Happy graduation, Annie. You did it!

Annie Shay, happy graduate (LCCC photo)

Daughter Annie graduates from Laramie County Community College on Saturday.

We are so proud of her. It has been a long haul. She struggled with learning disabilities in elementary school. She was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was eight. During teen years, she struggled in school, the learning part and the socialization part. She began to depend on drugs and alcohol to get her through each day. She was bipolar and we sought help but nobody seemed to understand it. She spent months in treatment centers in Wyoming and Colorado. She was able to complete some of her school work but fell too far behind to graduate. She earned her G.E.D. and started school at LCCC. It was too soon. She decided to major in music and spent many hours rehearsing and singing with the school's choirs. She has a beautiful voice but is not so confident around colleagues and audiences. 

She dropped out and soon was off again to treatment centers, this time in California and Illinois and Utah and finally back to Colorado. The years passed. She was diagnosed with bipolar and personality disorder. Meds didn't seem to be the solution but she kept at it, finally underwent ECT at a hospital in Boulder. She improved and returned to Cheyenne to live with Chris and I and go back to school. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

That's one thing she always wanted -- an education. Through it all, she spoke of that often. She enrolled again at LCCC. She depended on the Help Center for guidance. She struggled at first. Nevertheless, she persisted. She passed her classes and discovered that she liked school, maybe for the first time. That's one thing that people don't always understand about community colleges. They allow all kinds of learners to get a second chance. May be you aren't ready at 18. Maybe you get married young and find out 20 years later that you want an education. Maybe you're a military veteran looking for new directions. 

I was a university dropout, a scholarship student at a big university who lost his way. I worked and traveled. Four years after graduating high school, I enrolled in the local community college and started in the fall of 1973. My classmates had already graduated from four-year universities and were negotiating adulthood. I felt a bit lost. But the classes I took were wonderful. Contemporary American Literature. Public Speaking. Art History. The teachers were terrific and somehow I was interested in each subject. At night, I worked as an orderly in the Substance Abuse Unit at the county hospital. The nurses locked me in with the alcoholics who had been scooped out of the gutters or arrested for raising a ruckus. This is where they came instead of jail. Many had been to jail. We played cards and smoked. They told tall tales, most of which were true, I suspect. I learned a lot. On quiet nights, I studied. On wild nights, we orderlies wrestled rowdy drunks. That was some year. By May, I had enough credits to graduate and returned to a four-year university where I graduated in two years. 

We all have our stories. Annie now has hers. She is very excited about graduating. So very excited. In mid-June, she moves to Laramie to start summer classes at UW.  She will be thirty-something by the time she graduates. She worries about that, wondering if she will fit in with younger students, make friends in the larger context of a university, be able to excel in upper division classes. Chris and I worry. Annie is an introvert with ongoing psychological issues. She likes her time alone but sometimes too much time alone is bad for her mental health. 

Nevertheless, she persisted. 

Happy graduation, Annie. Enjoy it all!

P.S.: Annie posted a blog today from her POV. Read "How I got here -- graduating from college class of 2022" at WyoGal. 

That summer day in Wyoming, that was some wonderful day

One of my favorite loop tours for visitors is Cheyenne to Saratoga via the Snow Range. And then back again. For me, this 300-mile round-trip is no big deal. During summer, the obstacles on this route are construction, poky RVers, and hailstorms. During winter, you have to add in "slick in spots" hazards along I-80s Elk Mountain route. 

My wife Chris and sister Eileen joined me in my car. Brother-in-law Brian, daughter Annie and sister Mary rode in the rental. We first drove to Laramie. Annie wanted to show off her future campus. We parked in the War Memorial Stadium lot. Our visitors were impressed with the "breaking through" monumental sculpture and the big motto writ on across the stadium wall: "The world needs more cowboys." I really didn't want to get into some of the blowback the phrase caused. What about cowgirls?  Will this turn off Native American and other minority students? And what cowboys, exactly, are you speaking of? Cowboy Joe? John Wayne? The drovers in "Lonesome Dove?" The thousands of UW grads who couldn't find jobs in their home state and fled to non-cowboy states such as Illinois and Florida? Who? What?

We toured the big welcome center named for a rich donor. This is how it is on college campuses and I have no problems with it. Inside, I saw names of patrons who also support the arts and that made me happy as UW has great arts facilities and faculty. 

I noticed the library in the fireplace room and settled in to read through some of the old UW annuals. I was taken with the 1954 volume. Its first eight pages were photos of campus and Wyoming scenes that looked like blueline prints of 3D film. There is a pocket in the book's inside front cover that once held 3D glasses. How fun is that? 3D movies had hit the market in the early 1950s and they were all the rage when UW students assembled the annual in 1954. "It Came from Outer Space" (1953) and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954). I was also surprised by some of the other 3D titles listed on IMBD, "Kiss Me Kate" and "Hondo" among them. I don't have a real good feeling about Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor and The Duke coming at me in three dimensions. "They called him Hondo -- hot-blooded as the Plains that bred him. silent as gunsmoke, a stranger to all but the surly dog at his side." OK by me, but the dog better not die.

We ate lunch under the trees and toured the UW Art Museum, one of my favorite places. Some exhibits were closing down to make room for the fall crop of artists. But the ones still up were fascinating. I really got a kick out of  David Bradley's 2001 panoramic and satiric painting of the Santa Fe Indian Market (going on now). I was entranced by Collin Parson's "Light Ellipse" at the entrance to the galleries. The 12-feet-high ellipse is made of PVC panel and backlit by LED lights and changes colors as you watch. Parson's exhibit is one of the museum's fall highlights which includes visits and talks by the Denver artist. "Blind" by Holly Roberts was part of the museum's horse exhibit. This was one of the more experimental works in "The West on Horseback" exhibit that included paintings by Hans Klieber and black-and-white ranch photos by Elsa Spear Byron.  

After a quick tour of downtown we headed for the mountains along Route 130 through Centennial. The high prairie seemed very green for the first week in August. It's usually lightly-browned as beach sand, sometimes as brown as the Wyoming Brown you see all across the UW campus. A summer squall cut into our sightseeing. Also, there was that brown cloud that has found its way here from Oregon and California. The rain let up when we reached Lake Marie so we released our visitors into the wild, now with that fresh post-rainstorm scent. Lake Marie probably one of the most photographed site in Wyoming outside our national parks and the country's first national monument. Sometimes you can catch it as still and mirror-lake and, if the light is just right, you can shoot a fit-for-framing reflection of the surrounding mountains. Laramie's Doc Thissen once showed me such a photo, one of his.

On the way downhill we passed Brush Creek Ranch and I thought about C.J. Box's novel "The Disappeared" in which some nefarious goings-on happen at a guest ranch eerily similar to Brush Creek. Other fictional nogoodniks are haunting the Wolf Hotel in downtown Saratoga, a place where Game Warden/Sleuth Joe Pickett bellies up to the bar on a frigid winter evening and sips a Black Tooth Saddle Bronc Ale. Eileen, Brian, and Mary toured the Wolf and the rest of the town. 

"So who lives here?" I've asked myself that question many times, usually when passing places such as Hanna and  Jeffrey City. I know writers from Hanna and people in Jeffrey City who kept its arts council alive even when the town was dying. These towns also house coal-miners, wind-farm workers, retirees and meth heads. Just like any place in the Rocky Mountain West. As I drive back to Cheyenne, I look out on the landscape and marvel that anyone can make a living in this place. It inspires -- I think of Linda Lillegraven's wonderful landscape paintings -- and it also causes people to lose their minds, as happens in real life and in Annie Proulx's short stories (Proulx spent many years in WYO and once lived in Centennial). 

The setting sun ignites the clouds over the Laramie Range as we drive the last miles to home. It occurs to me that nobody in our two-car caravan sees Wyoming as I do. We all see and experience life differently. Some of us translate it (or try to) in the work we do. For others, it is memories and stories, a photograph that they unearth decades later and remember that August day in Wyoming spent with family. 

That was some day. 

Op-ed: Wyoming native argues for survival of the University of Wyoming Creative Writing Program

I don’t subscribe to our local newspaper, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. I am not boycotting it for political reasons or because I was the subject of an investigative report that portrayed me as a dirty dog. I just can’t access its content online unless I subscribe. Headlines I can read. Obituaries too. But not news, sports and op-ed which are my favorite sections.

I bought a copy today because it featured an op-ed by a former coworker at the Wyoming Arts Council. Linda Coatney wrote, “Finding my voice included endangered UW writing program.” She traced her evolution as a writer from a 10-year-old poet to a shy high school writer to creative writing workshops at Casper College to enrollment in UW’s master’s degree program in creative writing. And now that program is slated for demolition by the UW Board of Trustees. Why? Because our wingnut legislature failed to plan for a future where the state cannot depend on oil-gas-coal revenue due to the fact that fossil fuels’ day in the sun has set. If only we could have seen this coming.

Read Linda’s column for a stout-hearted defense of the program. Buy the Dec. 3 edition and turn to page A7. She may let me repost the column here once it plays out on the printed page. I am a print guy after a career as a newspaper reporter and editor and stints as a corporate editor, much of that time at the Arts Council. I write in a journal. I read books. I once was a paperboy and so was my son.

I also write for Wyoming’s online newspaper, WyoFile, and keep this blog which will celebrate its 20^th anniversary on Blogger in January. A few days ago I blogged about the UW situation. To read, go here.

The UW Creative Writing Program is tiny when compared to engineering and business and geology. That doesn’t make it any less important when it’s time to cut budgets. In fact, it may be more important to a state that is trying to leap into the 21^st century after spending so much time in the previous one. The creative economy was a major topic during my 25 years at the Arts Council. I like to think that I played a small part in making that a reality and not a dream. It takes time, of course, and Covid-19 showed us how vulnerable the collaborative arts can be. Pandemic precautions have shut down concert venues, theatres, arts conferences, art galleries, author readings and just about anything else that powers America’s arts and entertainment businesses. Artists and arts presenters have found clever ways to promote their work online and even in-person with creative masks and appropriate social-distancing.

Go read Linda’s op-ed and send your thoughts to UW. Or comment here and I will pass it along.

Help save the University of Wyoming Creative Writing M.F.A. Program

This comes from a Nov. 17 Facebook post by writer and UW prof Nina Swamidoss McConigley of Laramie:

Hey friends -- due to budget cuts, UW has proposed eliminating the wonderful, nationally-ranked creative writing M.F.A. program.

As a current student pointed out, this program is a vital way to provide a diverse set of writers fully-funded opportunities to write from and about an underrepresented place. Graduates from the program have published so many books -- last year, Kali Fajardo-Anstine was a finalist for the National Book Award.

If you care about the arts, communication about rural communities, and opportunities for young writers, it would mean the world to me if you could sign & share this petition to save the program:

https://www.change.org/.../university-of-wyoming-save-the...

You can also email your comments to: progrevw@uwyo.edu

This is a travesty. Many fine writers have been through the University of Wyoming Creative Writing Program. It sponsors many visiting writers and has strengthened state's writing community. Along with Performing Arts and Visual Arts, the program makes UW a destination for creative people all over the country and especially in the Rocky Mountain region. To jettison the program just as its value is being appreciated would be a terrible thing.

The state legislature has wasted years ignoring that hard times were coming for oil and coal, traditionally major sources of revenue. The handwriting was not just on the wall but everywhere you looked. Still, nothing was done and now we are facing the loss of an entity that helps make Wyoming great. Don't let them do this.

Sign the petition at the link above. Send your comments to progrevw@uwyo.edu

I earned my M.F.A. in creative writing at Colorado State University. I then went on to be the literature program manager at the Wyoming Arts Council and spent two years as assistant director of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Program. The M.F.A. took me in unexpected directions. I was a published writer when I entered the M.F.A. program in 1988. I I had no idea there was such a thing as the Colorado Council on the Arts (now Colorado Creative Industries) that gave fellowships m to individual artists and grants to orgs to put on readings, workshops and festivals.

In grad school, I signed up for the artist roster that funds writers in schools. I had my first assignment to a school on the high prairie when I landed the job at the Wyoming Arts Council. My experience in arts administration was limited to a stint on the CSU Fine Arts Series. I helped bring some incredible writers to campus with a budget provided by student fees and grants to the local arts agency, the state arts council and the National Endowment for the Arts. My first grant to Fort Fund was rejected. Damn -- this is harder than it looks. When I interviewed with the WAC in the summer of 1991, I had no experience in what it took to generate money for arts programs. I was a writer with corporate PR experience and stints as a newspaper reporter. The WAC hired me anyway.

I'll write more about my arts council experience later. Now it's time to save the UW program that will allow its graduates to pursue writing careers and act as springboard to the arts administration world. Other grads teach on every level from K-12 to graduate school. They all are on a mission to present the written and spoken word to the world. A tall task. But we are up to the challenge.

As I was writing this, WyoFile published a piece by Jeffrey Lockwood, a prof who splits his time between creative writing and entomology (arts and sciences). He makes some good points in the essay but it comes back to this: UW can eliminate and outstanding yet small program in the liberal arts and nobody will care. As Lockwood tells it:

Perhaps the creative writing faculty and our students have done ourselves no favors by publishing essays, articles and books that are critical of powerful individuals and structures. However, our task as writers is the pursuit of beauty, truth and right — and this may not align with corporate profits, legislative orthodoxy and status quo ideology. I don’t want to believe that the cut is political retribution, although those in power have demonstrated their willingness to punish troublemakers. Rather, I believe that the university’s course of action is based on the assumption that there will be little or no blowback.

It could make all the difference if you found the time to communicate with the UW Board of Trustees, president and the (acting) dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. Or send your support to an email dedicated to public feedback: progrevw@uwyo.edu

Writers write. What are you waiting for?

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.

Artist Al Farrow repurposes the world's armaments to produce "Divine Ammunition"

From "Divine Ammunition" at the UW Art Museum: Al Farrow, Trigger Finger of Santo Guerro, guns, gun parts, bullets, shell casings, steel, glass, bone, crucifix, 19 x 16 x 16 inches, 2007. Photo: Michael Shay

Here's the opening salvo of my Dec. 19 post on Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review:

If I was a gun guy instead of an arts guy, I might have been at the gun show at the Laramie Fairgrounds. It’s Christmas, right, and all of us deserve a Glock in our stocking. 

But I was a few miles away at the University of Wyoming Art Museum viewing “Divine Ammunition,” an exhibit of the work of California artist Al Farrow. The work was selected from private and public collections. There were guns galore in the Friends and Colorado galleries. Matching handguns serve as a cathedral’s flying buttresses. Rifles frame the door of a synagogue splashed in blood-red. The very real skull of an imaginary saint sits in a reliquary fashioned from guns and shell casings. 

Happy holidays, ya’ll.

Read the rest here. 

March for Science Wyoming steps off in Laramie on Earth Day 2017

Official logo of the March for Science Wyoming, set for Laramie on April 22. T-shirts are for sale with this design. All of the proceeds go to March for Science Wyoming. Go to  https://www.bonfire.com/mfs-wyoming/

March for Science 2017, Wyoming version, will be held on Saturday, April 22, in Laramie. This is one of the 300-plus satellite sites to the main march in Washington, D.C. Cheyenne residents will be bused in, returning the favor by Laramie folks who carpooled and rode the bus to Cheyenne on Jan. 21 for the Women's March.

April 22 is Earth Day, a good day to cut air pollution by pooling our resources. Also a great day for a march in Laramie, which is home to the state's only four-year university and a vibrant batch of science-oriented academics and researchers. An artistic bunch, too. The head of the UW Creative Writing Program is Jeff Lockwood, a writer and noted entomologist. J Shogren is a Nobel Prize-winning environmental economist and professor who leads the "pulp Americana" band J Shogren Shanghai'd.

Students come from all over the world, studying water hydrology, geology, computer science and many other majors. UW international students have additional worries under Trump's most recent batch of anti-immigrant policies. One wonders what effects these travel bans will have on international athletes. In a January 2017 article, Fox Sports reported this:

According to a study done by Rukkus Blog on 2016-2017 rosters, 11 percent of college basketball players are born outside of the United States. The total number of foreign-born prospects on college rosters is up 40 percent in the last 10 years.

Wonder if those well-heeled athletic supporters will lobby their man Trump to keep the overseas pipelines open. They will, if Gonzaga and Kentucky and Duke start losing. Face it, Trump responds to muscle, especially when it comes from rich white guys. We gotta have our March Madness!

Meanwhile, we march for scientists and researchers and women and immigrants and writers and artists and all the other targets of Trump and his authoritarian policies.

"Out West in the Rockies" lands at UW

At my day job, scores of press releases arrive daily. Occasionally, I read one and say "Wow!" It happened in March when I saw that artist Ai Weiwei's monumental sculptures were leaving China for display at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson. In Laramie, Dancers of the Joffrey Ballet will be the artists in residence in July at the Snowy Range Summer Dance Festival. Wow! Short story master Tobias Wolff will be the featured presenter at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference later this month. Wow!

But I was doubly impressed last week when I saw the following news release from Rick Ewig, associate director of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. This highlights a good year for equality in Wyoming. The LGBT community is finding its footing in The Equality State. Or rather the state is taking a turn for the better. Witness the big turnout last weekend at Cheyenne's "Pride in the Park." So many attended that the police arrived to tell us to move our cars as they were blocking traffic. We complied, of course, believing in blocking traffic only when absolutely necessary to get a point across.

But I digress.

Here's the news:

The American Heritage Center (AHC) at the University of Wyoming (UW) in Laramie, which houses several significant collections related to slain UW student Matthew Shepard, is currently developing “Out West in the Rockies,” a first-of-its kind regional lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history and culture archive of the American West.

The scope of of this collecting area welcomes collections from eight Rocky Mountain states: Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Retiring AHC Director Mark Greene helped inaugurate and Associate Director Rick Ewig will oversee this effort.  

Gregory Hinton, creator of Out West, an acclaimed national LGBT western museum program series, introduced the concept to the AHC and serves as project consultant.  Hinton announced Out West in the Rockies at the recent LGBQT Alliance luncheon of the 2015 American Alliance of Museums Annual meeting and Museum Expo in Atlanta. 

Growing interest in the rural LGBT experience underscores the need for a visible, dedicated, centrally located LGBT Western American archive. 

"The LBGT communities are under-documented in many established national archives and historical repositories, but particularly in collections dedicated to the history and culture of the American West,” says Greene, who is a Distinguished Fellow of the Society of American Archivists.  “An archive of this kind is long past due.  The AHC is proud to be committed to this effort.” 

The AHC ranks among the largest and busiest non-governmental repositories in the United States.  In 2010, the AHC was recognized as one of the nation’s premier archives when it received the Society of American Archivists’ Distinguished Service Award.  The AHC currently houses 75,000 cubic feet of materials, with 15,000 cubic feet remaining to welcome new collections.  Thus, with ample storage space, an experience, dedicated, and nationally recognized staff stands ready to accommodate substantial LGBT holdings. 

Rural Montana-born Gregory Hinton recently drove from Los Angeles through the Rockies in blizzard conditions to hand deliver his personal and professional papers to the AHC.  

"Too many LGBT men and women evacuate our rural western backgrounds seeking community, companionship, and safety in the bit city,” Hinton says.  “Happily, not everybody leaves.  And more and more of us return.  Thanks to the AHC, our stories are welcome in Wyoming.” 

A distinguished advisory board of respected western scholars, artists, and activists is being assembled, including W. James Burn, director, University of Arizona Museum of Art; Wyoming State Representative and UW faculty member Cathy Connolly; Rebecca Scofield, Ph.D. candidate, American Studies, Harvard University; and civil rights attorney Roberta Zenker, author of TransMontana. 

"Out West dispels the myth that LGBT history (and communities) are bi-coastal,” says Burns, recent chair of the LGBTQ Alliance of the American Alliance of Museums.  “Rural western LGBT populations are thriving and make significant contributions to the communities in which they live.” 

A call will soon be put out for significant regional collections of organizational records and personal papers consisting of a wide variety of materials, from emails and correspondence to speeches and manuscripts. 

“Everything from scrapbooks and photo albums to press clippings and marketing/promotional material; from digital and analog photos to diaries and blog entries; from professional contracts and grants to minutes and annual reports,” says Rick Ewig, also recent president of the Wyoming State Historical Society and editor of Annals of Wyoming. 

Seeking to immerse themselves in the vast landscape of the rural American West, scholars and historians from all over the world visit the AHC every year.  The AHC is UW’s repository of manuscript collections, rare books, and university archives.

UW Prof Jeff Lockwood previews new book, "Living Behind the Carbon Curtain"

Jeff Lockwood

Who lives behind the carbon curtain?

I do. You do too if you're in Wyoming.

University of Wyoming prof and author Jeff Lockwood will preview his new book on the subject Saturday evening in Sheridan at the Powder River Basin Resource Council annual gathering.

Lockwood's book is Behind the Carbon Curtain: The Energy Industry, Political Censorship and Free Speech. The book won't be out for another year -- Lockwood's Saturday talk is but a teaser.

See Dustin Bleizeffer's article about this in Friday's Wyofile. Here's an excerpt:

On one level, the book is about a series of cases in which the energy industry has colluded with government in Wyoming to censor art and education. But in a larger sense, said Lockwood, Behind the Carbon Curtain is about something even more worrisome; it’s about how corporatocracy is rooted in the Equality State and throughout many levels of government nationwide. Corporatocracy is a term used to describe governments that are designed to serve the interests of corporations, and not necessarily citizens. A couple of examples of corporatocracy at work in Wyoming are the removal of Carbon Sink (the sculpture that offended coal industry interests) and the unofficially dubbed “Teeters Amendment” — a last-minute measure tagged onto the state budget bill that prohibited even the discussion of Next Generation Science Standards for its acknowledgment of man’s role in climate change. 

Read the rest at http://wyofile.com/dustin/uw-professor-previews-book-critical-energy-influence/#sthash.fhTLvQNs.dpuf

Maybe Gov's new science panel may negate some of the damage done by the legislature

Democratic Party Gubernatorial candidate Pete Gosar was bemused by Gov. Mead's announcement of the selection of a panel to improve science education at our only four-year public university. This from Gosar's Facebook post:

The current administration appoints a panel to upgrade science at the University of Wyoming, but just a few months ago censored science for Wyoming students in K-12. Let's hope this panel puts in a full complement of remedial science courses at UW to ensure that our students can learn after graduation what they were denied before graduation.

It's difficult to live down the embarrassment of the legislation from last legislative session that banned schools from adopting national science standards. Gov. Mead signed off on the legislation offered by Rep. Matt Teeters (R-Lingle) who, thankfully, lost his primary challenge and will no longer darken the halls of the legislature with his Dark Ages approach to book larnin'. 

How many science panels and commissions does it take to negate one piece of boneheaded legislation?

Difficult to know. Word travels fast in this cyber-age. I read the bios of those appointed to the panel and was impressed. They are supposed to make some recommendations to the Gov by Nov. 1, just four days before the election. One of those recommendations should be: "Repeal the legislature's anti-science footnote and keep Republican legislators as far away from education legislation as humanly possible."

Then maybe we can get back to the business of being a player in the 21st century instead of a bystander.

Little Ag vs. Big Ag -- which one grows the most food?

From Wyoming Public Media:

In collaboration with the University of Wyoming, a local food advocacy group conducted a study to find out just how many vegetables a backyard garden in Wyoming can produce.  The project is called Team G.R.O.W., or Gardening Research of Wyoming.

Gayle Woodsum is the founder of Feeding Laramie Valley, the group sponsoring the research. She says the idea behind the study was simple. “So these were gardeners who said, yeah, we’d like to know, really, how much are we producing.  And what value does that have in terms of numbers.  But what they did is they weighed every pea, every bean, every leaf of lettuce that came out of that garden for the entire season.”

The 22 gardeners in the study raised 4,500 pounds of vegetables on a little over a quarter of land.  Woodsum says the results show the harvest was as good as those reported by large-scale factory farms.  The study was funded by a $5-million USDA grant.

Woodsum hopes the results will help the group with future efforts to show policy makers why community garden projects should be supported and encouraged the same way large-scale farms are.

BTW, I think that third paragraph was supposed to read "a quarter acre of land." A "quarter of land" doesn't make sense.

How much square footage is a quarter acre of land? 10,890. Divide that by 4,500 and you get 2.42 pounds of food per square foot. I guess that's possible. I've been able to grow a couple pounds worth of tomatoes from one plant. Then there's zucchini. Your average gardener (and I'm pretty average) can grow about 5,000 pounds of zucchini on one plant, give or take.

I guess the big question is this: How much funding in the recently passed Farm Bill goes to big ag and how much goes to gardeners?

Anyone?

Sherman Alexie at UW on Oct. 15

Sherman Alexie, author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” will lecture and sign books Tuesday, Oct. 15, 7 p.m. in the University of Wyoming  College of Arts and Sciences auditorium in Laramie. The event is free and open to the public.

Albany County Democrats hosts Demtoberfest Oct. 12 in Laramie

The Albany County Democrats are hosting Demtoberfest Oct. 12 at the Lincoln Community Center, 365 W. Grand Ave.in Laramie. Barbeque! Vegetarian options! Beer! Music by Libby Creek Original and Jeff Duloz! Food will be served around 6 p.m  and music starts around 7 p.m. There will also be a silent auction.

Early birds arriving after the Homecoming game vs. New Mexico are welcome, as beer and beverages will be ready early.

RSVP by ordering your tickets at https://secure.actblue.com/page/albanydems

Tickets at the door, and the Dems will accept credit/debit cards as well as cash and check.

Suggested Donation:
Entry (Food, Drink, and Fun!) $15
Darling, Daring Democrat $30
Extremely Wonderful Democrat $50
Ready to Win Elections $100

Questions? Please email info@albanycountydems.com or call (307) 299-0204.

Blowing in the Wyoming Wind: Cattle Kate could’ve told Meg what was coming

I always look forward to Rodger McDaniel's Saturday posts on Blowing in the Wyoming Wind. They also used to appear in our local paper, but since I don't get the paper any more I can neither confirm or deny their appearance on the op-ed pages. Rodger is part of our ragtag band of progressive bloggers in southeast Wyoming. I guess I shouldn't call Rodger ragtag, as he has plenty of creds as an attorney, minister, historian, author and one-time head of the state's mental health and substance abuse division. But anyone who blatantly proclaims a liberal stance in conservative Wyoming exists on the fringe.

This morning, Rodger blogged about two Wyoming women who were the subject of lynch mobs. Ellen Watson, also known as "Cattle Kate," had the temerity to challenge the cattle barons in 1885 Wyoming Territory. She was physically lynched. Meg Lanker-Simons has had the temerity to challenge UW and Wyoming's powers-that-be, most of whom happen to be conservatives. Now she's getting lynched on-line. Go read Rodger's post here.

Meg graduates from the University of Wyoming today. Congratulations, Meg. We keep urging her to write a book. Maybe she will, although law school figures in her immediate plans. Once she gets law school out of the way and publishes her book, I hope she keeps us in mind for the book-signing tour. Laramie should be her first stop.

UPDATE: Rodger's column is in today's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (I sneaked a look at a copy at my friend D's house). It's on the op-ed pages in the sports section and is headlined "UW choosing to hang before the facts are in."

Gregory Hinton returns to Shepard Symposium for performance of "Diversity Day"

Gregory Hinton is a Montana native who grew up in Cody. He now is the creator and producer of Out West at the Autry, a historic public program featuring a series of lectures, plays, films and gallery exhibitions dedicated to shining a light on the history and culture of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender & Two Spirit (GLBT2) communities in the American West.

I first met Gregory a few years ago when he performed his play "Beyond Brokeback" at the Shepard Symposium for Social Justice in Laramie. The play was based on online testimonials by GLBT2 people responding to "Brokeback Mountain," the Ang Lee film based on the short story by Wyoming's Annie Proulx.

Gregory's been back in Wyoming several times since, most recently to serve as a research fellow at the Buffalo Bill Center for the West in his old stomping grounds of Cody. This week he's in Laramie for a Shepard Symposium performance of "Diversity Day" in the Wyoming Union's Yellowstone Ballroom on Friday, April 5, 1:30-2:45 p.m. 

This is a one-hour staged reenactment—with voluntary audience participation— of combative public testimony adapted from Missoula City Council Minutes to add anti-discrimination protection for the LGBTQ community, a first in Montana history.  Footage of the original April 12, 2010 hearing will screen silently as testimony is read. A workshop and discussion will follow.

After Mayor John Engen of Missoula declared April 12, 2010 “Diversity Day,” six hours of powerful public testimony was heard prior to a Missoula City Council vote to add sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to the city’s existing antidiscrimination ordinance – a first in Montana state history.

'Diversity Day’ offers a frank glimpse into the day-to-day lives of Montana’s LGBT community and those who oppose their call for anti-discrimination protection.”  

"Diversity Day" was first presented at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival – Region 7, (KCACTF-7) in Ft. Collins in February, 2012.  It was then presented in June, 2012 at the West Hollywood Library as a featured event of West Hollywood’s One City/One Pride Culture Series. In association with the National Coalition Building Institute it will be presented in Missoula on April 12th, 2013 and in Billings in association with ACLU Montana the following weekend.  

Hinton has produced and directed stage readings of the AFER and Broadway Impact marriage equality play ‘8,’ both at KCACTF-7 in Ft. Collins and at the Bozeman Public Library.  Written by Academy Award winning Dustin Lance Black, ‘8’ is adapted from the transcripts of the 2010 California Prop. 8 trial where cameras were barred.  

For more information about "Diversity Day" or Out West programming, please contact Gregory Hinton at 323.876.9585 gregoryhinton@earthlink.net

"My Two Moms" author is keynote speaker for 17th annual Shepard Symposium on Social Justice

This year's 17th annual Shepard Symposium on Social Justice is next week in Laramie. Its theme is “Counter Narratives: Advocacy at the Intersections.” Here are some highlights (from the Casper Star-Trib Weekender section)::

GLARE and UW faculty panel is 4:30 p.m. WEDNESDAY in the Yellowstone Ballroom. GLARE is a group of faculty and staff in the School of Education at Brooklyn College committed to the well-being of gay and transgender people.

New York Times writer Samuel G. Freedman, author of “Breaking the Line,” speaks at 4:30 p.m. THURSDAY in the Yellowstone Ballroom.

“Equality in the Equality State” panel discussion/luncheon is 11:30 a.m. on FRIDAY, APRIL 5, in the Yellowstone Ballroom. Panelists will examine the Wyoming legislative processes surrounding the introduction a bill granting legal recognition to domestic partnerships.

Zach Wahls’ keynote address is 4:30 p.m. APRIL 5 in the Yellowstone Ballroom. It is free.“The sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character,” Wahls told the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in a public forum in 2011, then a 19-year-old University of Iowa freshman. His speech got more than 2 million views on You Tube. He has become a gay marriage and gay parents advocate, according to a release. His book, “My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family,” delivers a reassuring message to same-sex couples, their children and anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider.

“Saturday Night Party” begins at 9 p.m. APRIL 6 at the Alice Hardie Stevens Center, 603 E. Ivinson St. Tickets: $5; proceeds benefiting the Tie the Knot Foundation, which created a line of art-inspired bow ties to benefit various gay-rights organizations.

Good weekend for writers and artists in southeast Wyoming

It's a good weekend to be a writer or artist in southeast Wyoming.

Henry Real Bird, former poet laureate of Montana, will present a free writing workshop at the Laramie County Public Library in Cheyenne on Sunday, March 3, 1-3:30 p.m. No need to register; just show up with your journal and your imagination. Henry was born and raised on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana and is a often is a presenter at the annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. He's in town to serve as a judge for the 2013 Poetry Out Loud competition which takes place on Monday and Tuesday.

The Wyoming Arts Council and UW team up to present CLICK: A Weekend for Wyoming Visual Artists March 1-3 in Laramie. Hear from arts professionals in a series of panel sessions and attend hands-on studio sessions conducted by UW arts professors. On Friday at 7 p.m., hear from UW Eminent Visiyting Artist Judy Pfaff. Registration fee is $100. FMI: http://wyoarts.state.wy.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CLICK-conference-registration-2013.pdf

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak is eminent-writer-in-residence at UW in February

Poet and labor activist Mark Nowak in coming to Wyoming:

For the much of the past decade, Mark Nowak has been extricating the poetry workshop from the academic classroom and re-employing it in factories, workplaces, and other labor/working-class spaces. These workshops include his early transnational "poetry dialogues" with autoworkers at Ford plants in St. Paul, Minnesota (through UAW 879) and Port Elizabeth and Pretoria, South Africa (through NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa), another series of workshops with Muslim/Somali nurses (through Rufaidah, a Somali nurse support organization), and his current ongoing project with members of Domestic Workers United <http://www.domesticworkersunited.org/> in New York City (to be featured in the 2012 PEN World Voices Festival). 

While at the University of Wyoming, Mark hopes to work with graduate students and other community members in facilitating a Wyoming version of these creative writing workshops with workers in the area. In advance of his visit, he would like to work with interested students in identifying potential groups to work with, making initial contacts, and selecting a group of Wyoming workers with whom several creative writing workshops could be facilitated. As always, the goal is to also produce an event at the end of these workshops (and the end of Mark's residency) in which the participants read the work they produce to their family, friends, co-workers, and the larger community. 

Mark Nowak, a 2010 Guggenheim fellow, is the author of Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009) and Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2004). He frequently speaks about global working class policies and issues, most recently on Al Jazeera, BBC World News America, BBC Radio 3, and Pacifica Radio’s “Against the Grain.” A native of Buffalo, New York, Nowak currently works as director of the graduate creative writing program at Manhattanville College in Purchase, NY. 

Mark Nowak will be on campus February 18th - March 1st.  Public workshops will be held between February 17th and February 27th and will culminate in a Reading and Celebration the Gryphon Theater on February 28th.  There will be a public reading by Mark Nowak on February 22nd at Second Story Books. 

Website

Workers urged to share their voices in a "community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming"

Today's news from Michigan shows that the Republican war on workers continues unabated. Southern Wyoming once had a strong union presence in the mines and on the railroads. But most of the railroad jobs were moved out of Rawlins and Rock Springs and the mines got all "Right-to-Work-State" on its workers.

Mark Nowak is a documentary poet, teacher and labor activist who will will serve as eminent writer-in-residence for the University of Wyoming creative writing program in February. He and I are two of the writers featured in Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking out the Jams, a 2010 anthology from Coffee House Press.

This is an excerpt about working in a steel mill from Mark's poetry series, "$00 / Line / Steel / Train," which is included in the anthology:

Because the (brake) past is used because the tearing  (past) of the (brick) form is used is used because the fence (in) of the (goddam) frame is used is used is utterly used against us and by us and upon us and for us is used is used in the present (past) future (form) we are used yet users yet used.

Every day you put your life on the line when you went into that iron house. Every day you sucked up dirt and took a chance on breaking your legs or breaking your back. And anyone who's worked in there knows what I'm talking about.

Mark sent along this info about the "Working (in Wyoming)" project he'll be conducting when he's in the state. Here it is:

Working (in Wyoming) is a community-building, creative investigation of what it means to labor in Wyoming. A series of creative writing workshops will be held in southeastern  Wyoming (Laramie and Cheyenne) in February of 2013.

These workshops will be facilitated by Wyoming writing instructors and students in the University of Wyoming's MFA program in creative writing. In these workshops, Wyoming workers of diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to collaborate with others in the Wyoming community to create a short piece of creative writing (a poem, a parable, a short story, a piece of flash fiction/nonfiction, etc.).

Working (in Wyoming) will culminate in a large-scale yet intimate evening event in Laramie on February 28. Here working people from across the state will have the opportunity to share what it means to work in Wyoming with a presentation of pieces created in workshops. 

To get involved in the project, contact Kay Northrop at knorthrop@uwyo.edu or Brie Fleming at briennafleming5@gmail.com Read more on the project's Facebook page.

Mark's blog is filled with info about union organizing and strikes worldwide. If you think that workers in the U.S. don't have anything in common with coal miners in China or maquiladora laborers in Mexico, think again, and take a look at Mark's Coal Mountain blog.

"Carbon Sink" revisited by Cheyenne's Michaela Rife

Cheyenne's Michaela Rife penned a meditation on Chris Drury's late, lamented "Carbon Sink" sculpture at the University of Wyoming for the Nevada Museum of Arts Art + Environment site. Read the Nov. 21 piece here. Michaela is an arts writer who is in Vancouver, B.C., pursuing a master's degree at the University of British Columbia’s Critical and Curatorial Studies program.