Stupid words.

For years, decades, I earned my daily bread in the advertising trade, working in advertising agencies. My job was on the creative side, developing strategies that would most effectively lure customers, then turning them into ads in whatever media was required. The goal was always to use ideas and words and pictures and music to arouse interest and keep viewers or readers or listeners watching or reading or listening long enough to absorb whatever message we wished to convey. We always believed the audience deserved some level of respect in exchange for our intrusion into their lives.

But most people in the advertising business, like most people in most businesses, do not care all that much. They don't care if the advertising is creative or entertaining or inventive or unexpected. They are just putting in the time, putting their emphasis on looking and sounding good in the endless supply of meetings, both within the agency and with clients. They do not want to rock the boat; “give the clients what they want,” is the force that motivates them.

And that is why most advertising falls somewhere between invisible and inane.

That is why some guy in a tie somewhere decided that holding a “sale” is no longer good enough. That the public is no longer interested in discounted prices. That calling a sale a “sales event” would excite the audience (for whom they have little respect) into showing up in frenzied droves and parting with their money. After all, isn’t the very idea of an “event” exciting? Wouldn’t it deserve three—no, four—exclamation points in social media?

While this earth-shattering development has little effect on audiences, it somehow resonates with advertisers. So it’s, so long to a “sale,” and hello to a “sales event.” Car companies, in particular, have made adding “event” to a “sale” mandatory, it seems. And “sales event” has disseminated, propagated, and circulated until it is ubiquitous.

Most people probably don’t even notice it, just as they don’t notice most of the dumbed-down, simple-minded advertising messages that interrupt every aspect of their lives. But no one, I daresay, is so excited, so electrified, so hypnotized by a “sales event” as opposed to a mere “sale” that they rush right out and gleefully part with their money.

I could be wrong. I haven’t been in a client meeting in years. But one thing’s for sure—somebody is stupid when it comes to “sales events.” It could be me.

Utah cowboys at the National Finals Rodeo

Ten of the best days of the year ended Saturday night with the completion of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s National Finals Rodeo. Rodeo fans know that cowboys from across America and Canada, with a few thrown in from Australia and Brazil, compete all year long to win enough prize money to rank among the top 15 cowboys in their events and qualify for the National Finals.

It’s a grueling test—ten straight days of matching yourself against the best bucking horses and bulls, and select calves and steers in the timed events.

Utah cowboys cleaned house this year, sweeping up all the honors in the roughstock events.

Josh Frost of Randlett won the bull riding, winning two go-rounds and placing in five others, sewing up his place as the World Champion Bull Rider. Hayes Weight, from my hometown of Goshen, finished up second in the world standings, winning two go-rounds. Just behind him in third place in the world is Cooper James of Erda, with two go-round wins and placing in three other rounds. Tyler Bingham of Howell won a go-round and placed in two others, and finished in the world rankings at number eight.

Dean Thompson of Altamont won two go-rounds in the bareback riding and placed in six more and came home the World Champion Bareback Bronc Rider.

In the saddle bronc riding, Ryder Wright of Beaver won four go-rounds and placed in five more to become the World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider—for the third time. His younger brother Statler won a go-round and placed in four more, and finished the year in eighth place in the standings.

A Utah cowboy made some noise in the timed events as well. Cash Robb of Altamont won the steer wrestling at the Finals, winning money in six go-rounds and placing third in the world standings.

The State of Utah should be pleased with this unprecedented performance by our cowboys. I know I am.

 

Interview in Route 7 Review.

Utah Tech University in St. George publishes Route 7 Review, a digital literary arts journal. The name comes from a short highway through red rock and sand deep in southwestern Utah. A while back, while in the neighborhood for a “Poet on the Patio” reading at the city’s fine bookstore, the Book Bungalow, Utah Tech professor Stephen Armstrong and I talked about cowboy poetry.

Dr. Armstrong managed to wrangle my wandering words into some semblance of sense and the interview is included in the latest is issue of Route 7 Review, under a title honoring my hometown: The Man from Goshen. The links will take you there.

It was a sad day for Western writers everywhere when Five Star Publishing, where several of my novels had found a home in hardcover editions, closed down. However, another publisher in the same conglomerate, Thorndike Press, which had released those same novels in large print editions, invited a few of Five Star’s Western authors to submit manuscripts for publication as large-print originals.

There are two new novels of mine out in large print as of now, and a third will be along soon. It’s a trilogy, a series, with the overall title borrowed from this quotation by Ernest Hemingway: “There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” The line seemed appropriate for a bounty hunter, and so the series.

The star of the trilogy is Matt Crowder, formerly a deputy United States Marshal and now an independent hunter of men. Hanging Man: The Hunting of Man Book 1 is now available. Crowder encounters a man hanging from a tree with no identification and few clues concerning his identity or his fate. He spends the next 339 pages figuring it out, encountering all kinds of complications and adventures along the way.  

Also available is Running Man: The Hunting of Man Book 2, in which Crowder pursues an escaped convict whose goal is to put as much distance between his escape and pursuit as he can, as fast as he can. Again, our bounty hunter is relentless, and during the chase uncovers government corruption.

Hiding Man: The Hunting of Man Book 3 will be along soon. All are (or will be) available on Amazon and the usual online retailers. Since these are large-print editions they are a bit pricey, but may well be available on the shelves at your local library. So, check out “The Hunting of Man” series—both figuratively and literally.

In the news.

A while back I was invited to write for Cowboy State Daily. It’s an online newspaper published in, as you may well guess, Wyoming.

My friend and longtime acquaintance Candy Moulton created a section for the publication called The American West. Several writers and historians including Candy, Jim Crutchfield, Terry Del Bene, and others contribute stories focused on some aspect of Western history. The stories are bite-size and readable in minutes, but provide much knowledge and enjoyment.

Of course there’s more to Cowboy State Daily than The American West, including news and opinion pieces. There’s even a column written by a man named Rod Miller, who is not me. So, to avoid confusion, my byline in the paper is R.B. Miller.

Give Cowboy State Daily a look. You’ll find The American West is waiting for you.

 

An Utter Tragedy.

We will soon be off on a trip along the Oregon Trail through southern Idaho and into western Oregon and Washington. There’s a lot of history along this nineteenth-century superhighway.

Stretched across more than a hundred miles of the road is the history of one of the saddest tales on the emigrant trails—a series of events known by various names, but most often as the Utter-Van Ornum Massacre. As with much of history, there is a lot of confusion surrounding what happened. But here’s the gist of it.

Shoshone Indians attacked an emigrant company of some 44 travelers somewhere west of the present location of Mountain Home, Idaho, and somewhere south of present-day Boise. Several pioneers were killed and after more fighting and needing water, four of the eight wagons were abandoned. The emigrants lost other people in attacks over the next few days as they traveled until the Shoshone departed. With little to eat, the travelers left the remaining wagons and walked to the Owhyhee River, near the deserted Fort Boise. Indians there traded salmon for the remainder of the emigrants’ belongings and guns, then severe hunger set in.

The senior Van Ornum, along with a few surviving members of the Utter family, left the hunger camp and moved on. The move did not save them, but it may have kept them—at least the children—from being eaten. Four dead children were consumed in the camp and there was talk of killing another for food. Instead, the body of a man dead ten days was exhumed, but before he was eaten help arrived and 12 survivors were rescued.

Meanwhile, Indians had attacked and killed the Van Ornum party, except for three girls and a boy who were taken captive. It’s fairly certain the girls were soon killed, and perhaps the boy—but his fate remains a mystery. There were claims and stories of a white boy living with Indians at various places.

Responding to one such story, the boy’s uncle came from Oregon and convinced army troops from Camp Douglas in Utah to rescue the boy from a Shoshone band in Cache Valley. After some shooting, some negotiating, and some double dealing, the boy was taken. Although he had light hair and eyes, his identity was and is suspect. He was about the right age to be the Van Ornum boy, but spoke no English and was Shoshone in all his ways, and fought his “rescuers” to no avail. The Shoshone said he was the son of a French mountain man and a sister of Chief Washakie. A photo memorializes the capture, with the boy in the bottom row, flanked by the army officer who led the expedition and his uncle.

The uncle took him to Oregon, and to California soon after. Then history loses track of the boy, and his fate is unknown.

 

Poet on the Patio.

During rodeo weekend in St. George, Utah, The Book Bungalow will host yours truly as “Poet on the Patio” Saturday, September 14 at 10:00 a.m. Rodeo has been the inspiration for a good many of my poems, ranging from humor to thoughtful to ponderings on how the sport challenges home and married life.

My long-ago rodeo travels did not take me to St. George for the PRCA rodeo—an event that’s still going strong and will be held that weekend. But I did compete in the Dixie College rodeo there a few times as a member of Utah State University Intercollegiate Rodeo Team, and in 1973 won the bareback riding there. I still wear the trophy buckle on occasion, although my belt back then wasn’t as long as it is nowadays. 

If you are anywhere near the bottom corner of Utah that weekend, please drop by the patio out back of The Book Bungalow, located at 94 West Tabernacle Street in St. George, Saturday, September 14 at 10:00 a.m. Bring your friends. Bring your neighbors. Bring a smile (if you don’t bring one, come anyway—we’ll try to send you home with one).