‘Beyond Heart Mountain’ book and movie are for sale

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Buy Beyond Heart Mountain memoir published by Winter Goose Publishing. It is available as a printed book and ebook. Signed copies can be purchased from the author. The book was released February 27th. That week coincided with the 80th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 that sent 120,000 Japanese to 10 war relocation camps, that included Heart Mountain in northwest Wyoming.

Beyond Heart Mountain book and related are now for sale.

Remember to download the Beyond Heart Mountain promotional information booklet.

Boulder Community Media (BCM) produced a documentary that aired on PBS that aired in December 2021. The Nishigawa Neighborhood is a coffee table book that will soon be released.

During World War II, Cheyenne native Alan O’Hashi’s family avoided life in internment camps such as Heart Mountain.

As a Baby Boomer, Alan documents the overt and quiet racism pervasive in Wyoming and throughout the United States during and following World War II. He relates his experiences to current violence towards Asians and the issue of civility within society.

The backdrop to Alan’s account is the history of the once vibrant Japanese community in the 400 and 500 blocks of West 17th Street in the downtown area of my hometown, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

*****

“My grandmother and grandfather Ohashi and their large family lived in worked in that neighborhood where I spent quite a bit of time between elementary and high school. Having been away from Cheyenne for many years, I stashed those two blocks in the back of my mind until I learned that two classmates of mine were planning to build a housing development at 509 W. 17th St. The biggest obstacle was obtaining permission to tear down an old building. It was the last structure in the Japanese neighborhood. It was the site of a rooming house operated by Mrs. Yoshio Shuto.”

Buy the Beyond Heart Mountain movie

Buy the Beyond Heart Mountain DVD is mainly about the West 17th Street Japanese community history and a general overview of Executive Order 9066 that President Franklin Roosevelt signed that relocated 120,000 Japanese into 10 internment camps, including Heart Mountain in northwest Wyoming.

I interviewed four childhood friends for the documentary. Robert Walters formerly worked at the City Cafe. He still lives in Cheyenne, where he practices law.

Terie Miyamoto and her family-owned Baker’s Bar. It was the only racially-integrated bar in Cheyenne at the time. She now lives in the Denver Metro area.

Brian Matsuyama now lives in Seattle, Washington. He resided in Cheyenne during his childhood. His family owned the California Fish Market. Carol Lou Kishiyama-Hough is in Cheyenne. She and her family purchased the Fish Market from the Matsuyamas.

Buy the Nishigawa Neighborhood coffee table book. It’s a 11 x 8.5-inch hard-cover coffee table book with over 100 color, black and white images of the neighborhood. Signed copies are available from thanks author.

Nishigawa Neighborhood coming soon

Mrs. Shuto’s tenants were mainly Japanese residents who made their way to Cheyenne. She later opened the City Cafe across the street which became a gathering place for the Japanese in town.

My grandmother was a cook at the City Cafe. Next door, my grandfather was the third owner of a pool hall.

Whenever we went out to eat, the restaurant of choice was the City Cafe. It was a gathering place for the Japanese in Cheyenne. My friends enlisted me to do a cultural and historical survey of the Japanese residents who lived and worked there from the 1920s through the 1970s.

Buy a Beyond Heart Mountain cap are also available. They are low-profile baseball-style hats. Select Beyond Heart Mountain from the dropdown menu.

The logo is an adapted version of the Wyoming state flag. One size fits most.

Wonder Woman, Dolly Parton, and Gloria Steinem

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A couple of days ago, I sorted through my last box of autographed baseballs, and I found another artifact I’d forgotten about. Behind the printer and a 1962 “Life” magazine with a Roger Maris – Mickey Mantle Post cereal baseball card insert, I found my first edition of “Ms.” magazine.

The cover with the headline “Wonder Woman for President” threw me back to 1972.

Here’s another case of uncanny timing. The night before, a neighbor asked if I’d set up a projector in my Silver Sage Village community courtyard to screen “9 to 5,” the 1980 comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and the late Dolly Parton.

Three women fed up with a sexist boss turn the tables, take control of the company, and change the workplace. It’s slapstick funny and a pretty good primer on workplace misogyny.

Then I read in my Yahoo! news feed that Gloria Steinem had died at 92.

Steinem and others founded “Ms.” The magazine in my collection seemed a lot more significant than it had the day before. I read the table of contents and flipped through the pages. The country had changed, but much of it hasn’t.

The first regular issue of “Ms.” appeared in July 1972. It began as a preview inserted into “New York” magazine in December 1971. That preview sold 300,000 copies, generating thousands of subscription orders and letters. The response showed that the world had seriously underestimated what women wanted to read about.

The women’s magazines of the day largely revolved around fashion, beauty, marriage, children, and how to keep everybody else happy. “Ms.” treated women as citizens and political actors, not just consumers.

Steinem stood at the center of it.

She wore several hats in the startup. She had to be a businesswoman, a strong writer, a savvy political activist, and one of second-wave feminism’s most recognizable figures.

Steinem believed that the feminist movement needed a national publication where women’s experiences and political ideas could be taken seriously.

She and the magazine editors wanted Wonder Woman on the first cover as a symbol of female strength and independence.

At the time, DC Comics had stripped Wonder Woman of her superpowers and put her into a more conventional secret-agent role. DC restored Wonder Woman’s powers and traditional identity.

“Ms.” chose Wonder Woman to make a point about what happens when a powerful woman is made less powerful.

Inside the first issue, Steinem wrote an article with the provocative title “Women Voters Can’t Be Trusted.” Steinem took on the conventional political wisdom that women were unreliable, politically passive, or voted the way the men in their lives told them to vote.

In the article, Steinem argues that society misunderstood and underestimated women voters. She encourages women to discover their political power.

The political world looked very different in the 1970s when only 15 women served in Congress. No woman had been a major-party presidential or vice-presidential nominee. Democrat Shirley Chisholm changed all that when the Congresswoman became the first African American woman to run for president.

I learned that “Ms.” named Dolly Parton one of its “Women of the Year” in 1987. Steinem praised Parton for infusing feminism into her music and for celebrating women who made their own way. You can hear that spirit in “Just Because I’m a Woman,” “9 to 5,” and “Travelin’ Man,” the theme for “Transamerica.”

Parton gave voice to women’s independence, working lives, and the double standards they faced. Steinem observed that Dolly didn’t give political speeches but walked the talk through her song lyrics.

My copy of “Ms.” had survived, tucked away among baseball memorabilia.

That’s appropriate.

Baseball is all statistics, records, and arguments by armchair coaches about who belongs in the lineup. In 1972, women had no records to compare and had to battle to get through the turnstiles.

Gloria Steinem spent her life arguing that women belonged in the seats and in the field, diving for hard-hit line drives.

Dolly, Gloria, and Wonder Woman for MVP!

Dolly, Brothers and the Search for the Perfect Rib

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Do you like BBQ like Dolly?

I discovered that Dolly Parton and I have one thing in common.

I’ve never considered myself much of a Dolly Parton fan. Nothing against Dolly. She’s had an extraordinary career, but I wouldn’t have expected to find a culinary connection with the Queen of Country Music.

Dolly likes smoked barbecue ribs.

Maybe it comes from her humble Eastern Tennessee roots. I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t pretend that every food preference Dolly has can be traced back to the Smoky Mountains.

BBQ has a place in her empire. Her theme park, Dollywood, serves smoked and barbecue dishes, and her dinner attractions turn a meal into part of the show.

So, Dolly, this one’s for you.

*******

Wet or dry?

I’m beginning a little series on BBQ ribs, because ribs are one of those foods I could eat far more often than is advisable.

Like Dolly, I prefer them smoked, and I prefer dry ribs.

There are two BBQ rib camps.

Wet ribs are finished with barbecue sauce. The sauce can be sweet, tangy, spicy, smoky, or some combination of all four. It gives the ribs a glossy coating and plenty of flavor.

My favorite is yellow sauce that includes mustard. The recipe originated in the Carolinas and the Florida Panhandle.

Dry ribs rely on the rub and the smoke. A mixture of spices, at least salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onion, brown sugar, or other seasonings, is rubbed directly onto the meat before it goes into the smoker. The result is a darker, crustier exterior, with the smoke and seasoning doing most of the talking.

I like that.

If the meat has been smoked properly, why cover it up?

A good dry rib should taste like pork, smoke, and seasoning, and not like whatever happens to be the dominant ingredient in a bottle of barbecue sauce.

*******

Brothers from England, BBQ in Denver

Today’s ribs came from Brothers BBQ in Broomfield.

I had been fasting, and after leaving the doctor’s office, I didn’t have to travel far to find an early dinner. About two miles later, I sat down with a plate of ribs.

Brothers BBQ has an interesting history. I came across their first store at Monaco Parkway and Leetsdale Drive and struck up a conversation with them in 1998.

Chris and Nick O’Sullivan hailed from England but were raised in Denver. While traveling around the country, they stopped at barbecue joints everywhere they went, sampling regional traditions from Kansas City and Memphis to Texas and South Carolina.

Their style is essentially Colorado BBQ, a little bit of everywhere. That fits Denver, where people have arrived from just about everywhere else.

*******

The usual

I’m not much of an adventurous eater.

When I find something I like, I tend to stick with it. There is no need to scan the menu and take a chance.

I ordered the rib special. Compared to other BBQ joints, Brothers serves huge Daddy Back ribs, rather than smaller Baby Back Ribs.

For sides, I went with baked beans and coleslaw. Instead of sweet tea, I bought a Voodoo IPA brewed by New Belgium up the road in Fort Collins.

The ribs arrived looking like ribs ought to look: smoked, seasoned, and ready to be attacked with my hands. I go through a lot of napkins.

This is one of barbecue’s great advantages. It doesn’t require much ceremony.

Pick up rib.

Eat rib.

Repeat.

*******

The $23 special

There was a time when ribs were associated with inexpensive food, the kind of thing working people could cook slowly and feed a family without spending a fortune.

That isn’t the case anymore.

My rib special, a beer, sides, and tip came to about $23.

That’s not unusual for BBQ these days. The once simple pork rib has joined the ranks of foods that can make a respectable dent in the wallet.

I suppose that’s what happens when something once considered ordinary becomes an American culinary art form.

People now debate barbecue the way wine people debate grapes.

Texas or Kansas City?

Memphis or Carolina?

Wet or dry?

Hickory or oak smoke?

The server brought over a condiment rack with three kinds of sauce on the side.

*******

Smoke beats my backyard grill.

I try my hand at grilling ribs from time to time.

Every once in a while I’ll buy a rack and throw it on the grill. I get reasonably good results, but the flame burns off most of my rub. My version is edible, and it makes me appreciate restaurants that know what they’re doing.

I haven’t managed to duplicate the flavor of properly smoked ribs. My upstairs neighbor is from Florida and has a smoker. I should collaborate more with him.

Time is an ingredient, too.

You can’t hurry good BBQ. The meat has to sit there and absorb the smoke while connective tissue slowly breaks down and the exterior develops that beautiful crust.

That’s the magic of barbecue.

Fire does the cooking.

Time does the work.

Smoke and rub supply the personality.

Dolly and me

Now, every time I eat ribs, I’ll think about Dolly Parton, except when I hear “Jolene.”

I may not have listened to enough Dolly Parton songs over the years, but we agree that ribs should be smoked.

BBQ doesn’t care about your roots.

Dolly came from the hills of East Tennessee.

The O’Sullivan brothers came from England and traveled America looking for BBQ.

I came from Wyoming and eat ribs wherever I happen to be.

Different roads. Same destination.

Put a rack of ribs in the smoker and don’t mess with it too much.

Dolly, I’m with you on this one.

MapQuest vs. Google Maps: A Personal Journey Through Navigation

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I remember when navigation meant opening a paper map and hoping I could refold the creases in the right order so the rectangular map would fit back in the glove box.

I used to keep road maps in the car. Rand McNally kept me company. AAA travel agents walked me through the maps and helped plan my route.

On family vacations, my dad stopped along the way, unfolded the map across the hood, and tried to figure out where we were.

In the 1960s, cities expanded, roads changed, and maps quickly fell out of date. Countries change names. Borders move. Entire countries disappear.

Columbus dealt with a similar problem, although his maps had considerably more blank space than mine. On his first voyage in 1492, he charted islands and coastlines in the Caribbean, adding information to the European maps. Early explorers thought they had reached Asia.

Maps have always been snapshots of what somebody thought the world looked like at a particular moment.

Africa provides plenty of examples. The Gold Coast became Ghana. Northern Rhodesia became Zambia. Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. The Belgian Congo became Zaire, then the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those changes reflected independence, revolution, political change, and the rejection of colonial names.

Then the Soviet Union became the mother of all map revisions. If you owned a map of the USSR in 1990, you had a collectible.

In 1991, the Soviet Union disappeared, and 15 independent countries emerged from its former republics. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, the Central Asian republics, and others became countries rather than chunks of a giant red blob.

Imagine being the guy at the map company who got that phone call.

“Hey, Bob. You know that giant country we’ve been printing for 40 years?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it isn’t there anymore.”

“Great. I’ll call the printer and see if we can cancel that last order.”

The world’s constant change is one reason digital maps make so much sense. Digital maps can be updated overnight.

Then MapQuest came along.

MapQuest moved the old business of producing maps and driving directions online. In 1996, it launched its web mapping service and became a pioneer of online interactive maps and driving directions. I could access MapQuest on my Palm Treo. I had to write down the driving directions, though.

In the early 2000s, MapQuest gave up its top spot to predatory Google Maps and Apple Maps. Between the two of them, they turned everybody’s phone into a dashboard navigator.

I used them both until today, when I went back to MapQuest.

There’s a reason.

In January 2025, the federal government renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. The Interior Department updated the federal Geographic Names Information System and directed federal agencies to use the new name. The United States couldn’t make the rest of the world change its maps.

Then in 2026, the government changed Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America.

Google Maps and Apple Maps changed their digital maps. U.S. users see Gulf of America, while users in Mexico and Canada see Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, respectively.

That’s when I decided I’d had enough and switched over to MapQuest. I’m a simple fellow and don’t like change.

It turns out MapQuest didn’t go along with the Lake America or Gulf of America renames. The OG digital map appealed to me again.

I like the idea that my navigation app won’t make me relearn geography.

At least for now.

This creates a new problem if MapQuest changes its mind.

My solution?

I keep an out-of-date hard-copy Rand McNally road atlas in the pocket behind the driver’s seat, where nobody can update it while I’m driving.

While driving through the middle of nowhere, I had no cell service in eastern Colorado. The apps didn’t work. I pulled into a truck stop.

No maps.

Walmart had one.

If everything else fails, I’ll pull over, get out the atlas, stare at it for five minutes, and pretend I know where I am.

I get curious when I research my stories.

Rand McNally began in Chicago when printer William H. Rand hired Irish immigrant Andrew McNally in 1858. The company began as a traditional printing company.

In 1924, Rand McNally published the “Auto Chum,” which evolved into the road atlas that became essential reading for generations of American motorists.