June 11 bash for Dameione Cameron raises money and awareness

We attended a campaign launch party last night for Dameione Cameron. He's running as a Democrat for Senate District 7. There were a fair number of Republicans at this Dem bash, which is always a good sign in a state where Repubs outnumber Dems two-to-one or possibly even more. The crowd was also younger than usual, with an average age somewhere in the 40s. I represent the upper end of the scale. The younger cohort wandered through the crowd, signing up unsuspecting people for volunteer duty. The energy was palpable, as were the the trays of wings (spicy and not-so), bowls of watermelon and coolers filled with good beer. This was fitting for a candidate whose origins are in the Carolina low country, a practicing attorney who runs -- with Troy Rumpf, his partner of 18 years -- the best restaurant in Cheyenne, the Morris House Bistro. The Air Force brought the candidate to Cheyenne and he stayed on for the adventure, although the Clemson grad gets back to the low country as often as he can -- especially in the winter.

One interesting side note -- Dameione, Troy and the Morris House Bistro are sponsoring a little invitation-only soiree next week that leads into the Wyoming Brewer's Festival, which I and hundreds of my fellow beer lovers will attend next weekend at the Depot Plaza. The Morris House Bistro party will team up craft beers with craft foods, which is as it should be. Make mine shrimp and grits with Ellie's Brown Ale or a bomber of The Reverend from Avery Brewing in Boulder.

Cameron does not have a challenger in the Democratic primary. In the general election, he'll be running against Republican Leslie Nutting, whose name sums it up. 

Volunteer!

Vote!

Summertime in WYO

I spent the weekend with writers.

On purpose.

It was the 40th anniversary conference for Wyoming Writers, Inc., in Sheridan. Let's take stock. How many arts organizations do you know that are still alive after 40 years? I've been meeting with the same writing group in Cheyenne since the previous century. We used to gather annually at the Retreat of the Rockies with other regional writing groups from Laramie, Fort Collins and Scottsbluff. How many of those groups are extant? Ours, which we nicknamed Cheyenne Area Writers Group (CAWG) a long time ago. Both Laramie groups are gone, but there may be others. Only one of the FoCo groups are around and I hear that hellbound twisters got the Nebraskans.

Each summer, I do a summer events calendar for the Arts Council. There are always events that existed last summer that have done an el foldo for various reasons. The organizer moves to Arizona. The arts organization "has gone in other directions." Sponsors dry up and blow away.

That's OK. Not everything is meant to last forever. We happen to be living in a renaissance of outdoor music festivals and downtown gatherings of all kinds. I read in today's Casper Star-Tribune that the DDA/Main Street group in Casper traveled to Rapid City to get a look at its downtown plaza. They liked what they saw. Kids playing in the water park during the day and bands performing at night with local food and beverages being consumed. Ever been to the Firehouse Brewery in downtown Rapid City? It sits on the edge of the plaza and serves great beers and pretty good food. In March, the last time I was there, you can sip beers while warming your tootsies by the fire. You can also drink beer after the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, which may be one of the shortest in the nation.

The Star-Trib reported that the delegation was impressed with Rapid's downtown space and guessed that Casper would like one too if they can only keep the Know Nothings away from the planning meetings. You know the people I'm talking about, Seniors Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything or SWINE (tip of the hat to Al Capp). We don't want to spend our precious taxes (Wyoming -- lowest tax rates in the USA!) on an outdoor plaza! Next thing you know you'll be taking away our cars and making us live in Hobbit houses! Freedom! Something! Something! Freedom!

BTW, I'm a senior at 63. Not with the Social Security Administration or Medicare. But I do get the senior discount at Wendy's.

I'm a little off topic. We have wonderful summer events. If you don't believe me, check out this calendar. It offers hundreds of concerts, art fairs, writers conferences, quilt shows, rodeos, brewfests, children's art camps, etc. Here's a sampler of events happening this weekend:

June 13-14 — Fourth annual Chris LeDoux Days in Kaycee
13-15 -- Celtic Musical Arts Festival in Cheyenne
13-27 — John Kirlin’s Wild West Mu-Cycle Tour, Jackson to Rapid City, S.D.
13-28 — Stage III Community Theatre presents “Lysistrata” in Casper
14 — Tina Welling leads Writers in the Park workshop in Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole
14 –- Chugwater Chili Cook-Off in Chugwater
14 — Butch Cassidy Festival in Laramie
14 — Juneteenth in Cheyenne
14 — Takin’ it to the Streets in Douglas
14 — Jackson Hole Crawfish Boil in Jackson
14-15 — Hi Country Ranch Rodeo in Pinedale
14-15 — Pioneer Days at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper

I'm heading out to the Celtic Festival and Juneteenth this weekend. You might call both of these ethnic festivals. Juneteenth is an African-American celebration that marks the belated end of the Civil War. The Celtic Festival celebrates the music and art and brewmaking skills of the offspring of the Celtic tribes of northern Europe and the British Isles plus Ireland. That includes the Scots-Irish of Appalachia, the former convicts of the Aussie Outback and a whole bunch of other white people who freckle easily. I'm one of them. So is my wife Chris, who will spend Saturday staffing the YMCA booth at Juneteenth while I distribute subversive literature for the Laramie County Democrats. Later we will go over to the Depot Plaza to hang with the Cummings clan (that's Chris's tribe) and various ne'er-do-well Irish-Americans, some of whom I may be related to. We will quaff Guinness and dance (badly) to Celtic music groups.

So what did we writers do last weekend in Sheridan? Wrote. Listened to encouraging talks by writers and agents and editors. We had an awards ceremony and an annual dinner. Bought a few books. I saw old friends and they saw me. We drank a few cocktails.

Writers need to come out of their holes once in awhile to see what else is going on in the world.

Pete Gosar asks: Got science?

Refreshing to have a Wyoming gubernatorial candidate who actually believes in science and modern science education. In case you haven't been keeping up, the latest mantra of the Wyoming Know Nothings is that there is no such thing as human-caused global warming and that creationism should be taught alongside evolution. Next step, I'm sure, is to replace our children's school lunches with entrees of yummy coal. We have to get rid of it somehow! Read some of my earlier posts on the subject here and here. You can also read the Democratic Party platform here. It ain't rocket science, but it is science.

Remembering my mother and the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps

In my Memorial Day post, I listed those relatives who had passed on and were veterans of the U.S. military. I included my mother, Anna Marie Hett, who told us kids that she was trained as a U.S. Navy nurse but the war ended before she completed her training and served on active duty. My sister Eileen e-mailed me, saying that she never knew that Mom was trained as a Navy nurse. I questioned my memory, wondering if I had my stories mixed up. Memory is imperfect, after all. I Googled U.S. Navy nurses in World War II and found links to the Cadet Nurse Corps. I found a database and searched for Anna Marie Hett of Denver. I found two records on Ancestry.com. I had to sign up for a free trial and looked at the records. Sure enough, Mom had two membership cards for the corps. She signed up in her birth month of May 1944, just when she turned 18. The other card was in January of 1945. There are no other records as the war ended in August. I'll have to do more research but I do know that we have a photo of Mom is her Cadet Nurse uniform. Did she graduate as a cadet or was the program dissolved? I shall find out. Meanwhile, here is a photo of her 1944 membership card:

For those of you who didn't read my "Memorial Day roll call" post on Memorial Day, and for some reason it disappeared from my blog (What the heck, Blogger?), here it is again:

Remembering family members who served and are no longer with us:

Raymond Shay, U.S. Army and Iowa National Guard, World War I and Mexican Border Campaign, buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery with his wife, my grandmother --

Florence Green Shay, U.S. Army nurse, World War I

Thomas R. Shay, U.S. Army Signal Corps, World War II ETO

Daniel Shay, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam-era

Patrick Shay, U.S. Air Force

My mother, Anna Hett Shay, was trained as a U.S. Navy nurse but never saw active duty.

My father-in-law, Jack Schweiger, CWO4, U.S. Army, World War II, Korea and Vietnam, buried with his wife Ann in Arlington National Cemetery. They travelled the world and raised two kids in the process, Ellen Schweiger Berry, who married a 20-year Navy man, and Christine Schweiger Shay, who married me.

Thanks for your service. We miss you all.

Sunday morning round-up: Job's suffering, Dems gathering and summer fun

I am thinking today of a friend and a relative, both having trouble with their bipolar illnesses. One is in a treatment center and the other is debilitated by anxiety. I am thinking about them and praying for them. You have to pray extra hard for people seeking treatment for mental illness. There's the stigma, of course. There's also the fact that resources are limited, not because they don't exist but because we are a rural state that lacks mental health professionals and treatment centers. Some people go without because they can't afford it. They may be members of the working poor who would benefit from Medicaid Expansion which Republicans in Wyoming continue to block. Some people may not know where to turn. Finding help can be a daunting task, one that takes know-how and moxie and the patience of Job, who experienced many trials:

My skin turns black and falls from me,
and my bones burn with heat.
My lyre is turned to mourning,
and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

We are not taking care of "those who weep." 

Registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats 2-to-1 in Wyoming. The odds aren't nearly as lopsided in Laramie County, the most populous in the state. We elect Dems to the Legislature in this county: Floyd Esquibel, Ken Esquibel, Jim Byrd, Mary Throne, Lee Filer. There have been others, too. Not nearly enough, but it's a start. Come out today from 2-5 p.m. to a Dem attention-getter and fund-raiser at A&B Camping, 1503 College Drive. Meet the incumbents and three candidates running for the first time  Tix are $15 and include some great A&B barbecue and a big helping of camaraderie. Invite your friend or neighbor, the one who often wonders aloud: "Are there any Democrats in Wyoming?"

He or she may be the same person who says "There's nothing to do in Cheyenne." Usually those are our teen children, morose little beasts, who think nothing of packing a dozen of their friends into a car for a concert in Denver but won't go to Ernie November concerts downtown or one of the many summer outdoor events. The Wyoming Arts Council has put together a summer calendar on its web site. It's chock-full of music festivals, brewfests, mountain bike rallies, powwows and so on. Our summers may be short but they are filled to the brim with stuff to do. Cheyenne has the Hispanic Festival, Juneteenth, the Celtic Music Festival, Wyoming Brewfest and Superday -- and that's just in June. Jackson's first-ever Wild Festival promises to be very cool. It's a week-long mix of plein air painting, solstice celebration, raptor appreciation and music, plus all of the good vibes that go with being in Jackson on a glorious summer day. Donkey Creek Festival in Gillette has some neat bands lined up and the Nic Fest in Casper celebrates the culture of Brazil, site of this year's World Cup. And for those of you 21 and older, there are brewfests galore. Go to the WAC summer calendar and prepare to be entertained.

Cindy Hill has a manifesto and a little red book

Cindy Hill may be a commie.

She has a “little red book” just like Chairman Mao. She has written a “manifesto” just like Karl Marx.

So wazzup with Cindy?

She’s running for governor against the Republican incumbent, Matt Mead, and another Repub challenger, Taylor Haynes, a physician, rancher and Tea Party fave.

At least they’re not commies.

My kids and my nieces and nephews and all of their fellow travelers may not know what a commie is. They probably don’t even know what a “fellow traveler” is. No, it has nothing to with travel. It has everything to do with hanging out with commies, traveling in the same circles. If it quacks like a duck…

And so on.

Monday's CasperStar-Tribune explored Ms. Hill’s little red book and manifesto. The newspaper found some inaccuracies in Hill's online manifesto, which is hardly surprising when it comes to our Superintendent of Public Instruction. Remember that when she ran in 2010 she argued for the teaching of creationism side-by-side with evolution. She must believe that the dinos, such as our very own Allosaurus, accompanied our human ancestors as they searched the high prairie for edible plants and small game.

Prehistoric Man: What do you think, Al. Should I eat this pretty plant?

Al O. Saurus (rolling his eyes): Sure, man, it’s not poisonous.

Prehistoric Man eats plant, keels over and dies.

Al: Silly man. This race of cretins is never going to make it. The dinosaurs shall inherit the earth.

That’s the thing about dinos – they had brains the size of walnuts. We had much bigger brains and survived, leading to today’s Republicans who don’t believe in global warming because… well, just because.

Getting famous for all of the wrong reasons

Maybe that should be "infamous?"

The New York Times again weighed in on Wyoming's controversy surrounding science education in our public schools.

Let's recap. At the tail end of the most recent legislative session, Republicans stuck a little footnote onto an education bill that would prohibit using national science education standards in our classrooms. Wyoming is the first state to legislate against the standards.

What's the fuss all about? The standards teach that global warming is caused by humans burning fossil fuels.Wyoming gets most of its income from digging up coal and drilling for oil and natural gas. Some legislators thought it was counter-productive and possibly unpatriotic to teach kids that the coal lighting their classrooms and paying a big portion of their teachers' salaries was destined to kill off the human race.

The New York Times sent a reporter to Wyoming to see what the hubbub was about. It was a good article, one you can read more about here.

The NYT Editorial Board followed up with an op-ed piece Saturday that carried this headline: "Willful Ignorance in Wyoming." It's short and to the point. "Willful ignorance" sums it up pretty well. Take a few minutes to read it here.

Laramie County Democrats hold 2014 campaign kick-off June 1

The Laramie County Democrats will hold its 2014 campaign kick-off on Sunday, June 1, 2-5 p.m. All the action will take place in the pavilion at A&B Camping, 1503 W. College Ave., Cheyenne.

Any of you who know the barbecue at A&B will want to come out for the pulled pork, beef and brisket. Stay to meet the Dem candidates, some of whom will be making their first public appearance that features bbq and beer: Mike Wieland, HD9, Gaylan Wright, HD10 and Dameione Cameron, SD44. Incumbents include Rep. Mary Throne, HD11, Rep. Ken Esquibel, HD41, Rep. James Byrd, HD44 and Rep. Lee Filer HD12, our co-sponsor for the event.

Tickets are $15 per person, with children ages 6-10 $10 and 5-and-under free. This is a fund-raiser, so I encourage you to buy tickets early and often to support those who work for science education, the arts, economic development, health care for everyone, renewable resources and all other sensible and human-friendly policies.

I have a few tickets sitting beside my home computer. Leave a comment and tell me how many you want. You can buy tix on-site but we'd like to get a head count in advance so we don't run out of grub.

See you at the kick-off.

Sunday morning round-up: Interesting weather we're having

This week's Sunday morning round-up looks at the weather. Summer is poised to arrive after several false starts. Cheyenne received 14 inches of heavy wet snow two Sundays ago. The morning after, I broke my car's front windshield using my snow shovel to remove the cement-like mixture so I could get to work. I lifted a shovel-full of the stuff and the shovel and snow came crashing down and shattered the glass.When I made a claim with Farmers Insurance, which spends millions on clever commercials, there was disbelief on the other end of the line.

"Snow? Where are you?"

"Wyoming."

"It's still snowing in Wyoming?"

"We've had snow in every month but July. Where are you?"

"Oklahoma City."

"You guys get all of those tornadoes."

"Yeah. Maybe snow isn't so bad."

This past week, we had tornadoes near Gillette, Wheatland and on top of Casper Mountain. Hail, too. Just down the road in Loveland, Colorado, 5.5 inches of rain fell in four hours on Friday, causing fears that the floods of September 2013 were making a repeat performance. Funnel clouds closed Denver International Airport last week. I can tell when DIA closes because its jets land in my backyard. My house is adjacent to the airport, which has a runway long enough to handle United/Southwest/Frontier airliners. On some summer afternoons, you can see a half-dozen of them huddling near our miniscule terminal, waiting for the skies to clear over Denver, just 100 miles to our south.

So Wyoming gets snow, monsoon rains, hail and tornadoes. But our twisters are not the monsters they get in Oklahoma. Picturesque, though. Take a look....

Northeast Wyoming supercell captured by University of Oklahoma storm-chasers. 

Casper Mountain tornado captured by Amanda Olson and featured on the Casper Star-Tribune web site.

New York Times wades into Wyoming's battle over science standards

The Sunday New York Times had a good article about Wyoming's ongoing wrangle over science standards. It was fair and balanced in the old-fashioned meaning of fair and balanced -- used without air quotes or on Fox News.

It featured a photo of our refinery, which is less than picturesque on its best days, and another photo of a young student getting off a rural school bus on a rainy day. But the main photo showed Roger Spears, science coordinator for the school district in Yoder (pop. 155) in Land o' Goshen County. He was teaching a lesson to some kids at Southeast Elementary. He was dressed in a tie-dyed lab coat. He looked as if he was having fun and so did the kids. Mr. Spears likes teaching and he believes in science, which is why his school district adopted the standards that we're now arguing about.

Go read it at the New York Times site.

You have to be a little bit wonky to enjoy platform debate

You have to be a little bit wonky to like the debate over a party platform.

I'm a little bit wonky.

But I have to hand it to the platform committee who met for eight hours yesterday in a windowless, airless hotel room to combine all of the county platforms. How they survived eight hours without air is a question for another day. They may have been revived by happy hour.

The platform is important in stating what the Democrats actually support. Workers' rights, free speech, a living wage, social justice, science education, voting rights, renewable energy, the future, unfettered humor, etc.

We heard today that the Republican platform is 52 pages. Takes a lot of paper to tell the litany of what you're against. "You darn kids stay off of my lawn!" Takes a lot less space to state what you're for. The Dem platform is eight pages. That was before we Dems engaged in this afternoon's wordsmithing.

The revised platform will soon be accessible on the Wyoming Democratic Party web site. The draft is up there now.

Democrat Pete Gosar announces campaign for Wyoming governor

Pete Gosar of Laramie just announced that he's running for governor. This is welcome news. In his very short speech, he said that as the seventh of ten kids in a Catholic family. His mom gave him some good advice, that if he should ever get the microphone, say your thank yous first. Pete thanked all of those people who supported him during his year-long stint at Dem Party chair. Then he said he was looking forward to being our next governor. I'm the oldest of nine in a Catholic family. This is my microphone. So thank you, Pete. And I'm looking forward to Gov Pete. Let's get to work!

Dems rock in Rock Springs

Rep. Stan Blake from Rock Springs joins the band for a lively rendition of "Truckin'" at Friday night's reception. The band is The B Sharps. The lead singer said they played for the Republicans a few weeks earlier and we were by far a livelier crowd. Wonder if they played the Dead for the Repubs? Would that be redundant?

I missed it.

I arrived at the state Democratic convention in Rock Springs just a few minutes after Laramie's Pete Gosar stepped down as state party chair and Ana Cuprill of Pinedale took his place. Ana is the state party's first Latina chair! Pete hinted that he has another announcement set for the today. We can only guess what that might be but won't.

While gnoshing at the reception put on by the Sweetwater County Democrats, I ran into two of my fellow writers -- Barb Smith from Rock Springs and Kayne Pyatt from Evanston. Kayne has opened a shop in downtown Evanston called Serendipity and it features "books, antiques and coffee shop." She invited me over for a visit. Don't get to E-ton very often as it's on the opposite end of I-80 from Cheyenne. But it gives me pleasure to know that people are still opening book stores. Go TO Facebook and like Serendipity Books & Antiques on Facebook.

Ran into Mike Ceballos, Dem candidate for superintendent of public instruction. He has his work cut out for him, as does any Dem in WYO. He's assembled a fantastic team though, and he has one great asset -- he's not Cindy Hill, the beleaguered current superintendent who's spent more time in the headlines than in her office. Mike says that he'll be walking the state, which is what you have to do to get elected in our huge state. He keeps meeting people who say they voted for the Dem candidate Mike Massie in 2010. I do too. After the past four years, seems as if everyone (especially Rs) wants to put some distance to their 2010 voting preferences. If all those who said they voted for Massie actually did, how did he lose so badly? Remember, 2010 was the anti-Obama year, when multitudes voted the straight R ticket almost without thinking. What were they thinking? Thinking?

Today we convene for the convention. The hard work is done on Friday when the platform committee met for eight hours to hammer out a working document from those submitted by the county parties. We get to see the fruits of their labor today. Kathy Karpan is the luncheon speaker and activist Delores Huerta speaks at tonight's banquet. More later....

Sunday morning round-up: Dems gather next weekend in Rock Springs

In my Sunday morning round-up, I want to salute the weather -- what kind of salute I won't reveal. Snow today and some lingering flurries tomorrow. Another reason we call this season "sprinter" instead of spring. I-80 is closed!

Hope it clears up by Friday when I trek to the Wyoming Democratic Party state convention in Rock Springs. Rock Springs is an old mining and railroad town, one with a neat mix of ethnic traditions -- International Day is held every summer -- and a long union history. Homie Kathy Karpan once told me that she grew up thinking that everyone in Wyoming was a Democrat. Imagine that in present-day WYO? Karpan is the luncheon speaker at the convention. California social justice activist Delores Huerta is the keynote speaker. Learn more about her here.

Rock Springs is honeycombed with old mine shafts. Its surface is criss-crossed with rail tracks and I-80. The Downtown development Association/Main Street group is doing some keen things in the city's center. The railroad splits downtown and the old train depot is now the visitor center. Bitter Creek Brewing inhabits an old brick building on Broadway and down the street is the renovated Wyoming Theatre. The community college has some great arts programs, including a Friday Night Live writers' series that I was part of in February. The main campus building is a sprawling structure perched on a bluff. Dinosaur skeletons lurk around every corner. T-Rex dominates the cafeteria space. One can look through T-Rex's ribs, out the big picture windows and see the billion-year-old rock outcroppings that must be honeycombed with skulls and teeth and leg bones and many secrets of earth's past.

This Democratic Party gathering will feature a host of new legislative candidates. That's exciting -- more about that next week when I report on-site. Wyoming Equality will be there to talk about its marriage equality lawsuit against the state. The way that marriage restrictions are giving way to reason around the U.S., it won't be long until WYO joins the fold. A plank supporting marriage equality will certainly make it into the party platform. Another plank will address climate change, although there certainly will be something about using our rich coal, oil and gas deposits for energy independence. Nationally, the Dems try to have it both ways. Support renewable energy while also backing carbon fuels. Politics demands it. Many Dems work in those trades and the jobs, for the most part, are good union jobs. So we have a split personality. I haven't read the Republican Party platform, but am certain that it lacks any mention of human-caused climate change. Republicans made it clear during the most recent legislative session that they don't even want the word uttered and especially don't want the concept taught in the classroom.

King Coal stills rules the roost.

So it's snowing today. But we're pretty sure that summer is coming. The good folks at the Wyoming Arts Council have assembled a summer calendar of fun events. It's a crowded schedule of art fairs, music festivals, writers' conferences, brewfests, county fairs and other assorted outdoor celebrations such as Jackalope Days and Jake Clark's Mule Days. Something for everyone. Check out the list here.

Freedom to read under threat in South Carolina

As a Wyomingite, I can't really complain about another state's legislature's interference in the affairs of higher learning without bringing up some of our own home-grown depredations.

Remember how loudly Wyoming Republican lawmakers complained when former leftie radical Bill Ayers was invited to speak at UW? And, to be fair, it wasn't only Republicans. UW grad and Democratic Governor Dave Freudenthal lodged a complaint about Ayers. And remember how lawmakers screamed about the climate-change-themed "Carbon Sink" sculpture at UW? They fulminated long and loud enough to force the UW administration to spirit away the sculpture in the dead of night, burning parts of it in the UW power plant. 

So now the South Carolina Legislature wants to slash the budgets of the College of Charleston and University of South Carolina Upstate for forcing their delicate southern flowers to read LGBTQ-themed books. Conservatives in the S.C. Legislature discovered that College of Charleston and USC students were reading gay literature. Ironic in that a South Carolina-based press published Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio -- that's Hub City in Spartanburg. I hate to bring this up but publishing is one of the "creative economy" enterprises that has helped Spartanburg show up on all those "best places to live" lists the past few years. Maybe that's what really upset the legislators. After all, literacy and creative economy and smart growth are all part of the liberal conspiracy to ruin America. Next thing you know, the U.N. will be making all of us read gay books, forcing us to live in Hobbit homes, confiscating our cars and making us ride fat-tire bicycles.

This comes from Friday's The Guardian:

The College of Charleston ran into trouble after assigning Alison Bechdel's acclaimed Fun Home to students; the graphic novel details Bechdel's coming out as a lesbian as a teenager, and her relationship with her closeted father. The University of South Carolina Upstate, meanwhile, was teaching a collection of radio stories about being gay, Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio. Earlier this year, funding to the two schools of almost $70,000 (£40,000) was threatened because of the choices, described as pornographic and "forcing an agenda on teenagers" by their opponents; the issue has been under debate in the state senate this week, and authors have been coming together to stand up for LGBTQ rights.

I know a bit about the conservative South Carolina Legislature. I was a student at USC in Columbia for two years, 1969-1971. Those were stormy years.Vietnam and Kent State and riots in the streets. The Lege met right down the street from USC and its members fumed when long-haired hippies marched on the storied campus, its horseshoe once the site of a field hospital for troops wounded defending the city from that devil Sherman. Big Daddy Gov sent in the National Guard and state goons to put an end to it, busting a few heads in the process. It wasn't the National Guard who did the dirty work. They were mostly our age and not nearly as angry about protesters as the billy-club-swinging white state cops who were the age of our fathers. Heavy-handed techniques against students are not new to South Carolina or any other state. We saw some prime examples during the Occupy Movement.

So what to do? Hell, it's graduation time! Who has time to pay attention to anal-retentive legislators when there are parties to attend and beer to drink? And we still don't have a job!

Some of the most outspoken and radical people I ever met were in Columbia during that earlier trying time. You have to remember that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. were southerners, as were Jimmy Carter and Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. Not to mention all of those wonderful southern writers such as Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor and Harry Crews and Lee Smith and all the rest. Richard Ford has been outspoken in his opposition to this latest travesty (witness the graphic above).

Go to Writers Speaking Out Loud to voice your discontent. Remember that many outspoken peace and civil rights and free speech and freedom to read advocates walked before you. Speak out like you mean it!

Wyoming Writers, Inc., members gather June 6-8 for 40th anniversary conference

 

This is a great organization that puts on a great conference. I'm a member. If you're a writer in Wyoming (or vicinity) you should be too.

Here's the lowdown:

Anyone interested in writing will learn more about the art at the 40^th Anniversary writing conference of Wyoming Writers, Inc. June 6-8, 2014 in Sheridan.

Keynote speaker, Mark Spragg (pictured above), Cody author and screenwriter; opening speaker Chuck Sambuchino, editor and author from Writers Digest; Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction; and Wyoming poet Echo Klaproth will present workshops. Agents April Eberhardt and Jessica Sinsheimer conduct workshops on publishing and are available for pitching that favorite manuscript.

Join others at critique tables or open mic nights. Get tips from a paddle panel. Buy a book offering resources on writing or choose one authored by faculty and member authors.

Students attend at a reduced rate.

For more information on joining Wyoming Writers, Inc. or attending the conference, call Neva Bodin, 307-234-4535 or go to www.wyowriters.org.

Miss Atomic Bomb did not exist -- but she could have

Hubba hubba! Alas, this Miss Atomic Bomb never really existed. She has a neat story though at http://digital.library.unlv.edu/objects/nts/1226

Ground zero, baby!

That phrase would look good on a T-shirt. Mushroom cloud in background. "Welcome to Cheyenne" logo on there somewhere.

Cheyenne is ground zero should the Russkis ever get tired of harassing Ukrainian grandmothers and get back to their Cold War role of harassing humankind. Laramie County has loads of Minuteman IIIs, baby. And despite the fact that some nuke officers heads rolled over recent cheating improprieties (did you see last Sunday's "60 Minutes" piece about our local missile ranch?), armed missiles still dwell on our prairie, ready for launch.

F.E. Warren AFB went nuclear in 1958. Several generations of Cheyenne residents have been hatched since then. Which begs the question: why aren't there more signs of The Nuclear Age in our fair city? We have the base, sure, and there's an impressive array of missiles flanking the main entrance. And Missile Drive snakes its way a short distance through town. But where are the Atomic Cafes and the Nuclear Sushi Bars? If I was starting a craft brewery, I would call it Nuke Brews or Atomic Brewing. I'd name my beers after Cold War icons -- Red Scare Ale, Fail-Safe IPA, Pershing Porter. Our motto: "Glow-in-the-dark goodness."

There is an Atomic Advertising listed in the Yellow Pages. And we have the venerable Atlas Theatre downtown, as well as the Atlas Motel  (not so venerable), Atlas Towing and Atlas Van Lines. Thing is, those places named Atlas may have the same namesake of Atlas the rocket -- the great god Atlas of Greek mythology, the Titan who held up the world. Titan -- another great name for a missile. 

If NYC can have a big-ass Atlas statue, why can't we?

What other towns can claim ground zero honors? Minot, N.D., and Great Falls, Mont. That's good -- we can all be the three points of a Rocky Mountain Nuke Tour. T-shirts all around. We are getting a state park at a former nuke control center north of town. That's a start.

Nukes are no joke, you might say. But the dark humor tradition demands that we turn mutually assured destruction (MAD, like the magazine) into 21st century kitsch.

The Cold War years were 1947-1991. That's a 44-year span, a couple generations worth of humans living under the threat of nuclear annihilation. There's some history to preserve there, many memories.Consider that Cheyenne was established as a railroad camp in 1867 and Wyoming became a state in 1890. The Cold War era represents 30 percent of the time the city's existed and 35 percent -- more than one-third -- of the time we've been a state. If I just consider my time on earth, two-thirds of my life was spent as a noncombatant but a very real target of the Cold War. I don't want a medal. I just want that time to be remembered for what it was.

For the military, the Cold War went from September 1945 -- the month after the end of the hot war -- to Dec. 26, 1991. The Cold War Veterans of America are lobbying Congress to make May 1 a Cold War Remembrance Day. I suppose it's no coincidence that May 1 was once a national holiday in the Soviet Union. My father was on occupation duty in Germany through the end of 1945, which makes him a Cold War veteran. Korea and Vietnam and even Gulf War I military are Cold War veterans -- those first two would never have happened without without the paranoid fever engendered by the commie menace. Veterans also want to build a monument to the Cold War -- lest we forget. Millions of Americans have been born since the end of 1991 -- my daughter, for one -- and they have nary a clue about the Cold War. They have the residue of their own wars to deal with.

We need to remember the Cold War right here in Cheyenne. I would love to see Cold War-themed public art. Not boring old representational bronzes. Let's use some imagination, as much creativity as went into Mutually Assured Destruction and the fail-safe device and "peacekeepers" and bomb shelters and "Dr. Strangelove" and Red Scares and "Star Wars" defense systems and blacklists and Richard Nixon and the domino theory and the Miss Atomic Bomb pageant and all the rest. It's a mother lode of material. Let's use it before it's forgotten -- or whitewashed. 

Sunday morning round-up: Workers Memorial Day, pipeline protest and Microsoft taking over Cheyenne

I work in front of a computer in a temperature-controlled office. It's hard to imagine being injured or killed on the job.

But workers die every day in the oil patch, in mines, on the construction site, in factories and driving truck. It's tough work. Pays well (mostly), but the risks can be enormous.

Wyoming doesn't have a sterling record when it comes to workplace safety. The state marks Workers Memorial Day on Monday, April 28, in the State Capitol Rotunda. Get the details at the Equality State Policy Center web site.

At Friday's Cheyenne rally opposing the XL Pipeline.

Good turn-out Friday at the rally opposing the XL Pipeline. It was organized by Edith Cook who writes amazing columns for the local paper. BTW, if you'd like to read her words in their raw form before they go under the editor's knife, go here. She's a good writer and researcher. Her columns stir the blood and rile up the energy industry and its apologists. They incite a hue and cry from the right-wing crazies, who must all be unemployed as they seem to have plenty of time to pen angry online responses -- witness the recent online dust-up over Wyoming's proposed immigration resettlement program.

Edith spoke at the rally yesterday. Many protestors wore hazmat suits in keeping with the topics of tar sands and oil spills. I saw some familiar faces and met new people, some from Laramie and Fort Collins. After the speakers, everyone made a circuit around the Capitol, chanting about environmental trespasses and the legislature's recent efforts to dumb-down our schools' science curriculum. We will need well-educated scientists to solve some of the problems that science and technology have wrought over the years. Teaching kids that coal is earth's yummy candy and oil is mother's milk is not the solution.

News came in yesterday's paper that Microsoft is adding on to its data center here in Cheyenne. Its property is west of town in the North Range Business Park, adjacent to NCAR's super-computing center. We're going high-tech around here. Microsoft honchos seem to like working with business promoters such as Cheyenne LEADS. They also like southeast Wyoming's computer connectivity and its cool weather, which keeps down energy costs. Wyoming will be far from high tides caused by 21st century global warming which doesn't exist anyway.

It's all good for the economy. The initial Microsoft construction brought 400 jobs. While not all of these jobs employed locals, lots of dough was spent buying food and supplies and lodging and vehicles. As is the case with any Wyoming building project, workers were imported from Fort Collins and Greeley and Denver and  other exotic climes. Some skilled workers prefer Colorado to Wyoming, as it's the homeland of their forebears, dwelling place of the Broncos and Rockies, and purveyor of find suds and smoke. Cheyenne, of course, is a working person's city, with its refinery, chemical plant, military base, mega-truck-stops and sprawling fulfillment centers. A skilled union pipefitter can live in Fort Collins, work in Cheyenne and then hunt, fish, boat and hike all over Wyoming. We're also drawing many of our high-tech workers from ColoradoLand. Borders, it seems, are permeable when it comes to employment -- not so much when it comes to immigration issues.

 

We all put the "community" in "community college"

Remember the term "junior college?"

That's what we called a "community college" back in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a perfectly fine term. These institutions of higher learning were not quite as high-minded as colleges and universities so they were called "junior." When I was in high schools (1965-69), the term usually was said in a slightly condescending way, as in "he's going to the junior college." You know, grades 13 and 14.

Commuting to class and living with your parents. Seeing those same creepy people every day that made your high school years a living hell. Working that same stupid fast-food job you had at 16. Partying at the same old places.

Meanwhile, college-bound kids such as me jetted off to distant destinations where we discovered dorm living and seeing creepy people who went to other boring high schools and working some stupid fast-food job near campus or busing tables at a sorority. Partying at some new places but doing the same old things.

Sometimes going away to school didn't work out and a guy like me found his way back to his hometown and a trip to his junior college. All those kids I knew who went there were now off to a university somewhere. Or married. Or in Vietnam. Don't forget that a junior college draft deferment worked just as well as one to Harvard.

I spent a year in junior college and loved it. I started the same year that I should have graduated. At that point, the draft had passed me by and so had many of my bad habits. I shared a house with an old high school chum. Worked nights as an orderly in the county hospital's drug and alcohol unit. I sometimes had to attend to people my own age who were wigged out on acid or strung out on heroin. Most nights, I partied after work with my coworkers, drinking and smoking pot, secure in the knowledge that we would never end up as patients in our own unit.

I graduated from Daytona Beach Community College with an A.A. degree. That earned me an entrance into the University of Florida where I graduated with a B.A. in English in 1976. I wouldn't have made it without the help of the junior-type college in my hometown. It later became a community college and, later still, a four-year college. I hope it never loses sight of the fact that it can be a lifeline for those people who need a little time and extra attention to move on. A dozen years after my UF graduation, I was admitted into a graduate program and graduated four years later with an M.F.A., when I was 41 years old.

I was a little older and a little bit wiser as a community college student. Maybe that's why I got so much out of my classes. It couldn't be that they were just damn fine classes. I was introduced to writers Tom Robbins and Walker Percy in an English class led by Phil Drimmel. I'd never even heard of those writers before "Another Roadside Attraction" and "Love in the Ruins" got on Mr. Drimmel's syllabus. I made my first-ever public speech in a speech class that I took as a lark -- I've made hundreds of speeches and emceed many events since. I learned about some obscure classical art in a humanities class. I remember them well. This was the first time that I could freely call myself an English major and not a science major. It was freeing. I was writing in my spare time and trying to figure out how to get published.

I thought about all this last Thursday night when Chris and I attended a reception put on the the Laramie County Community College (LCCC) Foundation. The foundation's Lifetime Heritage Society honored Dr. Robert Prentice and Dr. Sandra Surbrugg for their donations of money and time and attention to college arts and humanities programs, notably the Literary Connection. As a writer, I've attended every Literary Connection since it began in 2004. My employer, the Wyoming Arts Council, has provided grants for it. The YMCA, where Chris works, has been a partner since the beginning. Chris and I used to be on the planning committee until the foundation took over a few years ago. It takes a village to put on any worthwhile arts event.

Drs. Prentice and Surbrugg put on a Literary Connection dinner every year at their sprawling home north of town. They foot the bill for the event, held on the ground floor surrounded by the artwork and books they collected over the years. Good food, great conversation, and a chance to chat with writers such as Tim O'Brien, Poe Ballantine, Pam Houston and many others. Also a great time to talk with members of the foundation, faculty and the community college's elected board. We're not all cut from the same political cloth, which makes conversation interesting.

Sandra owes her medical career to LCCC. The college let her take two classes so she could enter the University of Colorado Medical School. She needed the classes to satisfy the entrance requirements and needed them immediately. Sandra said:

"I may not have gotten a degree from LCCC, but if it hadn't been for LCCC, I wouldn't have been able to enter medical school. You feel like you have to give back."

She and her husband have given back in a big way.

I've taught as an adjunct at LCCC a number of times. My daughter's been a student there. My son has an A.A. degree from Pima Community College in Tucson. Chris went to a community college. Our taxes help pay for LCCC and we get out to vote for sixth-penny tax measures that build new facilities.

There's a lot of "community" in "community college."

The Great D&D Panic of the 1990s

BBC just featured a story about "The Great Dungeons & Dragons Panic of the 1980s."

For our family, it was "The Great Dungeons & Dragons Panic of the 1990s."

Our son Kevin was a big D&D fan. He and his junior high buddies used to crowd around the kitchen table with their chips and Mountain Dew and play D&D into the wee hours. This was also the time of The Great Columbine Panic of 1999, in which parents all along the Front Range were inspecting their teen boys of any predilection for walking into school and murdering a dozen of their classmates. The two scares went hand in hand, joining the usual paranoia that goes along with raising a teen in America.

Later, in the new century, we got to add terrorism and joining the military and drug use and suicide into this heady brew. It's a wonder our boys -- most of them -- made it into adulthood.

In the BBC article, veteran roleplayer Andy Smith sums of the panic this way:

"The view of roleplaying games has changed over time, mostly because the predicted 'streets awash with the blood of innocents as a horde of demonically-possessed roleplayers laid waste to the country' simply never materialised."

"Materialised" with an "s." I love the Brits.

Kevin's role-playing friends included a young man who hated school and grew up to be an accomplished truck mechanic, another young man with an active imagination who now spends most of his time in his mother's basement, another who is a computer guy with a very good IT job, another who is in a rock band in Denver and makes some fine home-brewed beer, and at least one girl -- I don't know what she's doing these days. And then it gets difficult. Two of members of this roleplaying crowd are no longer with us. Both dead by suicide in their 20s. One hung himself and one blew his brains out with a gun. I went to both of their funerals and have only been more sad at the funerals of two of my brothers, dead from pneumonia and cancer.

One of these young men was a very talented artist. He had just finished art school in Denver and had returned to Cheyenne. Not sure what happened to make him take the final plunge. He was a mysterious teen. He wore one of those long western coats to school, the same coat worn by the two killers at Columbine. After April 20, 1999, junior high administrators told him to stop wearing the coat to school. He refused. His diminutive German-born mother went toe-to-toe with school officials and got them to back off. Last time I saw here was at her son's funeral. I will always wonder what was going through her head that day.

The other casualty of those years was a skateboarder who couldn't go straight. He was a hardcore druggie and just seemed to be getting his life back on track when his young wife found him hanging in the closet. I remember him as a friendly kid whom I didn't want my son to hang out with. But he did. He later went to drug treatment for a year. He still has some struggles but graduated from community college and lives a thousand miles away with his girlfriend who seems nice on the phone.

So did D&D have anything to do with these later life traumas? I am not sure. Some innocent blood was spilled, but the violence was mostly self-inflicted. My wife Chris and I were concerned with D&D overdose at the time. When we asked Kevin about it, he thought we were being silly. Just wait until he brings kids into this crazy world.

Those roleplaying D&D kids always seemed to have such a raucous good time. A bunch of likable nerds.

Onward, aggies and artists!

This time last week, the snow fell and the wind blew. By the end of Sunday, my yard looked more like January than April.

The day before, I was thinking of outdoors and gardening and growing things, so after a workout at the YMCA, I drove by Grant Farms on Lincolnway to see if it was open. Baskets of peonies hung from the front porch and I saw people working inside so I dropped in.

"Just so you know, I'll be bringing all those plants inside tonight," said the woman at the counter. "Didn't want you to get the wrong idea."

Right. It's not time for peonies or other colorful outside growing things. Soon, though. I asked her if I could plant the onion sets she had on display. She said I was probably OK, as they were hardy and most of the plant is in the ground which is gradually warming up.

I bought some onion sets (I liked the name -- Red Zeppelin) and herbs and potting soil and seeds, just so I could feel as if gardening time was upon us.

The Grant Farms store in Cheyenne is alive and kicking after 30-some years. It once was a fruit and veggie stand run by a couple who lived in the house just behind the retail store. A fruit and veggie stand -- an old-fashioned idea that now is new-fashioned in this age of local produce and eggs and meat and chicken coops in the backyard. Grant Farms has a CSA with produce grown in Wellington and its own eggs and other fruits and veggies grown by other small organic growers to our south. The larger Grant Farms company declared bankruptcy last year after a search for a long-term investor went awry. Founder Andy Grant is a CSU grad who blazed the trail for other CSAs and organic farms and locavores in the region. CSU students used to be known as Aggies, this the big whitewashed "A" on the hill west of town. It's still an ag school but now also produces an array of annoying artists and musicians and writers such as yours truly. They feed the burgeoning FoCo music and arts scene, and some even wander up the road to Cheyenne.

I often wonder about the connections among the local food, craft beer and arts scenes. What came first -- the hand-crafted beer or the locally-sourced egg? In 1988-89, I was a member of the Fort Collins Food Co-op. At the time, it seemed like a holdover from the town's hippie days. Most of the shoppers were my age (late 30s) -- younger people in those days didn't seem concerned about the origins and quality of their food. Now they talk about free-range chickens and locally-sourced veggies and free trade coffee. Wonder how that's playing out in the Ag school? Do corporate farms and seed companies and fertilizer conglomerates still rule the roost? Or has "small and local" entered the classroom and lab? What about it, Aggies? There were 1,200 Future Farmers of America kids in town last week for the annual convention. Certainly all of those kids aren't thinking corporate, are they?

My grandparents' roots are rural. I came up in the city and suburbs. My parents were raised in the city. They never talked about "going back to land" -- their future was in accounting and nursing. Some of the earthier Boomer children did talk about "getting back to the land" although very few actually did it. Never in a million years would I have considered farming as an occupation. I know a gardener is miles removed from being a farmer. Still, backyard gardens are feeding a lot of people these days. City gardens are cropping up on patios and rooftops and vacant lots. The greening of the city, some people call it. Prowling the web I see all kinds of innovative ideas for high-rises that include vertical gardens.

The future belongs to the innovators. Aggies and artists.

Happy 420 Day to all of my friends and relatives in Colorado

Read the cover story at the Psychedelic Library.

Tomorrow, 04/20/14, is 420 day in Colorado. I only recently became aware that 420 was code for marijuana, pot, weed, ganja, reefer, cannabis, etc. It seems silly that a product with so many nicknames would also need one that was numbers only, but there you have it. The origin of the term is complicated. The answer seems to lie with a group of stoners who attended San Rafael High School in Marin County in 1970. You can read the story at 420 Magazine, the source for all things 420.

This only goes to show my advanced age. I was one of the first 12 million or so who had tried pot by Oct. 31, 1969, if one can believe stats in the esteemed Life Magazine (see above).

Public school kids turned on this Catholic school kid to demon weed (figures, doesn't it?). We all worked together at a combination pancake house and Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Daytona Beach, Fla. They asked me if I wanted to get high and go see a concert. Sure, I said, thinking we were going to get some adults to buy us booze and see one of the local rock groups play.

On our way to the concert, Ronnie took out his marijuana stash. He taught me how to smoke a joint. It was quite a ritual, one that spoke to my Catholic roots. I always enjoyed the ritual more than the high -- maybe that speaks volumes about my life. Once we were suitably stoned, we went to a club and saw a group called the Hour Glass in concert. Only later did I realize that these guys would become the Allman Brothers Band, they of "Live at Fillmore East" and the legend of Duane Allman. The Allmans had grown up in Daytona and attended Seabreeze High School, where my pot-smoking pals all went to school.

So now I was 17 and had tried pot. I thought it was pretty cool. It was a different high than Boone's Farm or beer. I liked it, but not enough to keep smoking. I was a jock, after all, and smoking anything was verboten, as was hanging out with hippies, surfing during basketball season, indulging in premarital sex, taking God's name in vain and coveting my neighbor's ass, which was pretty fine if I remember correctly.

My first two years of college, 1969-1971, are kind of a blur. I was trying to smoke as much pot as possible in order to remain firmly entrenched in the minds of the Life Magazine editorial staff, most of whom were the same age as my parents and equally clueless. And I continued smoking for some reason. By the late 1970s, I had left marijuana behind, realizing that it's tough to engage fully in an adult lifestyle while slackin' with Dr. Ganja. I had moved to Denver by then, the future capital city of the 420 legal pot crowd. Strangely enough, the drug of choice in Denver in 1979 was cocaine. Ah, there's a drug for you. A rush that blows off the top of your head and expensive as hell. One more likely to lead you to the pokey or the poor house than to nirvana. I even recall cheering to J.J. Cale as Red Rocks when he strummed into "Cocaine," which became a big hit for Eric Clapton whose own drug jones almost landed him in the morgue.

On Sunday, Denver celebrates "420 Day." I won't be there. It's Easter. I won't be hiding Easter eggs for the kids as they are all grown up now. Chris and I are cooking some steaks with tea totaling friends, so won't even be imbibing a Colorado craft beer or a California wine. Boring old age.

I have mixed feelings about legal pot. Both of my kids have had problems with drugs and alcohol. Both have been in treatment and are now clean and sober. One lives in Tucson and one in L.A., the latter not the best place for people with an inclination for drugs. But we hear now, this time from Al-Jazeera America, that heroin and other opiates are now a deadly plague in rural areas, notably Vermont, better known as the Portlandia of the east. I've known junkies, and don't care to again. Heroin was around when I was in college. Most of my friends had enough sense to avoid it. Even my friend Rick avoided smack, and he rarely met a drug he didn't like. He's now some sort of backwoods preacher in central Florida with a zillion kids. I was best man at his wedding back in the 1980s.

Wyoming won't legalize pot anytime soon. We like our booze, though. The Legislature just got around to banning open containers in vehicles a few sessions ago. And it wasn't without a huge debate about whether the ban applied just to the driver or all of the passengers. I remember fondly a decade ago pulling into  a liquor store drive-up in Sheridan County and ordering gin-and-tonics all around. We were off to a summer cowboy polo match and gin was the drug of choice. I wasn't driving, so I ordered two to go. That was the most fun I ever had at a cowboy polo match.

Happy 420 Day to all of my friends and relatives in Denver. Enjoy!

If you're interested, the Denver Post Cannabist blog has a list of 420 events. And Time mag has an article about the brouhaha in Denver over lighting up in public.

Wyoming works to bring science education standards up to the level of East Jesus, Alabama

WyPols had a nice summation of this week's hearings regarding the teaching of science standards in our schools. It once again brings up the question: Don't these people know that we live in an age where Know-Nothing statements make their way around the globe at lightning speed, causing people to wonder what the heck is going on in Wyoming? Read examples here and here.

The WyPols article had some quotes from WY State Board of Education Chair Ron Micheli. You may remember Mr. Micheli from his unsuccessful 2010 run for governor in which Dems changed registration en masse at the primaries to vote for Anyone but Micheli (i.e. Matt Mead). I was working at the polls that day and was very lonely as I watched my Dem friends making a beeline to the "Change Your Registration Here" table. Later, I recall sitting at my union HQ in Cheyenne listening to and blogging about the returns from the primaries. Micheli was ahead for awhile. Think about it:

“I just want people to understand that this isn’t some backwards state that doesn’t believe in discussion, or rational communication with each other. … But it has to be based on the economy of this state,” the chairman said. “The very people in education who are so adamant in favor of global warming” – here his voice started to rise – “are the very people who are being paid. And their money is 80 percent coming from the mineral resources of this state. And that’s a hard fact.”

Wyoming’s entire educational system is based on fossil fuels, Micheli added, “and any attempt to derail that or change that is not in the best interests of the state. Now if that’s being backwoods, if that’s being redneck, if that’s putting our head in the sand, then so be it. But [fossil fuels are]what our state is based on.”

Micheli said he was sorry for standing on his soapbox, but he needed to clarify things.“I am not anti-planet. I’m not an ignorant moron,” he volunteered. “I’m trying to be rational in this debate.”

Methinks he doth protest too much.

I'm, glad my kids are out of the local school system. I can imagine my very outspoken and liberal-minded kids reacting to climate-change deniers in the classroom. I don't blame the teachers, as they are at the mercy of powers greater than themselves, such as Mr. Micheli, crazies in the legislature, raging fundies, Obama haters and our governor. Parents must do their best to make sure their kids and grandkids get accurate info.

Their futures depend on it.

Why are all of the dad-blamed Gov candidates from Cheyenne?

Article in yesterday's Casper Star-Trib lamented the fact that all three of the announced  Republican candidates for governor are from Laramie County: Incumbent Matt Mead, ticked-off sort-of Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill, and Tea Party fave Taylor Haynes.

I don't speak for my fellow Democrats when I say "We will keep Mead if you promise to take Hill and Haynes off of our hands." Most of them aren't too crazy about our current governor. He scuttled Medicaid Expansion and joined in on the failed multi-state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act. But he is arts- and tech- and business-friendly, and seems to have a little more realistic view of the modern world than his fellow Repubs, especially those from the rural areas of the Cowboy State. At least two county Republican conventions (Platte and Hot Springs) recently censured the Gov over the Hill mess (SF 104) and the suspicion that he might be a RINO -- Republican in Name Only. Two other county Republican gatherings resorted to Tea Party mumbo-jumbo (Freedom! Constitution! Something!) but came up short of an outright censure. Interesting to note that our Dem county convention in March fielded a platform plank that would have called out Gov. Mead on the Hill fiasco. It was roundly defeated after a lively discussion. Most commenters thought that it was unwise to wade into this big Republican mess. Even though I seconded the motion, I ended up voting against it.

In today's CST article, Mead's office pointed out the Gov's rural roots in both Teton (richy-rich hangout) and Albany (liberal UW profs and enviros) counties. Haynes admitted that he was busy getting ready to a new ranch in Albany County. Hill couldn't be reached for comment, no doubt framing another spiteful missive to the Gov and his legal eagles who won't let her move back into her Superintendent offices in the Hathaway Building (the Constitution, ya'll!).

But interviewees in the article wondered why we can't have any gubernatorial candidates from some of our more rural counties. It's a good question. There's 98,000 square miles wherein candidates could dwell. Subtract Laramie County and you have left about 97,000. You could beat the sagebrush and find a few likely governors there. Or not. Still they wonder why their leaders come from The Big City and not from The Heartland.

I guess being a rural Wyoming Republican is a bit like being a Wyoming Democrat anywhere. Dems wonder why nobody ever listens to our progressive views. Here we are, sitting in our urban conclave, sipping lattes and plotting the downfall of Christendom, when a bunch of white guys stream into the Capitol Building from Meeteetse and Frannie and Ten Sleep and start ranting about herding gays into concentration camps and banning birth control and stopping the spread of Commie-inspired urban planning and banning the teaching of certain annoying scientific facts (global warming, evolution, earth orbiting the sun) and so on.

Why don't these people go back to their heavenly rural Nirvanas and leave us city people alone.

Sen. Al Simpson: Freedom to Marry is the Wyoming way

Right on, Big Al!

Sunday morning round-up: Barrasso fail, CIGNA shout-out, Colorado history flashback

Sunday morning round-up:

Apparently we're supposed to listen to Dr. Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) when he speaks about the Affordable Care Act. He is a doctor, after all, and one whose pearls of wisdom on matters medical keep appearing on Casper TV stations. Last week, he accused President Obama of "cooking the books on Obamacare." He and his Repub fellow travelers don't believe that Obamacare exceeded its enrollment goals by the March 31 deadline. Not surprising, as Barrasso has bigger ambitions and his face is always looming in the background whenever Repub minority leader Mitch McConnell blathers on about something. The good news is that Wyoming Democratic Party Director Robin Van Ausdall issued a rebuttal to Barrasso's claims:

“Senator Barrasso should focus on the needs of his constituents instead of making up wild claims for which he has no evidence.”

Read the rest here.

My insurance company is CIGNA. On these pages I've occasionally made snide remarks about health insurers. So easy to be snarky and snide when sitting at a computer keyboard in the wilds of Wyoming. But insurers have changed since the bad old days when clerks sitting at keyboards in the wilds of Dallas and Cleveland were making life-and-death decisions based on arcane rules and the bottom line. Obamacare was responsible for some of the changes, as was the mental health parity act and other legislation. Our family has faced an avalanche of health care emergencies in the past two years. CIGNA has been incredibly accommodating all along the way. It has streamlined the approval process and provides frequent updates on billing issues. When I have questions, I usually can get a real person on the phone or online. Thanks, CIGNA. And thanks for sponsoring programs such as "Weekend Edition" on National Public Radio.

While shuffling through boxes in the basement, I came across a 1959 Denver Post publication This is Colorado: Gold Rush Centennial Edition. In 1859, a few prospectors found gold at the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. Word went out across the land, and the next thing you know, Denver City is swarming with hipsters looking for great deals on LoDo lofts and crowding into brewpubs. I guess that came a little later. That's the thing -- as I read the 1959 publication, there wasn't a real sense of Denver's future. Photos and stories and display ads celebrated the state's history and landscape. Lots of mentions of the "Rocky Mountain Empire," not surprising when you consider that the Post's motto was "The Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire." Much was written about big manufacturing companies: tire-maker Gates, luggage-maker Samsonite and missile-maker Martin-Marietta. The rise of the automobile got a lot of print, as did trains and street-car travel. But barely a mention of the Denver airport that's become monolithic DIA. I saw only one display ad that mentioned computers, and those were for big business and industry. Some neat photos were included of a fake frontier town that was built near the State Capitol to celebrate the centennial. Also on display was an Atlas rocket. Past and future. That ersatz past has fallen out of favor and Atlas rockets that used to lie primed and ready under fields near Greeley no longer exist. Wyoming has the missiles now -- so don't mess with us, Greenies!

The Post's editors were cheerleaders for Colorado. But they didn't have a clue about what Denver would become. And who could blame them? Personal computers were more than a decade away. The sixties and seventies hadn't happened yet, decades that saw an influx of young people looking for that "Rocky Mountain High" and "Rocky Mountain Way." Young whippersnappers keep pouring into Denver for those same reasons. Colorado's Front Range is not so much a manufacturing center as an entrepreneurial center, more focused on high-tech and apps and small biz start-ups than factories. Who knew?

Ain't history grand?

The book has a few pages devoted to Wyoming and one full-page ad for Cheyenne Frontier Days (63rd year!). The Wyoming article by Cheyenne native Norman Udevitz focused on a western character from his youth named Big Tom and how he represented traits of self-reliance and neighborliness. Udevitz later went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting at the Denver Post.

What does "Magic City of the Plains" really mean?

Can you be an urban guy in a rural state?

Sure. Urban centers exist even in the West's open spaces. Denver is the town that Colorado's eastern prairie loves to hate because, well, it's Denver where all of those liberals live -- and where the dreaded legislature convenes to pass laws to take away our guns, legalize gay marriage, force us to smoke pot, join the EPA's war on coal/gas/oil, and so on. The Western Slope hates Denver because it steals its water -- and they're right about that. Denver has been stealing water from the mountains even before Colorado became a state. That's true of the entire Front Range.

Cheyenne is the most urban of Wyoming's towns. In fact, it's only one of two metropolitan statistical areas (along with Casper) in the state. It's also where the legislature meets and engages in Cheyennigans (also the name of WyoFile's blog about the legislature). Cheyenne, the "Magic City of the Plains," was supposed to be Denver. Thing is, Denver became the home of hustlers and live wires and shysters and visionaries while Cheyenne became home to no-growthers. That wasn't always the case. Cheyenne was a flourishing rail and commercial center while Denver was still figuring out how to put on its boots.

From the Encyclopedia of the Great Plains:

Because of its rapid birth and ability to recover from periodic economic slumps, Cheyenne was called the "Magic City of the Plains." As the city matured during the territorial period (1869–90), it also developed a reputation as a social and cultural center. The city was notable for its opera house, the Atlas Theater, the Cheyenne Club, the Inter-Ocean Hotel, numerous retail businesses, and more than forty lavish mansions. The success and wealth of the city attracted western legends such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Buffalo Bill Cody, Tom Horn, and Wyatt Earp, who rode shotgun on the Cheyenne–Black Hills stage.

Times marches on.

These days, according to Wikipedia: 

Cheyenne is the northern terminus of the extensive and fast-growing Front Range Urban Corridor that stretches from Cheyenne to Pueblo, Colorado, and has a population of 5,467,633 according to the 2010 United States Census.

Some of our rural Wyoming neighbors refer to Cheyenne disparagingly as "North Denver." They may be more accurate than they realize. All cities along the Front Range are actually Denver outliers. Denver International Airport could accurately be called Front Range International Airport except there's another airport with the "Front Range" moniker. All of the commuter flights from the Cheyenne airport feed into DIA. The same goes for Western Kansas and Nebraska, and all of Colorado. Most of us in Cheyenne prefer the two-hour interstate trip to DIA over the shorter "Vomit Comet" air trip to DIA. On good days, I can get to DIA in 90 minutes.

Many of us in Cheyenne get our arts and culture fixes in Denver. I'm one of a group of culture-hungry Dems who regularly get DCPA tickets to touring productions of "The Book of Mormon" and other Broadway shows. We usually have dinner downtown, go to the show, buy apres-show drinks and spend the night at one of Denver's many hotels. We know that rooms at the big hotels often go begging on weekends when convention and business travelers are at home.

Democrats aren't the only ones leaving the Cowboy State for a big-city night out. All of us -- Dems, Repubs, Indies and Libertarians -- taken together are a boon to Denver's economy. Denver pro sports teams have tons of followers in Cheyenne. I saw a number of FB status updates from Cheyennites yesterday from opening day at Coors Field. The Rockies even won, 12-2.

Cheyenne's membership in the Front Range bugs the Agenda 21 crowd. They don't want Cheyenne to look like other Front Range communities. You know, the prosperous ones such as Fort Collins and Loveland and Longmont and (God forbid) Boulder and Castle Rock. The list goes on and on. Cranky Tea Party types have flooded public commission meetings for PlanCheyenne to voice their displeasure that our county would consider such commie-inspired planning devices as bike paths, public art, parks, incentives for business and industry, efforts to grow the local entertainment scene, etc. Wyoming Tribune-Eagle Executive Editor Reed Eckhardt had an excellent staff editorial in this morning's paper decrying the bullying tactics of the "anti-planners" and the "anti-culture" crowd.

Problem is, Cheyenne was leading the Front Range before there was a Front Range. Just what do the [county] commissioners think the phrase "Magic City on the Plains" means? That people strutted around here in cowboy boots and hats and saluted each other with "howdy" for 10 days of the year?

In case you didn't know, that last reference is to Cheyenne Frontier Days, the big summer western bash in which all of us, even urban dudes such as myself, are asked to wear western gear and be friendly to tourists.

There's a reason that one out of every six Wyomingites live in Cheyenne. They have jobs. Jobs come from growth. New companies are formed and others move in for lots of reasons: tax structure, infrastructure, broadband access, climate, lifestyle. They don't move in because they heard that a lot of Know-Nothings crowded into planning meetings to shout about a United Nations plot to take away our gas-powered vehicles and make us all live in Hobbit homes. While that may be a quaint concept for 1914, it's not very attractive in 2014.

Growth comes, planned or unplanned. Which will it be, Wyoming?

Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Dolores Huerta is keynote speaker at Dem convention

I am a delegate to the Wyoming Democratic Party state convention in Rock Springs.

I had to fight hard for the convention spot. Really, all I had to do was show up for the county convention and sign my name to a statement that said something like "I swear to (insert here the name of spiritual entity or higher power or, if atheist, "none of the above") _____________ that I will show up in Rock Springs May 16-17 for the Democratic Party convention, will participate in the proceedings and will not nap in my seat. Amen."

That was it.

A much different experience than that very exciting presidential election year in 2008. Dems in Laramie County duked it out for a spot at the state convention. We even had to make convincing speeches from the floor and get voted on. I was elected as an Obama delegate, my wife Chris as a Clinton alternate. This turned her even more surly than she'd been all through the early primary season as it became clear that the unknown male senator from Chicago was getting the upper hand on Hilary, the party favorite. It was a long election season in the Shay household. Wyoming did send some Clinton delegates to the national convention in Denver, although Chris wasn't one of them. I attended as an embedded blogger, stirring up trouble wherever I could.

Wyoming Dems may not have many elected officials to show for our efforts. But we do have cameraderie. We will be among friends in Rock Springs and a fine time will be had by all. And the keynote speaker is fantastic. From the Wyoming Dems Facebook page:

There are four elementary schools in California, one in Fort Worth, Texas, and a high school in Pueblo, Colorado named after Dolores Huerta.

She was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in March of 2013. She has received numerous awards: among them The Eleanor Roosevelt Humans Rights Award from President Clinton in l998, Ms. Magazine’s One of the Three Most Important Women of l997, Ladies Home Journal’s 100 Most Important Woman of the 20th Century, The Puffin Foundation’s Award for Creative Citizenship: Labor Leader Award 1984, The Kern County Woman of The Year Award from the California State Legislature, The Ohtli Award from the Mexican Government, The Smithsonian Institution – James Smithson Award, and nine honorary doctorates from universities throughout the U.S.

In 2012 President Obama bestowed Dolores with her most prestigious award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S. Upon receiving this award, Dolores said, “The freedom of association means that people can come together in organization to fight for solutions to the problems they confront in their communities. The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights. I thank President Obama for raising the importance of organizing to the highest level of merit and honor.”

FOR MORE INFO: http://tinyurl.com/pf9dsao
READ HER FULL BIOGRAPHY: http://tinyurl.com/n9nue5k

Sunday morning wrap-up: Spring is lion time

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. That expression shows more wishful thinking than reality. In Wyoming, March comes in like a lion and goes out like another lion, or maybe the very same lion -- it's hard to say. March announced itself with snow and announces its end with more snow. This morning it's snowing like crazy in the western part of Wyoming -- and it's headed this way. The NWS has issued a winter storm warning for the Snowy Range which means that driving across Elk Mountain will be hazardous for my wife and her fellow travelers returning from a conference in Green River. I've written about I-80 before. Anyone who's traveled its tortuous miles between October and May can attest to its wintry bite. Even in the fall. Even in the spring. Lion time!

Still, the clock doesn't lie. Spring brings the launch of gardening season. April is the month for preparing the ground and sprouting seeds. May is planting time, although don't rush into it because we're still not free of frost and snow and biting winds. I ventured out to the annual Laramie County Home & Garden Show yesterday at the events center. The building was filled with more home than garden. The Laramie County Conservation District staffed a booth. I stopped and picked up a packet of wildflower seeds, a guide to pollinators and a recreation guide to the Upper Crow Creek Watershed. I didn't know about squash bees that specifically pollinate squash, pumpkins and melons. I will be on the lookout for them this summer. I also stopped by Gitty-Up & Grow, a business that sells raised bed and patio veggie planting gardens. Julie explained that she grew enough tomatoes, peppers, onions and herbs in her in her 3-by-2-by-1-foot screened-in patio grower to keep her in homemade spaghetti sauce all summer and fall. Not bad. Look her up here. Most of the other booths offered services for landscaping, barn-building, home-building, sprinkler systems, etc. A grass-fed beef purveyor was doing a brisk business, as was the Tupperware booth nearby. I wasn't interested in most of it. Not that my home and yard don't need help. But I have gardening on my brain.

Wonder what old-time ranchers and farmers think about the grow-your-own-food craze? Millennials are jumping on the bandwagon. Some spend their summers volunteering at farms. Others start gardens on rooftops or vacant lots or even frontyards, which is going to cause apoplexy among some of their lawn-obsessed Boomer neighbors. Denver allows frontyard veggie gardens and proposes to amend its zoning code to allow yard sales of "uncut fruits and vegetables, whole eggs, and home-prepared food products such as jellies, jams, honey, teas, herbs, spices and some baked goods." Obviously some homeowners' associations will not go along with the trend. Property values! But what if you live in a hip neighborhood where keeping up with the Joneses involves lush tomato plants supplanting bluegrass.

Neighbor No. 1 (snidely): I see that you're mowing your grass again.
Neighbor No. 2 (defensively): What's it to you?
Neighbor No. 1 (grabs a purple heirloom tomato from his vine and bites into it): Want a bite?
Neighbor No. 2 (revving up his lawn tractor, pointing at his crotch): Bite this.

Another chapter in the culture wars. Some of us (even Boomers) will see foodscaping as an inalienable right, much like craft brews and artisanal doughnuts. Others will see it as another Agenda 21 plot. Neighborhoods will be grouped accordingly, thus giving us even fewer opportunities to interact with those we disagree with.

In Jackson, where a new company, Maiden Skis, is making artisanal skis and snowboards, there are plans for a greenhouse attached to the city parking garage. It's called Vertical Harvest:

The greenhouse will grow and sell locally grown vegetables to Jackson Hole restaurants, local grocery stores and directly to customers year-round, providing a stable, consistent source of produce at competitive prices. The site for the greenhouse is a currently unused 30’ x 150’ lot owned by the Town of Jackson on the southern edge of a public parking garage in the center of town.

Organizers plan to recruit people with special needs to work at Vertical Harvest. This combines the usual contemporary blend of an innovative project with "doing good." Plus Kickstarter. Sure, Jackson is the hip part of the state where stuff like this seems to spring out of the rocks. But this could be done anywhere. There's a proliferation of mini-greenhouses and high tunnels throughout the state. Bright Agrotech in Laramie makes nifty indoor growing towers that you can put in any sunny room. Creativity and a bit of chutzpah is all it takes. Not surprisingly, you usually find artists in the mix.

UW College of Law hosts marriage equality panel discussion March 31

From Jeran Artery, Wyoming Unites for Marriage and chairman of Wyoming Equality:

On Monday, the Advocates & Allies club at the University of Wyoming School of Law is hosting “Marriage Equality Local – Regional – Global” which is sure to be a great conversation about marriage in Wyoming, around the country and around the world. 

What: Panel Conversation – Marriage Equality Local – Regional – Global
When: Monday, March 31 at 7 p.m.
Where: University of Wyoming College of Law – Room: Law 186
Who: You! And a great panel featuring Sara Eisenberg, Attorney for the City and County of San Francisco; Jaime Huling, Attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights; and me, Jeran Artery, Chairman of Wyoming Equality

Join us for what promises to be a great conversation about marriage. Bring your ideas and your questions about the effort to move marriage forward here in Wyoming and about the broader movement to ensure that all loving, committed couples everywhere have the freedom to marry.

Click here to RSVP and let us know you’ll be there!

We’re committed to moving marriage forward in Wyoming by sharing stories of why marriage matters to all families. Together, we can stand up and make our voice heard to ensure that someday soon Wyoming lives up to its motto as the Equality State!

Hope to see you there!