Front Rangers combine the love of art and sports

As we say farewell to August and say hey to September, my thoughts turn to fall. And that's not just because my wife Chris and I watched our first college football game last night, Clemson vs. Georgia. And how about those Pokes? It is one of the reasons, though. The Denver Broncos open their regular season Thursday night. They play the Baltimore Ravens, the team that eked out a win over the Broncos last year to go to the Super Bowl and beat San Francisco. The Broncos are spoiling for a fight. Maybe they'll settle for a win to launch the season which may include a trip to the Super Bowl in New Jersey.

New Jersey?

Denver Post sports columnist Vic Lombardi has been painting porn mustaches on posters of Ravens' quarterback Joe Flacco that the NFL plastered all over Denver in advance of Thursday's opener. There's nothing that says "Die, you gravy-sucking pigs" like a porn mustache. Still, it's nice to see street art combined with a love for the game. Two of Denver's major industries are arts and sports. In that order. Opera fans are less likely to wear hundreds of dollars of merch, yell wildly and puke on your shoulder during Sunday performances, even if it's Wagner's entire Ring Cycle. But opera and emo rock and theatre and book sales and art museum visits all contribute as much to the metro area's GNP as Broncos and Rockies and Avalanche and Nuggets. You could look it up.

So what's happening in September other than football?

Cheech Marin of Cheech and Chong fame comes to Laramie this week to open an exhibition at the UW Art Museum. Marin is one of the world's foremost collectors of Chicano art. He also will be on hand for a tour of the exhibit and a public lecture.

Marin will speak about art at 4 p.m., Friday, Sept. 6, in the Wyoming Union Ballroom, followed by a book signing. The title of his talk is “Chicano Art: Cultivating the Chicano Future”. On Saturday, Sept. 7, at 10:30 a.m. he will give an informal gallery walk-through at the UW Art Museum. Both programs are free and open to the public.

Another multicultural event, with a twist, will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 3. As it says on its Facebook page, the PhinDeli Coffee Shop will open at the old mini-mart and gas station at Buford along I-80.

Buford PhinDeli Coffee Shop will serve Free Super Clean Filter Coffee of Vietnam to everyone who visit from Sept. 3rd, 2013.

Will this first Vietnamese coffee shop in the U.S. create a tidal wave of interest or will it just be a flash in the pan? I plan on stopping by to get some Free Super Clean Filter Coffee. 

Speaking of coffee.... At the Cheyenne Farmers' Market on Saturday, I discovered that Cheyenne now has its own coffee roaster. Higher Grounds Cafe & Roastery is located at 15th St. and Thomes Ave. downtown. It's open from 7 a.m.-5:30 p.m. weekdays. I plan on going by to check out some of its Ethiopean varieties -- and smell the coffee roasting. 

I wrote the other day about the Casper College Literary Conference Sept. 13-14 and its fine offerings. I won't repeat myself. Check it out here.

The same weekend, writer Sherwin Bitsui, who grew up on the Navajo Reservation and now lives in Tucson, will stage a public reading of his work at UW. It will be in the Wyoming Union Senate Chambers at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13. 

BeatGrass helps kick off the Freedom's Edge Brewing Company's Forever West Fest Friday, Sept. 6, at 7 p.m., in Cheyenne. Drink locally made craft beers and enjoy locally made bluegrass. 

The band Gooding is very proud of its Wichita, Kan., roots. They should be. I spent some of my formative years in Wichita and look how I turned out. Gooding will be in Cheyenne Sept. 3 for a financial literacy presentation for students at Central H.S. The band will play Sept. 7 at Midtown Tavern. You can catch their funky homemade video here. I like the fact that the band brags about using a real woman and actress from Wichita in the video instead of an anorectic model from who-knows-where. Very real. Very cool.

Finally, the Pokes return to Laramie Saturday to play Idaho. Let's see how they fare playing a non-ranked opponent on their home field.

Cheyenne and Laramie will be part of the Front Range Megaregion by 2050

Word comes from south of the border that a group of Colorado counties wants to secede. The effort is being led by commissioners in Weld County, which butts up against Laramie County in Wyoming, home of the capital city, Cheyenne, wherein I dwell.

No word yet on the new state's name. But fellow blogger Michael Bowman (Colorado Pols) labeled it The Silly State of Dumphuckistan, which seems appropriate.

I'm pleased that the is happening in my home state of Colorado instead of my adopted state of Wyoming. It's usually Republican legislators from Casper or the Big Horn Basin who are proposing dumb stuff in public, such as labeling wolves terrorists or buying an aircraft carrier for our mythical land-based navy. Sometimes its our new county commissioners of the Tea Party persuasion, the "Agenda 21 wants to take away my guns and make me live in a Hobbit home" crowd. So it's refreshing that this particular bit of nonsense comes from Colorado.

What's got these people fired up?

Liberals making laws. First of all, Liberals should not control both legislative bodies and the governor's seat. Second, they should not be making laws for the entire state. Third of all, they should not be making laws that could possibly curtail fracking, limit gun ownership and promote alternative energy. There's probably a bunch of other things but that should do it for now.

I don't blame the rural, conservative residents of this proposed new state for being angry. I live in the most populated city in the most populated county in the least populated state. As a Democrat, I have to put up with stupid laws by the rural conservative majority that abrogate workers' rights, demonize gays, feed the egos and pocketbooks of the energy companies, prohibit Obamacare, OK silencers for hunting rifles, and so on. I would secede from the State of Wyoming if I thought that I could work up the liberal minority enough to pull it off.

If I had my druthers, I would advocate for a state that placed Cheyenne and Laramie across the border into Colorado. For the most part, these two southeast Wyoming cities have more in common with Greeley and Fort Collins that they do with Lusk, Worland and Afton. Rural Wyomingites already call Cheyenne north Denver or a suburb of Fort Collins. Thing is, we already are part of one of the "emerging megaregions" that will control American politics by 2050. I will be gone by then, but my offspring will live in a reliably blue part of Wyoming. Look at this map:

The Front Range Megaregion with stretch from Laramie and Cheyenne in Wyoming to Albuquerque in New Mexico. It will vote reliably blue and will control politics in three big Rocky Mountain states. That's already happening in CO and NM. Wyoming has some catching up to do. Laramie County with its 90,000-plus population already has one-sixth of the state's population. If that keeps up and we get to, say, a million people in Wyoming in 2050, Laramie County will have a population of 167,000 with most of them in the city of Cheyenne. Since it's tough to find a city of more than 100,000 that votes Republican, Cheyenne should be reliably Democratic. As the article in The Atlantic said, "it's not people that make cities blue, it's cities that make people blue." That's because city dwellers live with within a rainbow of other cultures and sexual persuasions.When you live and work with Latinos and African-Americans and Asians and gays and lesbians and tattooed young people and cranky old folks it's hard to discriminate against them.

Democrats only hope in SeWy (Southeast Wyoming) is to keep up the drumbeat of economic development, continue to beef up our infrastructure, refurbish our downtown to make it friendly for brewpubs, cafes and boutique hotels, improve our educational system and ban the Fox Network's blowhards from our TVs and radios.

Then you can color us blue for the long haul.