Next time you survive a heart attack, try to fine-tune the description

What action verb best describes a heart attack?

Most times, the past tense of have serves the purpose. Dad had a heart attack. That's so bland. You can "have" a heart attack, just as you can have a cup of coffee or a bad day. But it doesn't really get to the heart of the matter.  Something happens when you have a heart attack, something profound. The muscle that keeps you human stops working. It is an experience of a lifetime and, often, the last experience, your deathtime. It deserves a better description.

The heart attack should be the subject of the sentence. A heart attack killed father. A heart attack claimed his life. You can add an adverb: A heart attack almost killed father. Most of us survivors are fond of adverbs such as almost or nearly, Our lives depended on those adverbs. You could also stay with the action verbs and say something like this: Dad beat the reaper. Or, if you prefer, "Don't Fear the Reaper" with jangly guitars and cowbell, always more cowbell.

Heart attacks deserve better treatment, language-wise. They define what comes after, whether that be finality or life's new chapter. I was lucky and got the latter. I paid a price for neglecting the telltale signs. I wear an ICD in my chest wall that sends signals to a hospital monitoring station. I remain confident that Russian hackers will never find the frequency. But please alert me if I ever start saying nice things about Donald Trump.

My widowmaker heart attack on Jan. 2, 2013, nearly killed me. I lived. During my year of recovery, I went through rehab and ate right and exercised and continued not smoking (I quit in 1985). Some things I did not do. I did not read and entire novel. I wrote very little, although I blogged a bit about the widowmaker (links here and here). The experience took a piece of my heart, my soul. I never thought I would write fiction again. I told my wife Chris that I would never write another book, not even in retirement. She was having none of that. I started a novel the day after I retired in January 2016. I'm 30,000-some words into it. Hard work, this novel-writing biz. Better suited for a young man. Now I have experience but not the stamina. Life plays mean tricks. It entertains us with surprises.

How did the term "heart attack" get started? The heart does not attack. It protests. Dad ate too many Big Macs and his heart is mad as hell and is not going to take it anymore. Bam -- your heart seizes up like an engine low on life-giving 10W-40. My original diagnosis was Acute Myocardial Infarction accompanied by Congestive Heart Failure. I could also call it a Coronary Thrombosis. These terms aren't nearly as colorful as Heart Attack. That's what I will continue to say. And will continue to find better ways to describe that thing that disrupted but didn't end my life.

Cohort replacement is the only cure for Trumpism

It's an "age" thing.

In September 2016, just weeks before Trump's election, writer Chris Ladd in Forbes foretold the future. The article, "The Last Jim Crow Generation," spells out the roots of white anger that led us to this earthly paradise called Trumplandia. If you were a 70-year-old white man at the time of the election, you had led a mostly white life in the U.S. Here's a sample:

Like Donald Trump, white voters turning 70 this year had already reached adulthood in 1964, the year that the first Civil Rights Act was passed. They started kindergarten in schools that were almost universally white. Most were in third grade when the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education. A good number of them would complete their public education in formally segregated schools. 

Read the rest here.

Is it just me, or some of the best articles on Trumpism have been in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal.? This liberal baby boomer must be getting soft in his old age.

I am in this same cohort, those of us born in the first five years after World War II. I was born in December 1950. All of us boomers born in December of 1950 share one thing -- we were born in the same month and year. We do share some touchstones of our journey from birth to 18. Depending on who you were and where you lived, you had at least a passing knowledge of the Civil Rights struggle and Vietnam. You may have been involved in them, or blissfully ignorant. "Turbulent," they call the sixties. That term came up more than once last night in the first two segments of CNN's "1968."

Children and teens, as a rule, are focused more in school and sports and dating than they are in social justice movements. In my senior year of high school, my attention was on getting my basketball team to the state tournament, finding a date for the prom, and deciding on which college I could (or couldn't) afford. I was a good student, but not great, and a pretty good surfer. I had a car that ran most of the time. My parents were good people, but imperfect, which describes most of us humans trying to do our best. At 18, I complained about my parents to my friends. At home, I was respectful as any tormented teen.

My school was integrated, sort of. An all-white Catholic school recruited black athletes. My class of 69 had three African-Americans, two of whom were my teammates. Some of the football players were recruited from our town's all-black high school. Integration was still a few years in the future. My class also had an Iranian place-kicker and first-generation Cuban immigrant who looked more Irish than me. That was the extent of our ethnic diversity.

Ladd's Forbes article  talked about a workplace, unions, schools, churches, military -- all dominated by white males. That was our experience in our formative years. So, is it any wonder that men from the early baby boomer cohort look around, see a changing America, and freak out. And that is the cohort that turns out to vote, this time for Trump.

I am 67. I did not freak out in 2016. I am freaking out now. Racism and jingoism have returned with a vengeance. I was susceptible to these influences when I was 18. I am susceptible to them now. I choose a different path. The question remains: How did I get here?

How did we get here?

Dear White People: Columbia University wants to know what you think about the issues of the day

Columbia University's Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) wants to find out what white and partially-white folks in Cheyenne think about their role in society.

They came to the right place as Cheyenne is mostly white and partially white, ethnically speaking. The latest census figures for Laramie County, Wyoming, shows that 89 percent of the population checks the Caucasian or "white" box under the question about race.

I haven't yet received the results from DNA testing from ancestry.com, but I can attest I am probably all-white, or at least mostly white. I would love to see a percentage come back showing I am partially sub-Saharan African or Latino or Asian. But anyone can look at me and say, "Damn, I've never seen anyone so white." If I didn't have freckles where I was kissed by the sun, I would be so white that I would glow in the dark.

One more thing. I could be a little Basque on my maternal grandfather's side. He came from Ireland but had a very un-Irish name in Hett. Some genealogical research by my cousin showed that the name probably was de la Hett, possibly from the genes of a Spanish Armada sailor or maybe one of the French soldiers who occasionally ventured into Ireland to join the Irish in a doomed uprising. Ever read "The Year of the French?" I'm not giving anything away to say that it ends badly.

So I am European of the northern variety with maybe a dash of southern Europe.

Which brings me back to the Columbia University INCITE study. At the county Democratic Party convention at LCCC a few weeks ago, flyers circulated that promoted a survey for white people. Here's the basic text:

Columbia University is conducting a study here in Cheyenne on race and ethnicity, specifically about how white or partially white people think about their own race/ethnicity. If interested, you can take their survey by going to www.cheyennestudy-columbia.org/participate/ 

How could I resist? I went to the site and filled out the survey. It included questions about race, religious preference and political affiliation, among other things. I checked "none" for religion. This is a tough one for me. I do not go to church. But I spent my early life in churches and catechism classes and Catholic schools. I spent much of my adult life working hard at being a Catholic who believes in the social justice gospel. It was a losing battle. So I don't go to church. Shoot me. Fortunately, the bill to allow firearms in churches did not make it through the crackpot legislature this year. But it may in 2019.

I invite my fellow Cheyenne residents to fill out the survey. It would be fun to skew the results in favor of liberals. Imagine the eggheads at Columbia looking at their results and deciding that Cheyenne, Wyoming, was the most liberal place on the planet, more so than Boulder, Colo., and San Francisco and some of those college towns in Vermont. Wouldn't that be an eye-opener?

So take a fifteen-minute break and fill out the survey. You'll be glad you did.

A broadside is designed to get a reader's attention

Broadside published by University of Minnesota Press, 2018. 

I received a broadside in the mail this week. A broadside is a printed sheet that promotes a larger work, such as a book. Propaganda broadsides were plastered on walls throughout the colonies during the War for Independence. The London Times distributed broadsides of famous British literary works to soldiers in the World War One trenches. The idea, it seems, was that a bloke absorbed in Shelley or Wordsworth would not notice he was being blown to bits.

Some publishers still print broadsides, mainly of poetry. I have some of those from David Romtvedt and Bill Tremblay, among others. They usually are printed in support of a collection. Flash fiction is suited for broadsides but I don't know if that is a thing or not.

I received a broadside from University of Minnesota Press promoting Sheila Watt-Cloutier's book "The Right to be Cold: One Woman's Fight to Protect the Arctic and Save the Planet from Climate Change." The broadside was a prize offered to like UM Press on Facebook. I liked and I received. See the image above.

This broadside did its job. I did not know Watt-Cloutier's work until the envelope landed in my mailbox. She writes about climate change from an Inuit's point of view. The Arctic nation is almost invisible to us in The Lower 48. My knowledge of people in the Arctic centers around the term "eskimo" and all that it entails: igloos, kayaks, dog sleds, walrus-hunting, "Nanook of the North." My education on Arctic peoples comes mainly from 1950s-era National Geographic magazine which, as we all know now, was a very one-sided view of the world.

I plan on reading Watt-Cloutier's book. I will order it from UM Press. I looked through its catalog and was impressed by the scope of its publications. It includes works on an array of topics, focusing on the culture of the upper Midwest. I know as much as that region as I do about the arctic, although I have walked the intriguing streets of Minneapolis and read a number of books from excellent Twin Cities publishers Graywolf, Coffee House, and Milkweed. 

I watched a TED talk by the author. I read one of the author's postings on the UM Press blog and watched one of her TED talks. She made me see the effects of global warming on humans. We hear a lot about the effect of rising sea levels on coastal populations. When it comes to the Circumpolar Region, we hear more about polar bears than we do about the humans who have lived there for centuries. I live in a high dry climate, albeit one that will be affected by shorter winters. This will impact outdoor recreation and hunting and all of those people that depend on those for their livelihoods. But the Inuit need solid ice for their hunts. As the author says, they risk drowning by falling through the ice that once was solid beneath their feet. And efforts of environmental groups have affected their lives in real ways. It's easy for a city boy in Cheyenne to support bans on seal hunting thousands of miles away. If fact, it's easy for this non-hunter city boy to cast aspersions on hunters of the deer and antelope I see as I travel Wyoming. 

In the days of sailing ships, a naval broadside was meant to get the attention of and possibly demolish another ship. A printed broadside is meant to get your attention and educate you in the process.

This one did its work.

The biggest surprise of Trump's presidency? Melania tends Michelle's garden

I strolled around the Clay Paper Scissors Gallery last week admiring the "In The Garden" exhibit. It's all about growing things, one of my favorite subjects. It is spring, after all, but the snow falling outside my window annoys me. April showers bring May and June flowers, so let it snow. I will get around to gardening eventually. The anticipation of planting is almost as good as the real thing. I am a spring and summer guy. The warmth is part of it. But I have come to believe that i revel in this act of creation that begins with warming days.

Is there a gardening gene? My father was a grower. He spent his last years tending the gardens at St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Church in Ormond Beach, Fla., the church where Chris and I were married 36 years ago. His father grew on a farm and tended an impressive garden at his house in Denver's Park Hill. His specialties were roses and tomatoes. If he could have produced a tomato shaped like a rose, he would have been a happy man.

I thought of creation this morning when Venezuelan-born chef  Lorena Garcia was asked what person, living or dead, she would like to share a meal with. Michelle Obama was her answer, a woman who inspired her. I think of Michelle's White House Kitchen Garden. It was meant to be a creative place where Michelle educated children about healthy lifestyles. Veggies and herbs harvested from the garden went to the White House kitchen and local food banks. Grow your own food, eat your own food. The First Lady was a proponent of children's health. She wanted schools to stop serving junk in their cafeterias. She encouraged schools and communities to plant gardens. She wrote a book.

Most of us thought that our junk-food-eating president would rip out Michelle's garden when he took office. We wondered what might go in its place. An oil rig? Golf course? A McDonald's? Surprisingly, the garden remains. First Lady Melania Trump still oversees tending of the garden. School kids come in to help with the harvest. Surprised the hell out of me. It did not surprise me that Melania wore a $1,380 Balmain plaid shirt at a garden harvest last September. I guess you could say she also is growing the market for high-end gardening attire.

But I continue to hope that America's garden will not be destroyed during Trump's presidency. He has, however, done his best to roll back environmental regulations, cannibalize public education, and slash government programs that assist millions. He needs some gardening advice, although I doubt that he will listen.

When you plant a garden, you create new life from the ground up. When you paint a painting, you introduce the world to a new vision, your vision. Creative writing, song composition,  sculpture. All creative enterprises. It takes a long time to become adept in your chosen area. There is little monetary payoff along the way and maybe never. But still you create because that is what you are called upon to do.

In a time when every blessed thing is commodified, I find hope in Melania's garden. Seeds are sprouting today at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps they will take root someday in the Oval Office, the entire West Wing, all over D.C.

This kind of creation keeps hope alive.

And get over to Clay Paper Scissors at 1513 Carey Avenue in downtown Cheyenne and view garden-themed artwork by artists Win Ratz, Lynn Newman, Wendy Bredehoft and many others. There is some neat mixed-media work by Gillette's Heidi Larsen and some unique felted flowers by Cheyenne's Melanie Shovelski. If you're in the market for a garden furniture, check out Gary Havener's native pine and willow benches. For more of Bredehoft's cut-paper-and-wood "Botanics," see her show at Cheyenne Botanic Gardens gallery.

Democrats have to ask themselves: When do we get mean?

Wyoming Sen./Dr. John Barrasso is a hyper-partisan ass-kisser.

We see him looming behind Mitch McConnell every time the Senate Majority Leader utters another ridiculous pronouncement. There's Barrasso, nodding and looking somber. Bobble-head Barrasso. This is the same senator that refuses to have public meetings around his state to explain his behavior. The citizenry has conducted congressional town hall meetings around Wyoming. On the stage are chairs with photos of Barrasso, Cheney, Enzi. That's as close as these public servants will come to a face-to-face with the electorate. Some of their peers in other states have been yelled at for their Triumpist policies. Egos have been bruised. Ask Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado. He's used to fielding softball questions from true believers. Instead he got tough questions. Other people yelled at him for his bad behavior. He retreated back to the safety of the D.C. Beltway.

Wyomingites know how to tell shit from Shinola. You have to be older than me to know that Shinola is a shoe polish popularized by GIs in World War II. Shinola was handy and durable, great for those GI shoes and boots. GIs were adept at coining phrases, especially those that targeted inept officers, the guys sending them out to get killed. Not knowing shit from Shinola was dangerous. Funny, too, a fine play on words.

Wyomingites used to be able to tell shit from Shinola. Not any more. Congressional leaders now blow smoke up our asses and we inhale. That expression comes from cockfighting, where humans used to blow smoke up a rooster's ass to goad him into fighting harder. Cockfighting has fallen out of favor but the phrase remains and comes in handy in the political arena. Trump is a master at blowing smoke up people's asses. It incites his conservative base. Angers his opponents.

What is you can tell shit from Shinola? What if you resent having smoke blown up your ass? You have to find other candidates to vote for.

Try Gary Trauner. I canvassed neighborhoods for Gary when he ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and 2008. Trauner came within 1,000 votes of beating Barbara Cubin the last time she ran. Remember that Cubin's husband was ailing and she spent more time outside the Beltway than within. Even Republicans were irritated at her inattention to her job. Trauner hit the hustings and talked to voters. Lots and lots of voters. Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Contrarians. People of many stripes voted for him. They crossed over the line between D and R and voted D.

Those were the days. Now we have an impenetrable wall between D and R. Just look at the 2016 election. Three of our best public servants were defeated by a wave of voters who came to vote for Trump the Savior and pushed all of the R buttons. I speak of Floyd Esquibel, Ken Esquibel, and Mary Throne. The Red Wave elected the bad ones and carried off the good ones. And we Democrats didn't work hard enough to get out the vote. Shame on us all.

Gary Trauner runs in 2018 to unseat Sen./Dr. Barrasso. Trauner drew about 50 people to his "listening session" in Cheyenne. Attendees asked great questions, the candidate had convincing answers.  He said he was going to talk to all people. His philosophy seemed to mirror the Dems' 2016 plan of "when they go low, we go high." One questioner challenged this philosophy, wondering if there isn't a time to "get mean." Republicans, notably out-of-state PACs, serve as unregulated attack dogs for Republican candidates and those candidates can disavow any connection with them. Meanwhile, voters minds are being swayed by right-wing paranoia. You know, the stuff you hear on Fox and talk radio. In 2016, these are the people who showed up at the polls in droves. Dems eagerly anticipated election night victory parties. As a volunteer offering rides to the polls, I picked up and delivered exactly one voter to a polling place. His vote, whatever it was, was overwhelmed by the Red Tide.

Will there be a blue wave in 2018 that lifts all boats? Gary Trauner will be in one of those boats. I will help him row, or paddle, or steer, or sail, or whatever else you do in a boat in this godforsaken windswept desert. But I am just one person.

My advice to you: help us roll with the tide. This should be the ideal year for The Dem Blue Wave. But you have to show up. Take a look at Trauner's web site. He says that this campaign is "all about leadership and integrity." Let's prove him right.

If you'd like to see my blog posts from Trauner's 2006 and 2008 campaigns, go to the search box on my right sidebar and type in Gary Trauner. There are a bunch of them, and not all are masterpieces. I do like this one. But they do give you some perspective on the temper of the times in 2006-2008. Remember 2008? We elected the country's first African-American president. It was only ten years ago but now it seems as if it happened in an alternate reality.

This isn’t the first time that National Guard units have been sent to the border

1916 cartoon by Clifford K. Berryman, via National Archive Berryman collection. Not sure if the Uncle Sam of 2018 can jump the massive wall that soon will be built at the border. 

Guys in white pajamas shot at my grandfather. That’s the way he told it, anyway. Or maybe it’s just the way I remember his stories. For a few months in 1916-17, Grandpa and his troop of Iowa National Guardsmen faced Pancho Villa’s irregulars across the Rio Grande. He told us that the white-clad Mexican fighters couldn’t shoot straight but Iowans in their spiffy regulation uniforms weren’t much better. They didn’t know it yet, but they were practicing for the big show in France. The U.S. entered the war about a month after Grandpa and his unit returned to Iowa.

Trump isn’t the first commander-in-chief to send National Guard units to the U.S./Mexican border. It’s different this time because Trump is in a snit about not getting enough funding from Congress for his stupid border wall. During the campaign, Trump promised rabid rally crowds that he would build a wall and by gum, he will get his wall, or else your husband or cousin or daughter from the Iowa National Guard will spend the next year trying to snag the caravans of Mexicans that Trump imagines are invading the U.S.

Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa did invade the U.S. in 1916. His seasoned troops invaded Columbus, New Mexico, and killed 18. Villa lost almost 100 men due to the shiny new machine guns employed by U.S. troops. Villa fled back across the border, leaving Americans in a panic. Pershing’s troops, aided by the first airplanes used by the U.S. in combat, pursued Villa through northern Mexico. They killed a few of his lieutenants but never snagged Villa.

Trooper Raymond Arthur Shay, Iowa National Guard, Iowa City. He and his farm-boy cohorts knew how to ride and care for their horses. They spent most of that southwestern winter dismounted, swatting flies, and taking pot shots at insurgents. Prior to this border expedition, the farthest Grandpa had been from home was basic training at Camp Dodge outside Des Moines. He was a farm boy, oldest of nine kids. Now here he was, hunkered down on the banks of The Big Muddy and the big fool told him to push on – or at least to keep firing at the tiny men in pajamas he could barely see. Their horses weren’t much good either, as this guerilla war was unsuited to cavalry charges. Horses did come in handy for the U.S. Army patrols sent into enemy territory to find Villa. As far as I know, Grandpa never made it across the border.

Four years before, General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, commander of this Mexican Punitive Expedition had wrapped up another war like this. In 1911-13, he waged what most considered a successful campaign against the Muslim Moros in the Philippines. In Pershing’s view, the Moros were pajama-clad insurgents worth fighting. But not these poor, undisciplined Mexicans. Pershing grew increasingly frustrated. His hands were tied by Congress. Politicians -- always coming to the border on their junkets. Reporters in tow asking stupid questions. There was no winning under these circumstances. This refrain would be echoed decades later by other U.S. generals in other wars. You know, Vietnam.

At the end of January 1917, Pershing abandoned the border foray. The following winter, Grandpa, now a newly minted second lieutenant, found himself in France eyeballing German trenches across a bombed-out moonscape. World War I trench warfare, with its machine guns and barbed wire, rendered obsolete any “Charge of the Light Brigade” operations. Still, the Iowans had shipped over with their horses as cavalry looked fine on parade days. One spring morning, a resurgent General Pershing staged an inspection and picked the unit’s best mount to ride. It belonged to Lieutenant Shay. That was the high point of the war for him, his favorite story, and ours.

Other stories weren’t quite as romantic. Dismounted, in the trenches, poison gas washing over doughboys as they struggled to don their gas masks. Never enough time. Enough of the gas seeped into Grandpa’s lungs to cause some harm, but not enough to get him sent home before the Armistice.

Grandpa’s gas mask and helmet rest in a box in my basement. Photos, too, of him and his troopers in France. Photos of Grandma – his wife -- and her nursing school graduating class. I think about them and their war when I drive down Cheyenne’s Pershing Avenue, as I do almost every day. Cheyenne, a military town, became the adopted home for the globetrotting General Pershing. He married Helen Frances Warren, the daughter of Wyoming’s first U.S. Senator, and served at Fort D.A. Russell, now F.E. Warren AFB. Their home is now a living museum, preserved for future generations. The base itself is a national historic site, home to war trophies from the Philippines and the old airfield where World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker cracked up his biplane and almost died. It also was the training site for Spaatz’s Flying Circus and the U.S. Army’s airmail service -- Charles Lindbergh was one of its first pilots.

The Pershing family experienced its share of tragedy. If you take a stroll through Cheyenne’s historic Lakeview Cemetery, you will come across a large grave marker for Frances E. Warren and her three daughters, ages 3, 7 and 8. In 1914, Gen. Pershing left his wife and four children at the Presidio in San Francisco to take over command of a brigade at Fort Bliss, Texas. Things were heating up at the border and the general was there to plan for the inevitable. In August of 1915, Pershing received a telegram that his wife and daughters died of smoke inhalation at a Presidio fire. Only his 6-year-old son survived.

Pershing Avenue starts at F.E. Warren AFB and runs straight through town past the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center where the aging Lieutenant Raymond Shay spent some of his last days. The road ends on the east side of town. If you know where to look, you can see Minuteman III missile sites out on the prairie.

     

Combat casualties were minimal in my grandfather’s World War I unit. They were surpassed by deaths from infection and disease, especially from the Spanish flu. Grandpa’s lungs deteriorated from gas attacks. After he returned to the States, he recuperated for months in an Iowa Army hospital. When he took a turn for the worse, the Army transferred him to Army Hospital Number 21 – soon to be renamed Fitzsimons Army Medical Hospital after a hero of the Great War. The dry Denver climate, famous for its healing properties, may have helped his recovery. He really took a turn for the better when he met my grandmother, an Army nurse. He and Florence Green married in 1921, stayed in Denver, raised a family, and lived a good long time.

Now Grandpa and Grandma share a plot at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver.

Wonder what they would make of our boy Trump.

Writing and gardening -- two peas in a pod

One of my former state government colleagues advised me about retirement. He retired years before I did and was confronted with many volunteer offers. His wife, in a stroke of genius, advised him to take out his appointment calendar and write "No" on each page. She wanted him free to travel and spend time together.

I was tickled to see this same person on the list of volunteers for the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. It's a long list -- 88 in all, according to volunteer coordinator Amy Gorbey.  She's the energetic person who keeps tabs on us all. I had taken the couples' advice and held off volunteering for my first two years. For the most part, anyway. I did some volunteering for the Democrats leading up to the 2016 election. We all know how that turned out. I was asked to become part of several boards but declined. I wanted time to write and I that's what I got.

Over time, I feel a need to reconnect with humans. I figured I could have my morning writing time, in solitude, and then spend afternoons greeting visitors and otherwise helping out at the new Cheyenne Botanic Gardens and its new Grand Conservatory.

Thus far at the CBG, I've picked up sticks on the grounds, detritus from spring wind and snow storms. I snacked with some of my fellow volunteers. On Saturday, I staffed the front desk. I greeted many people, most from Cheyenne but others from Colorado and elsewhere. Most walked through the conservatory in less than a half hour and exited. Some lingered. One couple brought in their lunch and ate on the second floor that overlooks the many growing things on the main floor. One young woman carried a book as she disappeared into the gardens. One gentleman had a phone photo of a plant on the third floor and asked me what it was. I sent him and his question over to the horticulturalist. One attendee who exited a baby shower with an armful of gifts, said she was from Torrington and loved the CBG, wished her town has something similar. Not likely, considering the work that went into planning the conservatory and getting the voters to approve a sixth penny amendment to fund it. Cheyenne is the only city of its size to have such an amenity. Some might call it a lifestyle enhancement, as it gets bragged about by the Visit Cheyenne and C of C folks. Voters have approved initiatives for the CBG, a new airport facility, the public library. But they keep rejecting a recreation center. There are as many reasons for these issues as there are voters. Maybe I will explore them in a future column.

The CBG has been treasured by residents since it began its life 40 years ago as a simple greenhouse on U.S. Hwy. 30. Almost every growing thing you see in the city was planted by someone. The only naturally occurring plants belonged to the short-grass prairie. Native Americans and settlers found trees along waterways. In fact, you could I.D. a water source when parched travelers sighted trees off on the horizon. Snow-capped mountains lured people to the West but it was snow melt that brought prosperity. How it was harnessed is one of the West's great stories. Sad ones, too.

I like growing things. Not enough to be a farmer but enough to be a fair-weather gardener. That activity has something in common with writing. You prepare the soil, plant seeds, fertilize and water, and eventually harvest. If you don't like each of these steps, then why bother? I can buy tomatoes at the grocery store and farmer's markets. I can check out books at the library and even buy a few at my local neighborhood bookstore. Why grow my own?

I like the act of writing. It's fun, it's frustrating. After I spent a lifetime writing millions of words, i have finally arrived at a time when I'm pretty good at it. This is the harsh truth of any creative endeavor. There is no quick way to become good at something. This is a definite drawback when it comes to selecting college majors and making a living. But if it gives you meaning, you can't avoid the inevitable. Horticulture majors have a leg up on English majors, unless those well-read folks decide to parlay their knowledge of Emily Dickinson and magical realism into a law school admission.

You can grow a book. You can grow a garden. They both take time and attention, both in short supply in 2018.

Get more info on the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens at https://www.botanic.org/. Tips on writing? So many resources. The act of writing is a prerequisite for the other stuff.

Another generation betrayed by those who should know better

This Saturday, thousands of young people will stage the March for Our Lives anti-gun violence rally in Washington, D.C. Expecting huge crowds, officials have changed the opening day of the annual Cherry Blossom Festival to Sunday, March 25. This also marks the beginning of tourist season for D.C. Spring is gorgeous. The cherry blossoms that surround the tidal basin are spectacular. But this year, the weekend's focus will be on ways that we can stop the slaughter of our children in their schools.

I can only guess at the pain that the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students from Parkland, Fla., feel as they watch their elders dither over gun control. These are the results you get from us – hypocrisy and betrayal. The students’ adversaries are monumental. Its structure will have to be dismantled brick by brick.

I imagine what would have happened if a gunman had entered my Florida school 50 years ago and murdered 17 of my classmates and teachers.

The year, 1968. The school, Father Lopez Catholic High School in Daytona Beach. We 17-year-old juniors have Valentine’s Day on our minds. I hoped I had bought just the right thing for my girlfriend. My girlfriend might have been contemplating the very same thing. Basketball season was winding down and it looked like my Green Wave team was going to win the conference. We had all given up something for Lent. Chocolate. French fries. Cussing. Fear of eternal damnation kept us chaste so there was no reason to give up sex, although we joked about it. Spring break was on the horizon, as was summer, and we were thinking about summer jobs and days on the beach.

We had an open campus. Anyone could walk in and did. Moms delivered forgotten lunches and homework. Visitors dropped by at any time. We would have been sitting ducks for a killer.

It never happened at my school and never has. If 17 of my classmates had been killed, I would have known them all – we had fewer than 400 students in four grades. One of the dead or wounded could have been me. I like to think that I would have been a hero no matter what. I have nothing to base that on because I had never faced a shot fired in anger – and I still haven’t. We would all be devastated. We would be looking for solace and answers.

What would adults have told us? Don’t worry. This is an aberration. The gunman was crazy. It will never happen again.

And we would have believed them.

That was our first mistake. It wouldn’t be our last.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., would be gunned down in Memphis. Our school’s mostly-black neighborhood would not be safe. Riots would erupt on Second Avenue which, during those segregated times, was where the black population lived.  

On June 6, Robert Kennedy would be murdered by an assassin. I idolized the Kennedys. RFK and JFK were imperfect human beings. But I was a teen looking for some heroes.  

Florida native Charles Whitman murdered 16 people, most of them from a perch at the University of Texas tower, in July 1966. Not the first mass murder but the fact that it was a former Marine sniper made news. And he was a very angry white man.

On Valentine’s Day 1968, the Tet Offensive was just winding down in Vietnam. Surely this meant the end of a failed experiment, one that was claiming the lives of my peers and many Vietnamese. The war dragged on for another seven years. Our elders, “the best and the brightest,” insisted it was the right thing to do.

None of the adults gave us the real facts about sex. Parents and nuns and priests decided that fear was enough of a deterrent. They were mostly correct, although at least one of our female classmates missed part of the senior year with an unplanned pregnancy. You would not be surprised that pregnant teens found the same censure at public schools. It just wasn’t done. The boys were never blamed.

We knew betrayal, we didn’t yet have a name for it. Members of our generation possessed a simmering rage. That was a problem, because the Summer of Love and the Age of Aquarius had dawned. Peace, love, and understanding. If that was true, how come people were filled with anger? Blacks vs. Whites. Cops vs. pot smokers. Rednecks vs. hippies. Viet Cong vs. the U.S.A. Irish Catholics vs. Protestants. Jews vs. Arabs and almost everyone else.

Flash forward to the present. Seventeen killed and a dozen wounded at a Florida high school. The only ones making sense are 16- and 17-year-old classmates of the dead at Douglas High School. Adults in positions of power are dangerous fools. They spout nonsense that get their children killed.

Betrayed. It’s déjà vu all over again.

It may have its roots in the betrayal that ignited our generation. That was never resolved, or forgotten, just buried as the years passed. We weren’t the first. It’s possible that adults of every generation betray their children. Over time, we lose touch with our values and our kids pay the price. You can say that every generation needs to experience hardships to find out the true nature of the world. Center for Disease Control figures come up with 1.55 million deaths from firearms in the U.S. from 1968-2016. This includes the span of many generations. Wouldn’t a smart, caring community have come up with some solutions by now?

Good people do bad things. Bad people do bad things. That’s an old story. But why do we make it easier for anyone to buy an AR-15, walk into a school, and shoot down 17 people? Haven’t we learned our lessons by now? Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Las Vegas. The list goes on and on. If we don’t do something about it, we betray our children. If we do something about it, we betray only the NRA and our thick-headed politicians.

The choice should be clear. More betrayal, the generational rite of passage? Or do we do something new and different and constructive?

Which will it be?

"Lincoln in the Bardo" explores the gap between tragedy and comedy

George Saunders' novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" is eerie and hilarious. The novel is written by an experienced short story writer and is structured as a series of scenes set in the cemetery where Abraham Lincoln visits the resting place of his 11-year-old son, Willie. Saunders has constructed an excellent novel from snatches of dialogue from dead people and swatches from books about he Civil War era in Washington, D.C. You can be excused for getting lost amidst the first few pages and wondering where the book was going. I did. But I persevered, as you sometimes have to do with a challenging literary work.

At the core of the story is a man mourning the untimely death of his son. How do you cope with such a loss? You could write a book about Lincoln's monumental depression. We have seen public figures deal with the death of their offspring. Joe Biden publicly mourned the death of his son Beau and Beau was a seasoned adult and war veteran. But mourning a young son or daughter is a special kind of hell, one that doesn't require a belief in the actual Hell of the Bible or religious iconography or even Dante. It's a hell on earth.

First, what is a bardo? From Merriam-Webster Online:

The intermediate or astral state of the soul after death and before rebirth.

As is true with all online research, you can use this dictionary definition as a launching pad into a universe of references. Bardo is a Tibetan term that's found in the Bardo Todol in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Bardo Todol is translated as "Liberation in the Intermediate State Through Hearing."

Here's a quote from a Lion's Roar piece from April 2017:

More generally, the word bardo refers to the gap or space we experience between any two states. The lesser-known bardos described in the traditional texts include the bardo of dreaming, the bardo of meditating, and even the bardo of this life—which is, after all, the intermediate state between birth and death. 

A bardo can even be seen as the pause between one thought and another. I experience bardos on a daily basis but didn't realize it.  Once you know that, the shades that inhabit the cemetery where Willie Lincoln is buried take on a new dimension. They are not ghosts, really, or those dead people with unfinished business who haunt old hotels and abandoned mental asylums. You know, the ones who get the attention of the guys on TV's "Ghost Adventures." These souls in the bardo make up a compelling cast of characters who comment on Willie's funeral and Lincoln's nighttime foray to his son's final resting place. The two main narrators are printer Hans Vollman and Roger Blevins III, an eternally young man with some secrets.

In the reader's guide that follows the novel (Random House trade paperback), Saunders describes the core question in the novel this way: "How do we continue to love in a world in which the objects of our love are so conditional?"

Heartbreak is at the heart off "Lincoln in the Bardo." Lincoln is so heartbroken by Willie's death that he can barely go on, that he forgets he has another young son at home in a sickbed. Some of the most amazing lines in the book happen when each of the spirits admits he/she is dead and transforms into the next life. As they depart, onlookers get a glimpse into their lives before death and the lives they could have led had they lived to a normal life span. I was reminded of the graveyard scenes in "Our Town," when the dead comment on the fragility -- and ignorance -- of the living. Life is a mystery and a tragedy. Heartbreak is our destiny. The ones we love leave us and we are challenged to keep going in this sphere. Lincoln lost a son, lived with an off-kilter wife, and had a war to run. We often hear of "Lincoln the Emancipator" and "Lincoln the Rail-Splitter." The mythic Lincoln. In recent years, we have heard more about the Lincoln with crippling depression. I can hear R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe wailing "Everybody Hurts" as Lincoln makes his way home from the cemetery.

One note about Saunders as short story writer: I hadn't read a Saunders story in awhile. Not sure why. I picked up a 2016 Random House paperback reissue of "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" at my local bookstore. I read the title story and beheld intimations of what would appear in "Bardo." We meet the "ghostly McKinnon family" who occupied the CivilWarLand site back during the Civil War. They met a bad end at the hands of Mr. McKinnon, who was never the same after the Battle of Antietam. The daughter, Maribeth, is "a homely sincere girl who glides around moaning and pining and reading bad poetry chapbooks. Whenever we keep the Park open late for high-school parties, she's in her glory." Maribeth is more real than the narrator's two bratty sons. Saunders makes the real absurd and the absurd real. As Joshua Ferris notes in the intro, it's the latter skill "is a much harder trick to pull off" but it moves Saunders from the pigeonhole of satirist and "into the open air of the first-rate artist."

In "Lincoln in the Bardo," Saunders skill as a writer helps us see that the human tragedy is also the human comedy. Maybe that's a bardo, too, the gap between tragedy and comedy.

What kind of horse gets depicted in public art -- and who decides?

Donal O'Toole wrote a fine piece for Studio Wyoming Review last week. It critiqued the public art on the University of Wyoming campus and found it wanting. Too many bucking broncos. I agree. Enough with the bucking broncos. Cowboys riding horses out of a rodeo chute is just one small aspect of Wyoming life (for a different look at rodeo, check out RoseMarie London's photographs). Almost every community has a rodeo. Fine. What other aspects of the rodeo can be depicted in public art? Rodeo has a history but I see few representations of that. What about the Hispanic roots of rodeo? Where are our vaquero statues? What about Native Americans on horseback? UW has one sculpture of Chief Washakie. What is that tradition? Hispanics and Native Americans have long histories with the horse.

The horse itself has a long history in Wyoming. I was amazed to learn that an ancient genus of horse, now labeled Haringtonhippus francisci, roamed Wyoming for thousands of years, until about 17,000 years ago. Then it disappeared from the fossil records. DNA extracted from bones at Wyoming's Natural Trap Cave have shown that this horse is a separate genus from Equus, the one that includes the horses depicted in UW sculptures. The line that includes the North American horse, also called the New World Stilt-legged horse, apparently diverged from Equus 4-6 million years ago, according to a 2017 article in Science Daily.  Here is an artist's rendering from phys.org:

This illustration depicts a family of stilt-legged horses (Haringtonhippus francisci) in Yukon, Canada, during the last ice age. Credit: Jorge Blanco.

As interesting as it would be to see these horses in the wild, it would still be interesting to see artistic renderings of this Ice Age creature on the UW campus. Our history as a geographic place predates the beginnings of cowboys and rodeos. Millions of years of history is explored in science courses at UW. Let's put some examples on display for all to see. There is a funky T-Rex in front of the UW Geology Building. That's so predictable, isn't it? But why not represent all of the flora and fauna that now exists as dirt and shards and fossils (and coal, oil, and gas) underneath our feet? In this era of Climate Change Deniers, wouldn't it be educational to see what sort of life forms led to the eons-long formation of coal deposits which we have burned for fuel which loaded up the atmosphere with CO2 and caused global warming which will melt the polar ice which will then cause the oceans to reclaim some of its ancient territory which includes Wyoming?

Perhaps that is too educational. Chris Drury's "Carbon Sink" at UW tried to represent this and look what happened to that. You have to believe in the values of education to actually make this work. Our current crop of Know Nothing Republicans in the legislature despise higher education because it offers more expansive views of the world than their narrow minds can cope with. These same people fear non-representational art for its ability to challenge assumptions about time and space and imagination.

A different look at a horse: Deborah Butterfield's "Billings" was part of the "Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational" at UW. From the UW Art Museum blog.

One of my favorite public art installation at UW was the multi-year "Sculpture: A Wyoming Invitational" that began in 2008. UW Art Museum Susan Moldenhauer and staff decided to take art outside during the museum's interior renovation. UW hosted 17 works by 16 artists of international renown. Some were on the UW campus, others scattered around Laramie. I fondly recall walking the campus on a warm summer day to view the artwork and then tooling around town to see the rest. One of my favorites was Patrick Dougherty's "Shortcut," an assemblage of Wyoming sticks and branches that, over the course of several years, was allowed to change with the elements. Students helped the artist, which gave them some real-world experience in alternative sculpture. Then the wind and the rain and the snow took over.

We all learned a valuable lesson about power in Wyoming when energy interests persuaded UW leaders to dismantle and remove "Carbon Sink" on one dark and stormy night. Public art is OK, they seemed to say, as long as it doesn't interfere with the interests of international conglomerates that reap a bountiful harvest from Wyoming. That may be one of the reasons that public art at UW has become so predictable in the Trump era.

The artists continue to make relevant art and the combine, as Chief Broom might say in an inner dialogue, keeps churning along.

My latest art review appeared Friday in Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review. Read "Worth a thousand words: the work of Laramie photographers."

Keep reading -- and keep making art.

Strong mind, strong body -- take your pick

Just added to my reading list: "Blue Dreams: The science and the story of the drugs that changed our minds" by Lauren Slater. I will tackle it once I finish "Lincoln in the Bardo" by George Saunders.

"Blue Dreams" is a non-fiction account of psychiatric drugs and their effects by someone who is both a patient and a psychologist.

"Lincoln in the Bardo" is a novel that explores something that seems a lot like severe depression and PTSD in Abraham Lincoln, who is mourning the death of his 11-year-old son, Willie, in 1862.

Would Lincoln have benefited from a regimen of Prozac or other SSRIs? Perhaps. Maybe he would have recovered from his dark moods more quickly with a couple hits of Molly or LSD.

We'll never know. But psychedlics figure into Slater's book. Party drug MDMA (Molly) has been tested on those with PTSD. It has shown some remarkable and lasting results. As Slater recently described it on NPR's "Fresh Air:" those who take Molly and relive their trauma are able to shift that experience into another section of the brain, possibly the prefrontal cortex, helping remove it from the "fight or flight" amygdala. They can then get a handle on a horrible memory without degenerating into bouts of anxiety or self-harm, even suicide.

Slater wonders if this experimentation may lead to another golden age of drug therapy. The previous golden age brought on by lithium and Prozac may be nearing its end. Slater testifies that medications have helped her stay sane, raise a family and write books. They also have shortened her life.

That's the trade-off. So goes the old witticism: "Sound mind. Sound body. Take your pick." After five stays in psychiatric facilities between the ages of 13 to 24, Slater's doctors discovered Prozac. In a rush of Seratonin-laced good will, she finsihed finished her education, married, had two children and embarked on a writing career.

Then came trouble, in the form of the return of depression  and the start of her use of Zyprexa, which caused her to gain weight and lose her libido.

We patients are guinea pigs. Researcher still don't know the inner workings of these drugs. And their long-term effects. If you are in the midst of a severe depression, you want immediate help. Doesn't happen. Prozac or Zoloft may alleviate the symptoms eventually. Studies have shown that two-thirds  of those with depression would recover just as well with a placebo. That's depressing enough. Add side-effects into the mix and you have to wonder what in the hell we are doing.

I have been taking antidepressants for almost 30 years. I feel better, go off them, and crash. One of my psychiatrists once lectured me: "You have to stay on these the rest of your life. You have depression."

That made an impression. Unfortunately, I don't always listen. I went off my Zoloft six years ago and the walls came crashing down. I was out of work for a month. My psychiatrist at the time, who fled Wyoming for Hawaii one winter and never came back, tried a return to Zoloft and then several other meds. We finally went back to Prozac with a nighttime dose of Remeron. Several months later, I felt better but also was back exercising on a regular basis and eating right, which helped. Also, I was in talk therapy with a therapist and regularly saw my psychiatrist. Still, that summer I was still experiencing bouts of depression interspersed with anxiety. It probably took a good six months for my moods to stabilize.

Six months later, on Jan. 2, 2013, I had a heart attack. I recovered quicker from a "widow maker" than I did from depression. Got more help, too. Add an inept mental health care system to the fact that the docs know so little about the drugs and the human mind. That makes for a killer cocktail of ignorance. At least I have both Medicare and private insurance which enables me to navigate the system without going broke.

But I am not only here to complain. I am here to critique books. "Lincoln in the Bardo" is a wild ride and I'm only on page 98. This is how an award-winning short story writer writes a novel. Truly unique. I am a short story writer working on a novel. I find encouragement in Saunders work.

I have ordered Slater's book. I, too, would like to know what happens with long-term use of these drugs. My life depends on it.

Drama nerds and debaters seize the day after Florida school shooting

It seems that arts education can be a wonderful asset in standing up to bullies.

That was on display last week at the CNN town hall meeting on gun violence. Young people from Margory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., schooled Sen. Marco Rubio and an NRA flack on just about everything. No surprise that the students had honed their skills by participating in the school's drama club and speech and debate programs.

Memorizing lines and defending your views in front of a crowd can give you the confidence to take on a U.S. senator and the NRA. I encourage these students to continue the fight. Their #NeverAgain movement is sponsoring March for Our Lives march on Washington on March 24. Allied marches will be help around the world. Some are being planned for Wyoming. I will keep you posted on these pages. Several high-rolling liberals have donated to the cause. The rest of us can donate by going to https://www.gofundme.com/8psm8-march-for-our-lives . As of noon Sunday, the campaign has raised $2.5 million of the $2.8 million goal.

Further reading on the topic:

Emily Witt wrote this Feb. 19 New Yorker piece on how three drama club nerds sparked the #NeverAgain movement: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-survivors-of-parkland-began-the-never-again-movement

New Yorker article on Feb. 23 about high school protester Cameron Kasky and his "Spring Awakening" at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-spring-awakening-of-the-stoneman-douglas-theatre-kids

The high school's drama club wrote and performed an original song for the CNN-sponsored town hall session Feb. 21. Get more here: http://womenyoushouldknow.net/marjory-stoneman-douglas-powerful-shine-song/

Here are some of the song's lyrics:

But you're not gonna knock us down
We'll get back up again

No more Mr. Nice Guy

Our young people feel betrayed.

Youngsters are getting murdered at a sickening rate. After the Florida high school attack, survivors are angry. They are speaking out, staging sit-ins and planning protest marches. 

Their elders have abandoned them. As one of those elders, I am ashamed of my country. And I see myself as one of the good guys. I've worked for decades to derail the nefarious plans of crackpot right-wingers. I have allies in the fight. Fellow travelers, in the terminology of the Red Scare 1950s. In a small place such as Wyoming, we tend to know one another. Right now, we have our eyes on a state legislature dominated by wingnuts. I would say wingnuts from the hinterlands, but some of the worst ones are from the state's most populated county -- Laramie. My county. 

Sad to say, being a good guy is not enough. 

The children can teach us. Today, 100 teens from Parkland, Fla., got on a bus and took their pleas to their legislators in Tallahassee. We send them our thoughts and prayers. Scratch that. Thoughts and prayers have already been tried. I send my anger with them. They will confront a building filled with earnest faces.  Good guys -- mostly guys. They are involved in their churches, love their wives and children, are kind to animals, and care for the state of the nation.

Sad to say, being a good guy is no excuse.

To paraphrase Jesus: "You will know them by their actions." Matthew 7:20: "...by their fruits you shall recognize them." These legislators, many of them from rural America, are good Christians and read the Bible. Perhaps they neglected this section of Matthew. To use another phrase, "actions speak louder than words." What are their actions? They rail against immigrants. They demonize their LGBTQ neighbors. They cut food and medical benefits for those who need it most. They hatch plans to stop blacks and Hispanics from voting. They cut funds to education. They give carte blanche to gun dealers. 

You know them by their actions. So why do you keep voting for them? I ask these questions of Wyomingites, too. Florida may be in the news but we are seeing some ridiculous behavior in our own reps. In Wyoming, we are looking at a bill to allow conceal and carry in churches. Really? Have these people no sense of right and wrong? Didn't they get their butts paddled if they lied and cheated and bore false witness against their neighbors? Didn't they get Atticus Finch or Andy of Mayberry-style lectures when they broke the rules? They show no evidence of this. Apparently, you can't trust the words of good guys.

Our children and grandchildren now show us the way. I am not going to rain on their parade. Tread carefully, I could say. Be patient. After all, the world won't change with one fit of outrage, one speech, one march. But they will have to discover these hard facts as they work for change. 

As many aging activists will tell you, the struggle for black civil rights took hundreds of years. Women's Movement veterans can tell you the same thing. The struggle for gay rights didn't begin with Stonewall. Environmentalists have been publicly advocating for change since the first Earth Day in 1970.  But those battles have been going on a lot longer as people discovered that their fate is tied to that of the planet. 

This is beginning to sound like a graduation speech. I apologize. Aging good guys see themselves as founts of wisdom even though they may be just tired and afraid. I advise you -- wear sunscreen and don't take any wooden nickels.  

And don't let the good guys get in your way. 

Dear President Trump: Please don't put mental health care on your radar screen

The most distressing news to come out of the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre is that President Trump is now going to pay attention to mental health.

We have seen what happens to issues when Trump starts paying attention to them. His "concern" about our immigration laws have led to families being ripped apart by ICE and the Dreamers dreams to be abandoned.

And then there is the ridiculous border wall.

He and his Congressional cronies addressed the economy by passing the TaxScam bill that turns the economy over to the billionaire class.

Healthcare? He wants drastic cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the country's two largest health care programs.

SNAP or food stamps? Replace the SNAP system with a plan to send food boxes to those on the program. I would say those "poor people" on the program, but I know better. Our family used food stamps on an interim basis when I was underemployed and we had four mouths to feed on a salary for two. My disabled daughter is now in the SNAP program. SNAP feeds people. I hesitate to guess what kind of Republican-approved edibles would show up in a Trump Food Box.

Education? I have one name for you: Betsy DeVos. She is our so-called secretary of education who wants to privatize our prized public school system and to turn college students into paupers. Trump's base hates the educated class because we insist on using facts in our political arguments.

Now mental health. I have written about the mental health system numerous times. I am not a mental health professional. But my daughter has been in the system for 11 years and I can speak with some authority of her experience -- and ours.

My daughter Annie has been diagnosed as bipolar and has borderline personality disorder. Over the years, our family has sought treatment for Annie in many programs in five states. Why so many? First, she was unable to get the care she needed in Wyoming which, to federal granting programs, is considered a pioneer state, as if we were still rolling across the prairie wagons or handcarts. We are fortunate to live in the state's capital city and have used the services of good therapists and psychiatrists, some in private practice and some who work with Peak Wellness. As a minor, we had some say in the places she was sent for treatment, some of those in Colorado and California. When she turned 18, she made some of those choices, not all of them good. Some were excellent, as was New Roads Treatment Center out of Salt Lake City. Her caregivers in 2018 are at Summit Stone in Fort Collins, Colo. Colorado has a leader and mental health advocate in Gov,. John Hickenlooper.

One of the strengths and weaknesses of the United States is that every state sets its own agenda. Colorado has a Democratic governor and mostly progressive legislature. Wyoming has a Republican governor and a Know Nothing Republican legislature. Guess which state takes better care of its mentally ill?

Just take a look at some of the crackpot bills that are on the agenda for this year's Wyoming Legislature.

Please, I beg you President Trump, don't pay attention to mental health care. It has enough problems without you.

Remind your legislators that the arts and humanities make Wyoming great

I won't be attending the Governor's Arts Awards Gala tonight in Cheyenne. Not because I don't think it's important -- it is. I'm taking a year off. As a Wyoming Arts Council staffer, I helped put on the event for 20-some years. Now I'm retired, and filling my time with my own artistic pursuits. 

What is the Governor's Arts Awards? Every summer, the WAC opens nominations for individuals, organizations, patrons, and businesses who have helped make the arts a major player in this state. The WAC board chooses some worthy honorees and those are sent over to the Governor who makes the final decisions. This year's honorees are ART 321/Casper Artists' Guild, Susan Moldenhauer of Laramie, Leslie O'Hashi of Cheyenne, and Dr. Patrick Patton of Casper College. I have worked with them all. A deserving group. They will be feted Feb. 9 and receive a huge framed plaque.

We all talk about downtown redevelopment. The Casper Artists' Guild takes it seriously. The group has been around for decades, much of the time in its old location near downtown. When an old Yellowstone District warehouse came up for sale, the guild's Holly Turner and cohorts raised funds to take over half of the building. It's now Art 321 (for its address) and is a great gallery and workshop space for Casper artists. Stop in the next time you're in Casper. View the art. Check out the gift shop. Have lunch in the funky neighboring bistros, such as Racca's Pizzeria Napoletana. Art 321 is just down the street from the new David Street Station where I took in a few concerts during last summer's eclipse festival. A cosmic event brought people to Casper last summer. The arts made it come alive.

Art organizations and businesses often serve as catalysts for further development. That, alone, does not deserve a Governor's Arts Award. But it does demonstrate the importance of the arts. The arts are a necessity and not a luxury if you want a well-rounded populace. That's the key question: what kind of state do you want? Wyoming features lots of outdoors but, as the saying goes, you can't eat the scenery. But you can eat by painting or writing about or singing songs about the scenery. Our open spaces inspire artists in all fields. That takes the form of a a bronze sculpture of running pronghorn by Guadalupe Barajas or a surreal photo of a windy day on the prairie by Moldenhauer, one of this year's honorees. Tim Sandlin, one of last year's honorees, is inspired by both the landscape and the foibles of the people of Teton County. Dr. Patton and his wife Marcia, the first couple to receive the UW Arts and Sciences Outstanding Alumni Award, bring help students in Casper find their voices. O'Hashi teaches her students how to express themselves through movement.

I could go on and on but I won't. Read about the Arts Council at its web site. Check out past issues of its magazine, Wyoming Artscapes, too. In it, you will find scores of examples of the contributions of artists and arts orgs to this state.

When the legislature convenes next week, remind your rep and senator how important the arts are to your family and your state. They need reminders as they face a budget shortfall and atrocious bills that should never see the light of day. Tell them that all people are important, that they find their value through the arts and humanities.

I will write about the legislature's upcoming sessions. There are sure to be some legislative humdingers; there already are. To check out proposed legislation, go here  

It takes funding to make the arts thrive. It is more important that ever to make our politicians accountable. The past year in this country has been a lesson on getting involved and staying involved in the political process. And what happens when you don't.

The Birth of a Nation Feb. 17 at LCCC in Cheyenne

I first saw "Birth of a Nation" in a college film class 43 years ago. I had some electives to burn in my pursuit of a degree in English. The prof showed us "The Great Train Robbery," the first American Western film in 1903. It may have been based on Butch Cassidy's famous Wyoming train robbery. But did they film it in Wyoming? No -- New Jersey.

In the film class, we moved on to D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" or, as it was originally titled, "The Clansman." You can see the entire film on YouTube. Or you can see it in Cheyenne at 9 a.m.on Saturday, Feb. 17, at LCCC as part of the African-American Black Film Exposition Feb. 14-17. It's a long film -- more than three hours -- but worth the viewing. It's one director's view of race relations. Griffith was a Southerner, steeped in myth and ritual and prejudice. His movie doesn't only reflect his views but those of many Americans at the time -- and now.

1915 is 103 years ago. My grandparents were young adults. My parents were ten years away from birth. It would be 35 years before I arrived on the scene. Racism was a fact of life when I was a kid in the West and South. Racism still is alive and well in the U.S. I wish it weren't so but it is.

"Birth of a Nation" was a big hit at theaters. Promoter for the film was George Bowles, the PR whiz who worked with the Committee on Public Information to make its film, "Pershing's Crusaders." a hit in May 1918.  The CPI was just hitting its stride on disseminating propaganda when the armistice was declared. But it would also be used to stir up the threat against Bolshevism after the war.

A CPI propaganda illustration sent out during the war:. The U.S. was thinking ahead to the fight against Bolsheviks. Note the foreign-looking commie.  

Black History Month takes on special significance in 2018

Black History Month holds special meaning to me this year.

I am reading up on black history during World War I and immediately thereafter. It's mainly research for a novel, but it's also a fascinating time, a tumultuous time. Black soldiers helped win the war.. Black southerners migrated to the north for defense jobs. Ragtime and jazz flowered. Traditionally black colleges and universities were thriving. Returning soldiers were less likely to suffer the prejudicial attitudes of whites, only one reason that the summer after the war is called Bloody 1919 or Red Summer. There was other bad news: the KKK was on the rise from Stone Mountain, Georgia, to the Rockies of Colorado.

As far as the big picture, nationwide prohibition began in 1920 and women got the vote. Blacks faced Jim Crow laws in the South, a big factor in suppressing their vote, a trend that Republicans continue today. .

There was no integrated army in 1917. Black troops volunteered and many were drafted. They served in all-black units, often commanded by white officers. The troops proved their mettle under fire. But, in the beginning, Pershing's generals wanted them to serve only as labor troops. This prejudicial attitude was evident in a memo sent out in 1917 titled "Secret Information Concerning Black Troops," written by Colonel Louis Linard, Pershing's liaison offer to the French ministry. Here's a sample:

"The American attitude upon the Negro question may seem a matter of discussion to many French minds. But we French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call "prejudice." American opinion is unanimous on the "color question" and does not admit of any discussion."

As Andrew Carroll writes in "My Fellow Soldiers," this was "blatantly false; millions of white Americans were sympathetic to the plight of blacks in the United States." But that didn't get in the way of the memo writer. He warned French officers not to treat African-American soldiers "with familiarity and indulgence." The French, it seems, saw African-Americans as Americans and not a separate breed. Back to the memo:

"...the black American is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible. The black is constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and professional conscience, and for his tendency toward undue familiarity."

The odious memo was circulated to the French officer corps. They ordered copies collected and burned. They already had witnessed the bravery of black American troops under fire. In fact, the French had several units of black troops woven into their army. When the beleaguered French asked for help, Pershing assigned black units to the front. He was adamant in keeping white troops under American command. He wasn't so selective with his black troops.

To learn more, read Carroll's excellent book, notably the chapter "Black Jack and the Hellfighters." If you're partial to graphic novels, I recommend the excellent "The Harlem Hellfighters" by Max Brooks with illustrations by Canaan White. Brooks is the author of "World War Z" and "The Zombie Survival Guide." White illustrates the World War II comics series "Uber." The Hellfighters was the name the Germans hung on the 369th Infantry Regiment from New York. According to the book jacket copy:

"They had spent more time in combat than any other American unit, never losing a foot of ground to the enemy, or a man to capture, and winning countless decorations."

Not only that. The unit's ragtime and jazz band, led by James Reece Europe, was borrowed by many white units, and wowed the French with le jazz hot. After facing the usual racism at home, scores of African-American soldiers returned to France to settle and to ignite the Roaring '20s music scene in Paris. .

While we have many examples of books and movies featuring African-American troops in World War II and after (watch the Oscar-nominated "Mudbound" on Netflix), books about black soldiers in World War I are just hitting the shelves. Stay tuned for a six-hour Harlem Hellfighters History Channel series later this year.

Just a few examples of how much we have to learn about U.S. history. Read! The truth is out there!

Learning about Robert Burns and how plans gang aft agley

From the Poetry Foundation essay on Scottish poet Robert Burns:

Burns was identified as odd because he always carried a book. A countrywoman in Dunscore, who had seen Burns riding slowly among the hills reading, once remarked, "That's surely no a good man, for he has aye a book in his hand!" The woman no doubt assumed an oral norm, the medium of traditional culture.

Burns was an oddball for reading books at a time when the oral tradition was alive and well. He served as a bridge to the lake poets of the Romantic tradition, poets such as Wordsworth who "wandered lonely as a cloud" among the British Isles' natural wonders. He wrote his poems in the Scottish dialect which, in the late 18th century, was being supplanted by English. That's how many of us know Burns' poetry, through recitations of the original verse at Burns' suppers or at Celtic festivals. Some oft-used expressions in 2018 can be traced to Burns. Here is a stanza from the original "Address to a Haggis:"

Then, horn for horn, they stretch and strive:
Deil take the hindmost, on they drive
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankkit' hums.

You see terms such as "devil take the hindmost" in modern parlance. And what about this one from "To a Mouse:"

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane, 

In proving foresight may be vain: 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men 

          Gang aft agley, 

An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, 

          For promis’d joy! 

You could say that "the best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry." At least one American author made a career out of that line. You see it applied to everything from politicking to warmaking. Those who want to be cute or Celtic even use the phrase "gang aft agley" to show off their English major roots. Kind of like Burns walking around rural Scotland with book in hand.

I read up on Burns because I volunteered to read "Address to a Haggis" at a Burns supper.  I have a reputation as a good public speaker. I have served as emcee of public events because I speak loudly and enunciate clearly. I read, too, so my name comes up when poetry needs reading or reciting.

Burns wrote poems and songs, a lot of them, in his short 37 years. Politically he was outspoken, which didn't endear him to his English overlords or Scottish royalists. But salt-of-the-earth Scots loved him and still do. Burns suppers started five years after the author's death in 1796. They are alive and well in 2018 Wyoming. The event speaks to that thing that all of us miss in our lives, a sense of tradition, of ritual. The other day my daughter said that she wished she was Native American with all of its traditions. I told her that her own people have traditions. They gave up most of them when they moved to the U.S. due to starvation and political persecution. I challenged her to discover those Irish and Scottish and English traditions. We didn't just accidentally stumble into a wearin' o the green and step-dancing and getting blotto on March 17. 

Travel can broaden your cultural horizons. So can reading, which is less expensive, especially if you believe in that great American tradition of free public libraries. We can credit a robber baron Scotsman named Andrew Carnegie for really getting the library ball rolling. Carnegie background: 

I owe everything to the Irish and Scots who came to the U.S. I owe a lot to those who laid the groundwork for the diaspora but never left, such as Burns. Cheyenne erected a statue to the poet. It's a big statue, located in a pocket park an easy walk from my old Kendrick Building work place. I carried my lunch and a book. I read while eating ham sandwiches and chips. I never read any Burn poetry during these quiet sojourns. I knew nothing about Burns and thought my life would be perfectly fine without Burns poetry. He seemed a quaint figure in literature. Poetry recited by old guys in kilts but not a poet studied seriously in the academy. He belonged to an ancient world that existed before modernism, before global warfare and science and radical politics stuck a knife in the rhymed couplet.

But just for a moment, let's think about the lad who wandered the glens with book in hand. His own Scottish dialect preceded his love of books and that's the path he chose. He was the voice of the Scots at a time when that voice was being stamped out.  He wrote songs. He composed bawdy poems. Regular folks, even that countrywoman in Dunscore, knew his lines by heart. Many still do.
Pause a moment and consider one of Burns most famous lines referenced above:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men 

          Gang aft agley, 

These lines sum up the current political situation in the U.S. I may start using the phrase in daily discourse. Despite owning a golf course in Scotland, I doubt that the president has read any work by the Scottish national poet. We also know that a countrywoman in Turnberry will never spot Trump with a book in hand. He doesn't read. He doesn't know history. Recite Burns' lines to him and watch the blank look on his face. "Gang aft agley" could be his motto. Alas, if only his scheme for taking over the presidency had gone awry. We're stuck with him now.