Boulder Community Media (BCM) publishes books

Views from Atop My Bedpan — Views from Atop My Bedpan is a memoir about the author’s experiences with the American healthcare industrial complex spanning seven decades.

There’s a paradox. Public and private healthcare providers are dedicated to keeping people alive and free of disease, but, at the same time, they must financially profit to maintain themselves.

Meanwhile, the industry keeps its heart thumping and pumping based on continually expanding the number of patients who consume the latest pharmaceuticals, visit doctors, and are diagnosed by the newest machines. It’s better that people stay a little sick rather than be cured from a profit-and-loss standpoint.

At last check, according to the Social Security Administration actuary chart, the author has 10.4 years to go. He conjectures his death at 79. He’s had a flirt with death every 20 years or so, most recently, surviving an exotic lung disease in 2013. His next meet-up with the Grim Reaper will likely be the last. We all have unique experiences as we move through life. Being at the top of my game has been hard work. I prefer to have positive influences on others I meet.

Beyond Heart Mountain — Beyond Heart Mountain released by Winter Goose Publishing is a memoir of author Alan O’Hashi. The book premise, what if everyone intentionally became acquainted with people different from themselves?

The memoir is based on Alan’s Beyond Heart Mountain documentary that aired on PBS and available as a DVD.

He recounts his childhood growing up in Cheyenne, Wyoming and the subtle and overt racism that arose during World War II. The story backdrop is the once vibrant Japanese neighborhood in the 400 and 500 blocks of West 17th Street, reduced to parking lots.

Following the signing of Executive Order 9066, his family was spared life in one of 10 war relocation centers. Heart Mountain was a camp located in northwest Wyoming where some of the 120,000 Japanese people, mostly on the West Coast were isolated. The War Relocation Authority deemed Japanese residing in the interior, like the Rocky Mountain West as being low security threats and interned in place.

On the Trail: Electric Vehicle Anxiety and Advice — Author Alan O’Hashi scheduled a book tour after Beyond Heart Mountain was published. He drove 2,600 miles on the sparse and open roads of Wyoming between May and July 2022 in his Nissan Leaf SL Plus electric vehicle.

Alan had a rude awakening when it came to recharging his EV in a state with very few charging stations. He kept a detailed real-time travelogue about his travels interspersed with his past experiences driving around Wyoming.

If the 2030 goal is to increase the number of EVs on the road by 30 percent the has to be an equally aggressive effort to design EVs at several price points so they are affordable to all, not just wealthy drivers. Along with affordable inventory, charging stations must be as convenient as gas stations.

True Stories of an Aging Do-Gooder — Author Alan O’Hashi has lived a life of divergent experiences living with other people. He had a large extended family in Wyoming. Upon graduating from high school, he went off to Hastings College where he lived in the Altman Hall dorm. His first home ownership situation was purchased a house along with two other men – “The Golden Guys” in Gillette, Wyoming. When he moved to Lander, Wyoming, his first apartment was above the Ace Hardware store on Main Street. He became a proponent for mixed use development after that.

Those living arrangements converged when he joined the Silver Sage Village (SSV) senior cohousing community in Boulder, Colorado.

His story about how to play well with others is a somewhat organized stream of consciousness.

This book provides “nuts-and-bolts” methods about how your community can use cultural competence techniques that better encourage members to understand one another.

After arguing about whether pets are allowed in the Common House, what if cohousers organized themselves and decided to collectively undertake a mission to save the world?

True Stories explores why I believe cohousing can evolve from a “social movement” into being a “social norm.”

The stories are about relations between and among individual people and the personal changes necessary to find commonality with strangers, all with different experiences and lifestyles.

True Stories of a Mediocre Writer — All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” is what Ernest Hemingway says about the essence of good storytelling.

Author Alan O’Hashi wrote this book that is part memoir and part a self-help book about writing. He pitched Beyond Heart Mountain on a typed up sheet of paper to Winter Goose Publishing. After a 15 minute meeting, the publisher asked him to send a full manuscript. Four months later, he had his first book deal. This book recounts his experiences about how he learned to write with confidence and imperfection.

The book is for anyone who is a writer of organized words whether they are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, work memos, grant applications, academic papers, or love letters.

True Stories of a Mediocre Writer

Read this book if you’re a professional writer, a novelist just starting out, or a screenwriter with a half-done script lost deep in the bowels of a computer hard drive.

Are you a writer who wonders how to get over self-doubt, kick your obsession with perfection, and for whatever reasons, can’t quite finish your writing project?

This book will provide insight, and a few tips through the experiences of the author about becoming more confident in your ability balancing perfection and accuracy that results in a higher likelihood of finishing your work.

Nishigawa Neighborhood picture book

Nishigawa Neighborhood –– happened to the Japanese residents and businesses on West 17th Street in downtown Cheyenne, Wyoming?

Nishigawa Neighborhood is a picture book not just about the demise of the once vibrant Japanese community in a small town in Wyoming that thrived from the 1920s through the 1960s, but about civility and lessons learned from racism and xenophobia symbolically through the revitalization of a neighborhood.

The story is a historical memoir told through the eyes of the author, a Sansei generation Baby Boomer Cheyenne native, Alan O’Hashi.