Obama advocates for community colleges

Look, private colleges are O.K. I hear they have some good ones in places like Cambridge and Palo Alto and Oberlin. But, as a graduate of one community college and two land-grant universities, I'm a firm believer in public-funded higher learning.

Yesterday, Pres. Obama unveiled the American Graduation Initiative, a 10-year, $12 billion plan to invest in community colleges.

During his announcement at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Obama noted that the economic recession and a changing U.S. economy have reduced the number of automotive industry jobs, a mainstay in Michigan.

The "hard truth is that some of the jobs that have been lost in the auto industry and elsewhere won't be coming back. They are casualties of a changing economy," Obama said, adding that "even before this recession hit, we were faced with an economy that was simply not creating or sustaining enough new, well-paying jobs."

Obama called the investment in community colleges crucial because "jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience" in coming years.

I enjoyed my classes at Daytona Beach Junior College (then D.B. Community College and now Daytona State College) more than I did the first two years at Enormous State University in a C.S.A. state. At 22, I was older by a few years, time tested and weathered after a sojourns as a college ROTC dropout wandering the U.S. That may have helped. Time to knuckle down and take enough courses to graduate and head off to another Enormous State University. I rode my bike or hitched a ride to class, and spent off hours at the library or canoodling with my girlfriend who lived a few blocks away.

At 3, I clocked into my job at Halifax Hospital where I spent the next eight hours riding herd on alkies and druggies dredged off Daytona's streets and thrown into the place officially labeled 1100 but we called it the drunk tank. Usually there were two orderlies working behind the ward's locked doors. Sometimes it was just me. I was a big dude, and I held the keys to the kingdom, so they didn't mess with me. We all played cards and told stories, some of which were true. Every so often a patient would go into D.T.'s or devolve into a seizure. I was ready for either. Every so often a call came over the loudspeakers for "Dr. Blue." That meant that all the ordleries were needed at 1400 -- the psych ward. Some very large loonie the size of Chief Broom was going haywire, knocking down doctors and nurses like a scythe through Kansas wheat. I was lucky -- I never got my teeth knocked out during those calls. Usually it took three or four of us to subdue the subject. A few scrapes, a few stories for later regaling at Big Daddy's Bar.

Education comes in many forms. I graduated in May 1974 with a group of auto mechanics and nurses and dental hygienists and pre-law candidates and a few other misguided English majors. I quit my job that August, saying my farewells to the patients (I knew them all by then) and the ghosts and some of my compatriots who were still working on their educations. I headed 100 miles up the road to Gainesville and the next phase of my public education, paid for with loans and work-study jobs. I graduated from UF in 1976 and kept moving on, eventually landing in Denver in 1978 for the adult phase of my education.

The education never ended. Nor will it. I've taught at several community colleges. I like the range of students -- 18 to 78. Some who are just taking composition 101 for the credit and don't give a hoot about the minimalism of Carver and the maximalism of Henry James. Others are like the Vietnam vet whose daughter urged him to finish his associate's degree at the same time she earned hers. Or the grandmother who travelled 140 miles round trip from Kimball, Nebraska, to Cheyenne to take my creative writing class. She had stories to tell. Or the Air Police zoomie who loved to write -- and told me the stories of the ghosts swirling around Warren AFB. Or the recent divorcee who kept journals for the 20 years of her marriage but ripped them up in a burst of anger. And now she wanted to resurrect those shredded memories.

It's not too outlandish to say that there's a direct line from my time at community colleges to my work last year to elect Obama. Sure, Harvard is great. But real democracy is born in the crowded halls and classrooms of your local community college.

Take time to check out the American Graduation Initiative at http://tinyurl.com/m4u746.

Steve Earle drops into Sheridan Aug. 8

Musician and songwriter Steve Earle will perform in concert at the WYO Theater in Sheridan on Saturday, Aug. 8, 8 p.m. Tickets are $29 adult and $27 senior, military and students.

Here's the announcement from the WYO Theater web site:

The WYO is proud to present a special solo acoustic concert of Steve Earle, touring in support of his new album Townes, a 15-song set comprised of songs written by Earle's friend and mentor, the late singer-songwriter, Townes Van Zandt (Pancho and Lefty and White Freightliner Blues, to name just two). Townes debuted May 28 at number 19 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, the highest debut in Earle's career, and at number 6 on the Billboard Country Chart.

Earle is a master storyteller in his own right, with songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Travis Tritt, The Pretenders, Joan Baez and countless others. His 1986 debut record, Guitar Town, shot to number one on the country charts immediately establishing the term "new country" or sometimes "alt-country," followed by an exciting array of twelve releases including the biting hard rock of Copperhead Road (1988), the politically-charged Jerusalem (2002) and, more recently, the Grammy-winning albums The Revolution Starts...Now (2004) and Washington Square Serenade (2007).

FMI: http://www.steveearle.com/. Listen to Steve Earle's acoustic version of Pancho and Lefty at http://www.myspace.com/steveearlemusic

Homelessness increases in rural West

A July 13 post by the always-alert jhwygirl at 4&20 blackbirds alerted hummingbirdminds to an alarming trend, one that may have a huge impact on those who dwell (or try to) in these wide open spaces.

In the July 12 Washington Post, Alexi Mostrous writes about the increase in U.S. homelessness, especially in rural and suburban areas.

Louis Gill doesn't like to turn anyone away. The director of the Bakersfield Homeless Center in California has taken to laying out cots and mattresses between the shelter's 174 registered beds to cope with the rush of homeless families brought to his doors by the financial crisis.

"Last year, we saw a 34 percent increase in homeless families and a 24 percent increase in homeless children," he said. "Why do we go beyond capacity? Because in a just society, a child should not have to sleep outside or in a car."

Gill is a frontline witness to the change in the makeup of the country's homeless. The stereotype of a homeless person as a single man no longer applies. A resident of the Bakersfield center is far more likely to be a young mother with a "good, solid job and a mortgage that she just couldn't pay."

"They're like folks you know and that you've worked with," Gill said. "Maybe the work's not there right now. Maybe they got behind on their payments. But the idea of a typical homeless person has changed. We're seeing individuals come in that have never had to access the safety net before."

A study by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) measured changes in the number of homeless between 2007 and 2008, before the height of the economic crisis, and Director Shaun Donovan acknowledged that the data do not reflect "the great many more families who were living on the edge, doubling up with friends and family members, and struggling to stay out of the shelters and off the streets."

Some case studies collected by the department's Homelessness Pulse Project suggest that rural and suburban areas were particularly ill-equipped to cope with the new wave of homeless. And many of the states that experienced the largest increases in homelessness are predominately rural.

In Mississippi, the number of homeless increased 42 percent last year; in Wyoming, 40 percent; in Montana and Missouri, 23 percent; and in Iowa, 22 percent.

It's good to know that Wyoming is right up there (or right down there) with Mississippi when it comes to homelessness. But these statistics are now a year old. What's happened around the rural West in the past year, when the walls really came crashing down?

The Welcome Mat Day Center in Cheyenne is the only one of its kind in the Capital City. Comea House at 1504 Stinson Ave. provides overnight shelter. Welcome Mat provides a variety of on-site services at its 907 Logan Avenue facility. The Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless publishes a newsletter, Wyoming Winds. Its web site has a list of homeless resources in Wyoming. Go to http://www.wch.vcn.com/wchsvcs.htm

What's my homeless risk? I have a good job and a house we call home. My wife works and likes what she does. Our teen is working this summer and so is our home-from-college son. If those jobs disappeared tomorrow, how long would it take for us to be homeless? My job includes the health ionsurance that covers us all. No job and no health insurance spells doom, especially when Chris has a pre-existing condition known as diabetes.

We're a resourceful family, but one that spends most of its income on mortgage, cars, groceries and ongoing bills. We were frugal during those boom times when our fellow Americans were spending freely on vacations and boats and eating out at Olive Garden. Retirement is compiling daily, but savings are not.

How close are we to homelessness? What about you?

Wyoming Cold War residue could harm "our precious bodily fluids"

In "Dr. Strangelove," when Col. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) starts talking about commies poisoning "our precious bodily fluids," Group Captain Mandrake (Peter Sellers) realizes his commander is nuts. So nuts, in fact, that Ripper has launched World War III.

Col. Ripper says this: "Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face? On no account will a Commie ever drink water, and not without good reason."

Baby Boomers probably remember that the John Birch Society made hay with the conspiracy theory that commies somehow arranged to fluoridate our water to neuter God-fearing Americans in time of war, cold or hot.

But the Birchers should have been more concerned with the trichloroethylene (TCE) used to clean our own nukes, here in Wyoming and elsewhere. TCE has been poisoning our precious bodily fluids for 50 years, rendering us useless against attacks by commies, Saddam Hussein's WMDs, swine flu, feminists, wayward Yellowstone wolves, atheists and any other menace (real or imagined) wingnuts can devise.

A plume of TCE, maybe one of the largest in the country, is moving toward Cheyenne. One of these days, it may lurk right under our house near Yellowstone Blvd.

Actually, we already have contamination in our neighborhood from Cold War chemicals used on Wyoming Air National Guard's aircraft. TCE and carbon tetrachloride have been seeping from the sprawling Guard base south of us since the 1960s. To the Guard's credit, it has been on this issue since I moved to the neighborhood back in 2005. I receive frequent mailings on the clean-up status. There's a monitoring station in Mylar Park, just a 10-minute walk from our house. A trench 100 feet long and 35 feet deep is being dug in the park to try to contain the seeping solvents. Groundwater that flows into the trench will be treated and discharged into nearby Dry Creek. The goal, according to an Air Guard release from 2008, "is to prevent further underground contamination and keep the chemicals from getting into the creek."

But the TCE plume at F.E. Warren AFB is more problematical. Between 1960-64, USAF personnel used thousands of gallons of the chemical to clean Atlas rocket engines once the fuel had been removed. The used solvent went into unlined pits and eventually trickled down into the aquifer. For many years, the Air Force and the Army Corps of Engineers refused to acknowledge a problem. Then tests were conducted by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. The Corps still did nothing. And in 2007 Sen. John Barrasso got involved. Amazing the difference a U.S. Senator can make when he sets his mind to it. Studies were conducted on this substance that may cause cancer. The obstinate Corps chief was replaced by one more accountable to the citizenry. A a major report detailing clean-up solutions will be issued in September. You can hear the details at a public meeting July 28, 6 p.m., in the Cottonwood Room at the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne.

The reason I bring this up? Jared Miller wrote an excellent series of articles for today's Casper Star-Tribune about this threat from the bad old days of the Cold War. Read the series at http://www.casperstartribune.com/articles/2009/07/12/news/wyoming/813bd62b38077e9b872575f00020f944.txt

Dennis Kucinich spanks wingnut doctor

We have our own Wingnut doctor from Wyoming: Dr. John Barrasso, U.S. Senator

"Richard II" on the soggy fields of Cheyenne

Attended the Wyoming Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of "Richard II" this evening at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. The theatre company hauls its sets and equipment from one end of Wyoming to the other in one horse trailer. No easy feat.

Right about intermission time, the skies clouded up and rain fell. Half the crowd departed, but I was hooked on the story and wouldn't leave. Mac -- a family friend -- and I watched the rest of the show under a tree, not a great idea while lightning shot out of the clouds. But at least we weren't holding golf clubs.

"Richard II" all about kingship. What does it take to be a king -- and when is it justified to unseat a king? Richard II makes some wrong moves, pisses off some of the courtly lords who join the banished Bullingbrook in an uprising. Richard is never more charming than when he's deposed. Alas, he's murdered (must have a few bodies on stage in the tragedies) and then we are left with a feeling that all this didn't have to happen. Actually, it did. Without Bullingbrook usurping the throne, we wouldn't have the magnificent "Henry IV," parts one and two, and the much-quoted speech given by Henry V on the fields of Agincourt on St. Crispin's Day. And most significantly, there would be no scenes between Prince Hal and Falstaff.

Kings tend to get murdered in Shakespearean tragedies. Much mayhem ensues, which makes them so much fun. Summer and Shakespare go together like peas and carrots.

Weekend round-up: big issues -- and strange

Rising star of the Young Republicans, Audra Shay, may be a distant relative -- but I certainly hope not. Go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-10/the-gops-young-hatemonger/

NYT: "Obama Student Loan Plans Wins Support in House." Let's move this thing along. The U.S. student loan system (if you can call it that) is a travesty and needs a major overhaul.

This Sunlight Foundation post goes back to June 22 but was resurrected by Montana’s excellent Left in the West. "...five of Baucus’ former staffers currently work for a total of twenty-seven different organizations that are either in the health care or insurance sector or have a noted interest in the outcome." This may help explain Sen. Baucus’s opposition to "public option."

Papal news from a slip-sliding-away Catholic: National Catholic Reporter does a great job covering Pres. Obama's Rome visit with the Pope. On Sojourners God's Politics blog, Jim Wallis summarizes the Pope's new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).

In other religious news: "Trickle-down Fundamentalism" or "Godly powerful rich white men should rule the world." See Rachel Maddow's interviews with Jeff Sharlet at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

Attention gardeners: eat those squash and zucchini blossoms! Go to http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/homegarden/2009448964_yardsmart11.html

Weekend garden blogging -- help me save the soul of my wayward Kentucky Wonder

First, the weather. Warm and dry. No rain for three days. That's amazing, because it had rained almost every day since May until Wednesday. It's a rarity around here to let Mother Nature take care of watering the garden. Had to return to the hose on Thursday and Friday. The weatherpeople forecast a stray storm or two for yesterday evening. Storms passed us by to put on a great lightning show, huge anvil cloud hovering somewhere over Hawk Springs on its way to Nebraska. Chris and I sat on the back porch and watched the lightning vein the clouds for an hour.

We may get storms today. I'll hold off on watering and see what develops. Watch the skies!

Some of the spinach plants started to bolt so I clipped them off at the base and we enjoyed a mighty good stir fry with garden spinach cooked in olive oil with chunks of garlic. One of my daughter's favorite treats. Rather have that than ice cream, which makes me wonder about her DNA. A dedicated vegetarian. I keep telling her that ice cream is core food group along with beer and Cheezits. But she's not buying it. What's wrong with this younger generation?

Harvested the outside leaves on my green and red leaf lettuce plants. Cut off the broccoli crowns in the hopes that more crowns will grow. Fruits have formed on my Gardener's delight cherry tomato bushes but the Early Girls ain't so early. I have another tomato plants with fern-like leaves and I can't remember the variety. But it's growing like crazy and blooming but no fruit yet. The bush beans are finally bushing out -- think I planted the seeds too deep. Two zucchini plants are attempting to take over the world. My lone surviving crookneck squash plant is finally starting to leaf out. I bought three seedlings in May. Two of them shriveled and died and only one remains. No such things ever happen to zucchini, even in Wyoming.

My Kentucky Wonder pole beans on the side yard are sending out runners. One has attached to the trellis in the way that God intended. The other keeps leaping off the trellis to commune with the Achillea filipendulina and the shasta daisies. Each evening I return his probe to the trellis, only to find it groping its neighbors the next morning. He's obviously confused about his place in the grand scheme of creation. Perhaps I can have Rev from the Free Will Church of Eternal Damnation come down and talk to this wayward plant. Set it straight, if you get my meaning.

Other than that, the garden grows. We continue to watch the skies for hail-laden clouds.

This week's Victory Garden dedication: To Martin Hett, my grandfather, whose birthday is on July 14 -- Bastille Day. He became a fine self-taught Colorado gardener who grew up hungry in County Roscommon in pre-Republic Ireland. Left home at 12 in search of food -- never went back.

For a brief time, Greenpeace replaces Reagan on Mt. Rushmore with Pres. Obama

Greenpeace found a way to cover up the unpleasant visage of St. Reagan recently added to Mount Rushmore National Monument in South Dakota.

Here's what the monument looked like on Tuesday:

Greenpeace enagaged in some July 8 hijinks, covering up St. Reagan with Pres. Obama, along the way making a point about Obama's lukewarm attituide toward global warming:

Vast improvement, don't you think? And protest is patriotic, as American as apple pie -- and Mt. Rushmore.

Help wanted: Wyoming Democrats need two replacement state senators (w/7/9 update)

Two Democrats have resigned their seats in the Wyoming State Legislature.

Sen. Bill Vasey of Rawlins has retired and moved to Arizona. Much as Wyoming retirees like to think of Arizona as the state’s 24th county, that designation is not yet official, thus Sen. Vasey must bid farewell to his District 11 Senate seat.

Sen. Ken Decaria of Evanston has moved to Cheyenne for a job as government relations director for the Wyoming Education Association. His change of job and venue caused him to resign his District 15 Senate position.

What does a perennial minority political party do when it loses two of its seven Senate seats (out of a total of 30)? Finds new blood – quickly.

Here’s the process as outlined in a July 6 press release:

Carbon County Democratic Party Chair Vern Whitfield announced today that the Democratic precinct committeemen and committeewomen of Senate District 11 will meet Monday, July 13, at 6 p.m. at the Jeffrey Center in Rawlins to interview those interested in filling the Senate seat. Senate District 11 includes all of Carbon County as well as the Rock River precinct in Albany County.

The process for filling a legislative vacancy is governed by the Wyoming State Statutes and the bylaws of the Wyoming Democratic Party.

The rules require the precinct committee members of the Senate district to meet and select three finalists for the position within 15 days of the party being notified of Sen. Vasey’s resignation. The party plans to select the finalists at the meeting on Monday, July 13.

State party bylaws state that any registered Democrat who lives in Senate District 11 who wants to be considered for the position must either appear in person at the meeting or send a written statement of intent. At the meeting, each candidate will be given the opportunity to present their qualifications and may be questioned by those present. Written statements of intent can be sent to Carbon County Democratic Party Chair Vern Whitfield at 1212 Weaver St., Rawlins, WY, 82301, and must be received by Monday, July 13.

At the meeting, after all the candidates speak and answer questions, the precinct committee members will vote by signed ballot to choose the three finalists. Those finalists' names will be submitted to the county commissioners in both Carbon and Albany counties. Then, the commissioners will have five days to meet and vote to appoint one of the finalists to fill the legislative vacancy. The county commissioners' votes will be weighted by the population of the portion of the Senate District that is in each county, using numbers from the 2000 U.S. Census.

FMI: Vern Whitfield, Carbon County Democratic Party Chair, 307-320-7479 (cell), 307-324-4205 (home). Bill Luckett, Wyoming Democratic Party Executive Director, 307-631-7638 (cell).

Dems will go through the same process in Senate District 15, which includes most of Uinta County, including the town of Evanston.

Uinta County Democratic Party Chair Sharon McPhie has announced that the Democratic precinct committeemen and committeewomen of Senate District 15 will meet Thursday, July 16, at 6 p.m., at the Uinta County Library in Evanston to interview those interested in filling the Senate seat. The meeting will be in the Almy Room. Contact: Sharon McPhie, 307-789-3691.

Needless to say, the Rawlins interviews on July 13 and the ones in Evanston July 16 will not require crowd control. The Union Pacific/I-80 corridor, from Pine Bluffs to Evanston in southern Wyoming, used to be owned by the Democrats. Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins and Rock Springs were loaded with union members in the railroads and mining. When I interviewed Kathy Karpan last August prior to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Rock Springs native recalled how she grew up surrounded by union Democrats and didn’t even know there was such a thing as a "Republican." Alas, there are all too many Repubs in Rock Springs now. Most of the new energy industry jobs are non-union, and the railroad employs a fraction of what it used to. The blue traditions live on, but is fading.

That goes for Rawlins and Evanston. Evanston lies in the extreme southwestern corner that once was Utah territory but was lopped off and given to Wyoming territory to teach Brigham Young a lesson about succession and polygamy. But Brigham Young got his revenge. Uinta County remains solidly LDS and conservative Republican, a segment of the Mormon Corridor that encompasses all of Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

So, the Dems will really miss Sen. Decaria. The Democrats have never controlled the Wyoming legislature, although during Kennedy’s presidency they were very close with the highest percentage of Democrats at 47% (thanks to wikianswers.com).

HM will provide updates next week.

UPDATE on 7/9/09 from Bill Luckett: Please be advised that the date of the meeting to select finalists to replace Sen. Ken Decaria has been changed to TUESDAY, JULY 14, 2009. The meeting will still take place at 6 p.m., at the Uinta County Library in Evanston. For further information, please contact Sharon McPhie, Uinta County Democratic Party Chair, 307-789-3691 (home).

One of 10 Lee Stranahan videos on health care reform