow Florida, "Freedom Never Dies" Sheds New Light on one of America's Earliest and Most Fearless Fighters for Civil Rights.

In 1951 after celebrating Christmas Day, civil rights activist Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriette retired to bed in their white frame house tucked inside a small orange grove in Mims, Florida [Mims is in north Brevard County, a 45-minute drive from Jackie Robinson Ballpark]. Ten minutes later, a bomb shattered their house, their lives and any notions that the south's post-war transition to racial equality would be a smooth one. Harry Moore died on the way to the hospital; his wife died nine days later.

"Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore" explores the life and times of this enigmatic leader, a distinguished school teacher whose passionate crusade for equal rights could not be discouraged by either the white power structure or the more cautious factions of his own movement. Although Moore's assassination was an international cause celebre in 1951, it was overshadowed by following events and eventually almost forgotten.

"Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore"  produced by The Documentary Institute, restores Moore to his rightful place in the Civil Rights saga.

Our daughter Annie begins the new year by getting "washed in the ocean"

A fine day for a baptism. 

Our daughter Annie arrived with Chris and I for the Salty Church’s annual New Year’s Day full-immersion baptism. Annie was joined by 51 others who all wore the same black T-shirt with this inscribed on it in white letters: “Washed in the ocean freed from my past today I am new” (see photos). Annie, Chris, and I were joined by family members and friends and we trudged through the soft sand to the water. 

Some of us walked, I trudged. But I was prepared. I used my high-performance rollator walker to blaze a trail through the sand. The rollator was equipped with big knobby tires which, I surmised, would be a better machine for the beach than my tiny-tire-and-tennis-ball-equipped walker. I pushed it forward and then walked to it, pushed again, walked, so on and so forth. The idea was that if I pushed it as I did across our living room, too much weight would dig-in the wheels. Now I’m not saying I am too much weight but I am and my ploy worked for a time. That’s when Joe the Biker arrived to assist. Dressed in black Boot Hill Saloon T-shirt, jeans, and big boots, he was equipped for riding his Harley and to assist a handicapped old guy through the sand. He stomped down the pesky sand granules to make a runway that paved the way to water’s edge wherein dwelt the hard-packed sand. Joe said he liked baptisms and while he was not one of the baptizees, he was happy to be here and considered it a blessing that he was sober and alive and well in ’25 and praised Jesus and I said Amen.

I was mobile via my legs the last time I was on this stretch of beach 10-plus years ago for my brother Dan’s funeral or send-off is a better term. I joined a long line of mourners that had walked from the Salty Church to the Grenada approach and onto Ormond Beach. Surfers paddled out for the appropriately-named Paddle Out and airplanes piloted by Dan’s friends flew over in the missing man formation.

But today was for the living and a fine day it was. Blue skies, gentle breeze, modest waves. Annie donned her T-shirt and joined the crowd. The Salty Church preacher greeted us, said a prayer, and issued the day’s instructions. I could tell Annie was a bit nervous but also giddy with possibilities. She is the Evangelical of the family, attendee of conservative Christian churches and one who dwells within the web of True Believers. This is the last cynical thing this fallen-away Catholic will say on this post. For this day, I am not a sarcastic liberal. I have written here about my recent experiences in a Seventh-Day Adventist Hospital where doctors and nurses and CNAs and therapists worked for 25 days to save my life. I am indebted to them and to an organized religion that would build a healing place and hire healers to manage it. While in a coma, I dreamed of reaching out and touching the hand of God or someone very much like him or her. I listened to the twice-daily prayers over the loudspeaker and said some of my own prayers. I allowed others to pray for me and took communion from a lay communicant from St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church. I absorbed departing greetings such as “Have a blessed day.” I often repeated their blessings.

I have much to learn from the congregation of human beings.

One of those things is that my daughter, whose struggles with mental health issues have caused her much pain, will now be baptized. I watched as two church members said a prayer, lowered her into the water, and how she sputtered and smiled when she emerged. She was touched by the spirit and the fact that her aunts and uncles and nieces and family friends came out to see it happen. And then we convened at our house for cake and tea. Annie opened gifts which included earrings and necklace crosses and a giant conch shell my brother brought from Palm Bay. The cake was delicious and a chocolate phantasmagoria.

All told, a glorious day.

Happy New Year: Fear and Loathing in 2025 America

A friend once asked me to name my favorite writers. It's a long, long list, but I gave him the top five: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Flannery O'Connor, and Hunter S. Thompson. Fine writers all.

My friend who shall remain nameless made an astute observation: "But you don't write like any of those authors." 

A fair point. I don't write like any of them. But how could I? These writers had their own styles that are much admired and frequently copied. That's what beginning writers do: imitate their maestros. But you eventually move on to find your own voice if you stick with it. I've stuck with it and crafted my own style and it apparently has few fans in the publishing world but that's life in the fast lane. 

I haven't given up and I'm called to write for a number of reasons that make up my 74 years. My parents read to me and I gobbled up Yertle the Turtle and Winnie-the-Pooh. I read cereal boxes at the breakfast table and billboards as I peered out those big windows in post-war automobiles. I wrote stories for my third-grade teacher Jean Sylling and she put one up on the bulletin board. It was about aliens in a flying saucer landing in my Denver backyard. I was embarrassed but also thought it a bit grand, a story I wrote put up for all my classmates to see. 

My father the accountant had a big library and I read through many of them without really understanding what was going on. My mother usually had a baby in one arm and a book in the other. That's who introduced me to "Catch-22." She read and laughed and I was curious but was only 11 and not interested enough until I was in high school and close to draft age and Heller's novel haunted me and made me laugh. I turned on my chums to the book and its hilarity resonated with them but we rarely talked about the war part. 

Strange happenings were all around and I soaked them in but did not write about them. My parents and eight brothers and sisters were all distinctive entities and I inherited their nuances. My forebears visited my dreams. I attended Catholic School and irony and metaphors surrounded me but I was not aware of it until later, much later. I watched "Get Smart," "The Monkees," and the evening news and they all kind of blended together. Sex was a puzzle that we Catholic teens were left to figure out on our own and it's still a work-in-progress. 

My childhood and teenhood were all precursors to hard lessons to come. I really thought I had it made at 18 and the world was my oyster although I'd never eaten an Atlantic Ocean oyster as I surfed in that salty sea whenever I didn't have to take care of my siblings or go to school or go to work to afford that school. I dated the most beautiful creatures on Planet Earth but they might as well have been the imaginary aliens that landed in my yard in my third-grade story. 

Speaking of alien life forms: I am no closer to understanding the human condition than I was in the third grade. I refer to recent happenings in the U.S. of A. It is past time to revisit Thompson's Fear & Loathing chronicles and Yossarian's naked self and Billy Pilgrim's time jumps and the residents of Macondo and O'Connor's Misfit. I may not fully understand them but they live inside me every second of every day.

How does the fog come in on the day after Christmas?

The fog comes/on little cat feet

Thought of this Carl Sandburg poem as I sat watching the ocean as fog crept in. Cats weren't on my mind as much as the view from Tom Renick Park in Ormond-by-the-Sea. My visiting daughter stood beside me. Waves rolled through the fog and crunked on the shore. The surf wasn't bad. Rollers breaking outside but you could ride them out of the fog like a vampire surfer. Three young surfers appeared suddenly, boards under arms, walking north on the beach. No wetsuits. Gotta admire those guys. Two days ago there was sun and a bit of wind and all the surfers wore wetsuits. Must be the wind. The fog today traveled on a light north breeze. We were shielded by the adjacent condo high-rise. Still, tiny mist dabs fell on my exposed legs and dotted my windbreaker. I kept expecting a cat to appear but the only sound was traffic along A1A and kids on winter break cavorting in the playground. No way to hear little cat's feet. I imagined it just the same.

My first winter solstice on the Florida coast

This solstice I awoke to lawnmowers, just one, the riding mower Brian pilots as he mows my yard and the ones adjacent and across the street. It’s winter solstice and in Wyoming I didn’t wake up to lawnmowers. Snowblowers sound similar but the pitch is different, closer to a screech than a roar. And the mowers move quickly as they crisscross the salt-air-resistant St. Augustine grass that is like a weaving rather than the upright bluegrass or fine fescue of Wyoming. Yes, bluegrass, a lawn type suited more for the green of Kentucky racehorse pastures than the brown of the high prairie. When bluegrass matures, it feels fine on bare feet. Not so the Florida varietal; its runners poke feet. It keeps growing after summer and Brian is here every other week in December instead of every week in June. The Florida rains arrive and you can almost watch the grass grow.

Winter solstice announces the rough part of winter and the beginning of longer bouts of sun although we barely notice it day by day. Summer solstice announces the glorious days of summer and the slow passage of the sun across the sky or so it seems when you live in the Sunshine State and you work mowing lawns or pounding nails or laying down roofing shingles. Brian finishes the big front law and moves to the back. He makes three passes in my tiny yard and then he’s on to Number  70 or Number 66 or motors across the street to Number 67. I hear him most of the morning and it’s odd is what it is, this summer sound at Christmastime. Soon the leafblower erupts and it’s more akin to snowblowers and I wish I found comfort in it but don’t.

In Florida and Wyoming, the sounds of December 21 mean one thing: summer is coming. In Wyoming, it takes its own sweet time. In Florida, well, it’s already here.

Watching surfers the day before my 74th birthday

They are tiny figures on the outside sandbar, straddling their surfboards, heads bobbing up with each oncoming wave, and then obscured again behind the froth.

I know how it feels, this waiting. It’s not like other kinds of waiting, waiting for a traffic light to turn, waiting in the grocery store line, waiting for school day’s final bell.

It’s waiting for the future, waiting to see the heft of the wave, the promise of the day’s best ride as the sea moves beneath your board and lifts you up and it’s up to you to see where you go and what you do

And sometimes it’s a bubbling brute of whitewater that pushes you off the board and into the drink and depending on the wave size, how much time you spend cartwheeling until you emerge to find your board.

These young surfers out there today, they wear leashes and their boards spin with them and sometimes into them.

In the 1960s, the boards were bigger and unleashed, could whack you good if close enough, the skeg or fin a sharp knife that can leave a mark.

My surf life was short, a high school thing that I left behind in my twenties and I don’t know why.

Some of today’s surfers will be out on the waves in twenty years – remember how young you were at 37, half my age now? At 17, 37 is forever years away, 74 is so far down the line that it doesn’t exist except among those old people who clog the roads as you speed to the beach before the waves get blown out.

Age beached me. I can’t walk. I can swim with a floatation device. I can get to the beach by car and use my walker to get to the water, let it lick my toes, take me back to 1967 when a December day with waves was good enough but not as glorious as a July day with surf and 80-degree water and my fellow surfers surround me and I spy my girlfriend pull up and park and she waves and I return the wave and feel as if I will live forever this way, a young man in the ocean, just waiting for the next wave.