Back off, man -- I'm not a political scientist

My message to the old hands of America's Democratic Party: butt out.

This is our election and not yours. We might take your sage advice if it hadn't proven so bad over the past eight years. We lost the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 because you cautioned caution instead of fighting the Republican Slime Machine. Many of you were in the House and Senate in 2002 and 2003 and bought Bush's load of crap about weapons of mass destruction. Some of you are still in Congress, waffling over war funding and constitutional rights and torture and health care reform.

Why should we listen when you advise us that a long-drawn-out battle between Clinton and Obama is bad for the party when, in reality, it allows all of us to play a role in the selection of the best candidate? You'd prefer that all this messy caucus and primary stuff in the hinterlands would end so you could play your superdelegate card and trump us all. Before the Clinton primary wins on Tuesday, some of the Dem superdelegates (senators, governors, etc.) were saying that Hillary should drop out of the race for the good of the party. See how much they know?

So back off. We are calling voters and walking neighborhoods for our candidate. Mine is Obama; my wife's is Clinton. On Saturday we caucus. And then we keep on marching to the convention.

Obama to speak in Casper & Laramie

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will speak at 2 p.m. Friday at the Casper Recreation Center gymnasium.

Doors will open at 12:30 p.m., and the public can enter via the Casper Ice Arena. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited and tickets are required. They are available at the Obama office in Casper, 254 N. Center St., Suite 206, from until 8:30 p.m. today and from 9 a.m-8:30 p.m. Thursday; and at the Sheridan office, 118 N. Brooks, from 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Thursday.

Obama will then speak at 7:15 p.m. at the University of Wyoming Arena-Auditorium in Laramie. Doors will open at 5 p.m. Tickets are not required for this event, but admission is on a first-come, first-served basis.

Remember that Wyoming Democratic Party caucuses will be held in each county on Saturday, March 8. Registered Dems -- get out and vote for Sen. Obama.

FMI: http://www.barackobama.com/.

(Bill) Clinton coming to Wyoming?

Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC just said that there was a rumor flying around that our former president, Bill Clinton, might be stumping for Hillary in Wyoming on Thursday. Anyone else heard this rumor? I'll check the blogs and see what I can find.

We were new to Wyoming when Bill Clinton ran in 1992. He actually came to the Cheyenne airport during the campaign against Bush Sr. and seemed to shake every hand in the place. My wife Chris pushed her pregnant self forward twice to shake the candidate's hand. "Make way -- pregnant Democrat here! Make way!" She's shameless. I got only close enough to wave. Outside the airport gates, crazed Wyoming Repubs waved anti-Clinton banners and yelled some things that we didn't want to hear.

We all know what happened that November.

Barack, are you and/or Michelle coming to Wyoming before the Saturday caucuses?

UPDATE: This just in from the Casper Star-Tribune:

Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has announced that former President Bill Clinton will be in Wyoming on Thursday to attend events in Riverton, Rock Springs and Laramie.

President Clinton will make a series of stops across the Equality State on Thursday.

"I am thrilled to be returning to Wyoming to talk to voters about Hillary's vision for our country and their exciting role in choosing our next president," Bill Clinton said in a statement. Bill Clinton will visit Wyoming in advance of Saturday's Democratic caucuses. Specific times and places of his visits were not released.

Spokeswoman Carolyn Aanestad of Riverton's Central Wyoming College said that Hillary Clinton's campaign notified the college's facilities coordinator of a desire to use the college's food court between 2 and 4 p.m. on Thursday. Hillary Clinton's campaign told the college earlier in the day on Tuesday that the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea, would attend the event.

Carbon sequestration bills become law

Brodie Farquhar wrote a fine wyofile piece yesterday on carbon sequestration legislation that included an interview with Gov. Dave Freudenthal. Read the entire story at http://www.wyofile.com/carbon_capture_sequestration_pore_ownership.htm. Here’s an excerpt:

Tuesday, Gov. Freudenthal plans to sign House Bill 90/HEA 25 (carbon capture and sequestration) and House Bill 89/HEA 18 (ownership of subsurface pore space) at noon in the Capitol Rotunda. The two bills will put Wyoming out in front of all the other states and in front of federal regulations expected from the Environmental Protection Agency this summer. Basically, HB 90 charges the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality with regulating "geologic sequestration" of CO2. Companion bill HB 89 mandates that the surface owner owns below-ground "pore space" in which CO2 might be stored.

Whatever rules and regulations the EPA or Congress may yet come up with, Gov. Freudenthal said he’s confident that Wyoming is headed in the right direction. That confidence was buttressed by a long conversation he had last week with John Bruton, the European Union ambassador to the United States. Europe sees carbon capture and sequestration as an essential element for energy and global warming policies, said the governor.

Return of "Winter Soldier" to D.C.

From the Iraq Veterans Against the War web site:

From March 13-16th, U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan will testify to what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground in these occupations. To provide a preview, we've created this short film. The film features three members who will be testifying at Winter Soldier and includes videos and photographs of Iraq from their deployments. This video contains graphic content. We need your support to help make Winter Soldier a success. Find out more about Winter Soldier.

Phoning Cheyenne for Barack and Hillary

My wife Chris and I shared the home phone all weekend. She was making calls for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and I was calling for Barack Obama. We didn't keep score, although Chris was wondering by the end of the day if she'd made enough calls. By 9 p.m. Sunday, when I settled in to watch Law & Order on the tube, I knew I'd made enough calls in my precinct. Too many were saying they were voting for Clinton. I thought this was Obama Country. The goal at Cheyenne Obama HQ is to get as many supporters as possible out to the March 8 Laramie County caucus (get there at 8 a.m.). The confirmed Obama supporters I talked to where either busy on Saturday or didn't want to "rub shoulders with a lot of people," as one guy said. Shoulder-rubbing is not a popular pastime in Wyoming, land of wide-open-spaces and taciturnity. But come on, people, a crowd of Democrats never really hurt anyone, right? Get out there and caucus!

The Clinton supporters I talked to were wild about the prospects of coming to the caucus and throwing their vote Hillary's way. Are Clintonites more akin to shoulder-rubbing than Obamaians? Tought to say at this point. I'll blog the caucus Saturday and let you know.

One ominous development: my "Obama for President" yard sign blew away during Sunday's blustery snowstorm. We were issued plastic sleeves that you pull over a U-shaped metal stand and stick into the yard. When I first saw it, I said, "This will never stand up to our winds." I made a vow to duct tape it to the metal stand, and then promptly forgot when I headed out to canvass. I awoke Sunday morning to the naked metal stand, one end pulled out the ground, flapping in the breeze. Obama was gone.

Next time: duct tape. Or a different sign.

Iowa Gov rounds up support for Obama

Iowa Governor Chet Culver, a Democrat, had some nice things to say about Barack Obama when he visited Cheyenne today.

For example, Obama will make the strongest Democratic Party candidate and president. "He can go the distance," Culver said. "Not only can he beat Hillary, he can beat John McCain."

Culver cited a poll that appeared in last Sunday's Des Moines Register which showed that Obama would beat McCain 53-36 percent, but that McCain would beat Hillary Clinton 49-40 percent.

In red-state Kansas, a recent poll showed that Hillary Clinton would lose to John McCain by 34 percentage points. Obama, on the other hand, would lose by only four points. That latter percentage is within the range that can be made up before the November election.

Kansas now has a Democrat as governor. So a shift toward Obama is not out of the question.

Gov. Culver declared for Obama after meeting and talking to all the Dem candidates during the months leading up to the Iowa caucuses. He's urged other Democratic governors (there's 28 of them) to do the same. When asked how we Wyomingites could get our own Governor Freudenthal on the Obama bandwagon, Culver said, "I'm working on him."

Gov. Freudenthal is one of four Dem governors along the Rocky Mountain Front who haven't yet endorsed a presidential candidate. Others are Ritter in Colorado, Schweitzer in Montana, and Richardson in New Mexico (remember him?).

In the West, Dems play it close to the vest when it comes to politics. We know that Clinton superdelegates have been asked to keep it quiet. Maybe that's why we haven't heard an endorsement from our superdelegate governor.

Gov. Culver didn't whip us into an Obama frenzy, but he did get us cranked to go out and knock on doors. After Obama field coordinator Patrick Lane gave us some detailed instructions, we grabbed clipboards and marched to victory.

Here was our team: Sara B, fellow writer, activist and new mom; G, an African-American state highway patrolman who, until last week, was a registered Republican; and a Baby Boomer lawyer, his Mexican-born wife (to translate when we ran into Spanish-speaking households) and their teen son. We spread out over a Southside neighborhood and knocked on as many doors of registered Dems as we could in two hours.

I didn't find any strong Obama supporters. A middle-aged woman who held a yapping dog while we talked said she was undecided but could be persuaded. Health care was a big issue for her, since she didn't have any. She was planning to go to the March 8 caucus. We had a nice talk about the candidates but, in the end, she was still on the fence.

It was a warm day with little wind. One man (not on our convassing list) was outside watering his front lawn. We chatted for a bit but he never asked about my "Wyoming for Obama" T-shirt. I moved on. I encountered one strong Hillary supporter whose husband (not at home) was undecided. One middle-aged Hispanic man with four big-tired pickups in his driveway would only say that his wife was the registered Democrat and he would give her the info.

When I turned in my canvassing lists, Sara told the story of a man she and G had talked to. When they walked up, he was under the hood of his classic Caddie. He was stand-offish at first, Sara said, until G started talking to him about cars. As they talked, the gearhead admitted his disdain for the Bush regime and strong support for Obama. He would be at the caucus. Score one for our side.

More tomorrow....

Photo: Iowa Gov. Chet Culver talks to Dems assembled at Obama HQ in Cheyenne for a day of canvassing. At right is Wyoming Obama campaign director Gabe Cohen; at left is field director Patrick Lane. Photo by Deb Fischer.

Fine weather for a political Saturday

Active weekend in Wyoming politics. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver will be in the state today to stump for Barack Obama. He'll kick off a day of canvassing at the Cheyenne Obama offices, 415 W. 28th St., beginning at 11:45 a.m. Following that, he'll be whisked off to Laramie where he'll do the same. In the afternoon, Obama supporters will knock on doors across town to get Democratic voters out to the March 8 caucuses.

Meanwhile, New Mexico Lieutenant Gov. Diane Denish will be in town to stump for Hillary Clinton. She'll help promote the Wyoming Day of Action for the Clinton campaign. That gets underway at 10:30 a.m. today at the campaign office, 1603 Capitol Ave., No. 209. Most Cheyennites know this as the Majestic Building. At 12:30 p.m., the Clinton campaign office in Casper will host a statewide phone bank.

Tonight is the Nellie Tayloe Ross dinner with keynote speaker U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, a Democrat in a Republican district and the youngest woman serving in Congress. Tomorrow is the Democratic Party's "Mockus" at the Plains Hotel which is billed as an event "to help educate voters on the caucus process."

Throughout the fine-weather weekend (61 degrees and sun today, snow tomorrow), we will either be walking neighborhoods or holed up in windowless offices making phone calls. I know which one I'm going to choose. I volunteered to contact Dems and Indies in my precinct to get them out for Obama on March 8. Maybe I can catch them washing their cars....

Find out more about all these events at http://www.wyomingdemocrats.com/.

For Obama info, go to http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/wyhome

Gary Trauner in Cheyenne for Dem events

Gary Trauner dropped into the Democratic Party's legislative reception this evening in Cheyenne.

He's cranking up his campaign for the U.S. House seat being vacated by Barbara Cubin. There's at least one other candidate on the Dem side, and a passel on the Republican side, including Dan Zwonitzer and Cynthia Lummis, both of Cheyenne.

Gary was there with his field director, Eric (didn't catch his last name), a veteran of the 2007-2008 primary battles in Iowa. He's reworking Gary's web site, which is woefully out of date. It should be up and running any day now, said Eric, who's operating out of an office in Casper.

Gary plans another door-to-door campaign like the one he waged in 2006. I know he knocked on thousands of doors two years ago, a tactic that brought him within a whisper of beating Cubin. At least some of the Republicans and Independents who admitted voting for Gary in 2006 said theirs was an anti-Cubin vote. He obviously can't count on that with the Repubs fielding an array of fresh faces, one of which will make it through the gauntlet to the general election campaign.

Trauner is rested and ready, organized and well-funded. He's a veteran of one Wyoming campaign, which should serve him well over this long election season. He's in town this weekend for a variety of events, including Saturday night's Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner and its salute to the state's women politicians. Keep checking his web site for updates at http://www.traunerforcongress.com/.

Legislature passes carbon storage bill

House Bill 89 passed the full Senate on third reading and now goes to Gov. Freudental for his signature.

The bill makes surface landowners the owners of the geological structures underground where greenhouse gases may be sequestered. In Wyoming, this would be the carbon dioxide produced when our coal is burned in a power plant. The plan is to inject the CO2 into so-called underground pore spaces until we can figure out what to do with it.

I am glad to be the legal owner of my pore spaces. I doubt if they'll be needed in the battle against global warming, as they're located beneath my residential lot in Cheyenne. The nearest power plant is about 30 miles away in Colorado. The nearest Wyoming power plant is about 80 miles away, north of Wheatland. These plants will be looking for closer pore spaces than mine. But first, they have to be retrofitted with carbon capture technology which still is in the development stage.

Kudos to the Wyoming Legislature for planning for the future. It's fitting that yesterday legislators heard from EU Ambassador to the U.S. John Bruton. The main topic was coal, and how the EU will need it for its future energy needs. The EU has committed to reducing greenhouse gases drastically by 2020. Carbon sequestration is the way to do it. Bruton noted that money is a major issue, as adding carbon sequestration equipment to power plants increases costs 30-40 percent. He asked the Legislature: "How are you going to bridge that financial gap?"

A good question for us all.

Life is difficult in the 2008 Dem household

We are a house divided.

I'm working for Barack Obama for president. My wife Chris is a Hillary Clinton supporter.

I will have a yard sign for Obama up by tomorrow afternoon. I dare her to yank it out of the ground. I double-dare her to get a bigger yard sign for Hillary and place it in front of Barack's.

She is canvassing our neighborhood for Hillary. I am a precinct captain for Obama.

On our way home from dinner tonight, we talked about retirement. Chris said she'd be ready to retire in peace and contentment once Hillary was president for eight years and all of Bush's mistakes and crimes had been rectified and/or overturned.

I said that Barack Obama will spend the next four years wiping out Bush's dubious legacy, and then have four more years to put our country on a path that will ensure a bright future for our children and grandchildren.

Chris said: "Tell that whippersnapper Barack he can run when Hillary had made things right."

I said: "His time is now."

No fisticuffs erupted. But I can tell that the next couple weeks in Wyoming will be interesting. We may end up as delegates to the state convention, Chris for Hillary, me for Barack. The convention is in Jackson during Memorial Day weekend so we can suspend our political disagreements long enough for a brewski or two at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar off the town square.

We may even be together at the national convention in Denver, me as a blogger (keeping my fingers crossed) and Chris as a volunteer.

And in November, when we all vote for America's future, we will both cast our ballots for the Democrat, whomever he or she may be. We win, either way.

Dems hold legislative reception Feb. 29

You're invited to the Democratic Party's legislative reception on Friday, Feb. 29, 6-9 p.m., 514 W. 24th St., home of Karyn and Russ Knutson of the Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition. Tickets are $10 for this reception/fund-raiser, and you can get them at the door. If you're so inclined, you can bring a covered dish. Beverages have been donated to the cause.

This Cheyenne reception is always lively during an election year, even more so this time around, with so much at stake. Dem legislators will be there, as will U.S. House candidate Gary Trauner, Gov. and Mrs. Freudenthal, and Democratic Party candidates for state races. Also expect reps from the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton offices in Cheyenne.

Get more info about local and state Democratic Party happenings by calling party HQ in Cheyenne at 307-634-9001.

Welcome to "Vietnam with sand"

For an on-the-ground look into the U.S. "surge" in Iraq, read Nir Rosen's "The Myth of the Surge" in the newest issue of Rolling Stone. Rosen speaks Arabic, so he gets to hear exactly what Iraqis are saying to each other. This is a great advantage as almost no American soldier speaks the language. Their homegrown translators often have their own axes to grind. This makes a baffling situation even more confusing. "Vietnam with sand," is how an Air Force veteran of Iraq Wars I & II described it to me last week, adding that a fifth airman at Warren AFB had had just been killed in Iraq.

Read it and weep at http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge

Thanks to my old college chum Bob Page of Independence, Mo., for tipping me off to the story.

Clinton & Obama both have WYO offices

We heard from both Clinton and Obama reps tonight at the monthly meeting of the Laramie County Democrats.

Margy White from Cheyenne and Molly McAndrew from Iowa are working with the Hillary Clinton campaign. The grand opening of Clinton HQ in Cheyenne will be held tomorrow (Wednesday) on the second floor of the Majestic Building at 16th and Capitol. Another office is opening in Casper.

McAndrew's in Cheyenne with three other Clinton staffers. She worked in Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin before arriving in Wyoming. You can contact the Clinton office at 319-310-2017 or via e-mail at mollyrmcandrew@gmail.com.

Obama campaign people Gabe Cohen and Julia Warren have been in Wyoming three weeks. Before that, he was field director for Obama in Colorado. He held his first public meeting last spring in the liberal bastion of Colorado Springs. He'd been warned about the Springs, home to a heavenly host of evangelicals such as James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Even when he drove the Ronald Reagan Highway to get to the meeting he wasn't scared. But he knew this campaign was different when he arrived at the meeting and he wasn't the only one there. In fact, the room was packed with 80-100 people.

As Wyoming state director, Cohen's been traveling the state whipping up support for his candidate. He's been to Lander, the Wind River Indian Reservation, and Thermopolis. He was told beforehand that there were some places in Wyoming that Democrats don't go. Thermopolis was one of those. "We had a great meeting there," he said. "We've held meetings in almost every county and the energy is incredible. We've registered a lot of Democrats."

Odd as it seems, Democratic Governor Dave Freudenthal is from Thermopolis. A few Dems are hidden among the many Repubs in Hot Springs County.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, the Obama office is a busy place. When I visited today, staffers said that the campaign could always use more callers and people to canvass neighborhoods. If you want to volunteer, call 307-630-4168 or go to the web site at http://wyoming.barackobama.com.

Did I mention that I'm an Obama supporter? You could tell?

Carbon sequestration bills get support

The Wyoming Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday supported both bills dealing with "potential geologic storage of carbon dioxide." That's the great thing about this issue -- its spawned a plethora of new terms for my personal lexicon. Here's another one: Underground pore spaces. That's a fine phrase, as we're all familiar with our skin's pores which, in teenagers, become packed with goop and yield explosive zits. We hope that nothing explodes when we pack carbon dioxide in our ground's pores. The jury is still out on that.

Meanwhile, we have to legislate. That's what governors from the coal states of Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia were saying over the weekend at the National Governor's Conference in D.C. They were urging that their states not be counted out when it comes to environmental legislation. It's odd that most of these governors are Democrats. Their promotion of clean-coal technologies pits them against other members of our party who promote wind/solar/geothermal and look upon coal burning as the root of all evil. We know that when the Democrats take over the White House and both houses of Congress, climate change legislation will follow. The Govs just want coal to get an equal hearing. Wyoming, after all, annually produces 38 percent of the coal used in the U.S., more than any other state (Montana produces only 4 percent). Our economy depends on it.

The Governors are also calling for legislation on carbon sequestration. Wyoming, apparently, is one of the few to have legislation in the hopper.

Which brings us back to the bills rolling through the Wyoming Legislature.

House Bill 89 calls for surface landowners to control the underground poer spaces where carbon dioxide could be stored. House Bill 90 sets up regulations for carbon sequestration under the supervision of the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. Both bills must pass two more readings in the Senate before they can be signed into law by Gov. Dave Freudenthal.

Get legislative updates at http://legisweb.state.wy.us/.

The long, long slog in Afghanistan

"Battle Company is Out There" is Elizabeth Rubin's Feb. 24 New York Times Magazine dispatch from the front lines of the war in Afghanistan, now in its seventh year. Rubin spent several weeks last October with the soldiers of Battle Company of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in the country's rugged Kornegal Valley.

Some memorable moments in the story. Rubin and Capt. Dan Kearney sit down for a chat:

One full-moon night I was sitting outside a sandbag-reinforced hut with Kearney when a young sergeant stepped out hauling the garbage. He looked around at the illuminated mountains, the dust, the rocks, the garbage bin. The monkeys were screeching. “I hate this country!” he shouted. Then he smiled and walked back into the hut. “He’s on medication,” Kearney said quietly to me.

Then another soldier walked by and shouted, “Hey, I’m with you, sir!” and Kearney said to me, "Prozac. Serious P.T.S.D. from last tour.” Another one popped out of the HQ cursing and muttering. “Medicated,” Kearney said. “Last tour, if you didn’t give him information, he’d burn down your house. He killed so many people. He’s checked out.”

At first, I thought this was an example of the GIs goofing on the reporter, trying to freak her out. But mental instability is the recurring theme through the piece. When Kearney's unit came into the valley to replace the Tenth Mountain Division, they found some strange goings-on.

So what exactly was his job out here? To subdue the valley. It’s a task the Marines had tried, and then the soldiers of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division — a task so bloody it seemed to drive the 10th Mountain’s soldiers to a kind of madness. Kearney’s soldiers told me they’d been spooked by the weird behavior of their predecessors last May: near the end of their tour, many would sit alone on the fire base talking to themselves. Privates disobeyed their sergeants, and squad leaders refused to step outside the wire to show the new boys the terrain. No one wanted to be shot in the last days of his tour.

A few months into the unit's tour, the Army called in a shrink because Kearney complained that his troops were going crazy at its lonely outpost.

I had to wonder how I'd behave if I spent month after month in the Kornegal Valley. Every day the soldiers are the targets of snipers and mortar fire. They live in tents and subsist on MREs. When they go into villages, the elders nod and smile and pledge cooperation. At night, the village elders are playing host to insurgents and giving them tips on how to kill the Americans. When the Americans call in an air strike to take out a house or building where they know insurgents are hiding, civilian casualties are inevitable. When the troops go in to investigate, bodies of women and children are displayed by the villagers but bodies of insurgents are mysteriously missing. WTF? Where did they go? Very confusing. Maddening, in fact.

Rubin is on hand for one very bruising battle in which one of the unit's sergeants, on his sixth tour, is killed, and a number of others wounded.

After reading the story, I wondered what would happen to all these young soldiers. Not just in Afghanistan, but when they return to the States. How will these experiences manifest themselves in their relationships and in society at large in 10 or 20 years? I'm not worried so much about myself and my generation. We're moving off center stage. But I am concerned for the world my kids and their kids will live in. Some of these warriors will come carpenters and teachers and politicians. Others won't find a place so easily. Their frustrations could be fed by P.T.S.D. They could freak out with guns. There's a grand tradition of this sort of behavior in the U.S.

One other thing: As I looked at the article's photos, I realized that the Kornegal Valley looks like the landscape in Wyoming's Laramie Range. The trees, the brush, the dust, the rocks. It's eerie.

Wyoming plays catch-up with recycling

As I bring my cans and bottles to Cheyenne's blue-bin recycling posts, I often wonder what becomes of my cast-offs. How far does my fruit cocktail can or Budweiser bottle have to go to be transformed into something else? With rising fuel prices, what's the cost of hauling aluminum cans to Los Angeles or New York or maybe even China?

I've talked to some of my fellow recyclers about this and they don't know the answers. They're a diverse bunch. An airman from Warren AFB with two kids in his SUV said he was from upstate New York where they'd had curbside recycling for 20 years. He wondered why we didn't have something similar. There is a pilot program in Cheyenne's Sun Valley neighborhood. No telling how long the pilot will last and whether it will prove economical enough to expand citywide. One good sign: cranky letters promoting and bemoaning the curbside plan have begun to show up on our local op-ed pages. Once it reaches the op-ed stage, you know that implementation can't be far behind.

I see many families hauling their stuff to our three blue-bin locations. Kids instructing their parents on the wonders of recycling. Retirees, too, whom I see when I use part of my lunch hour for recycling. Lots of women, too, of all ages. More women than men, if my unscientific observations are any gauge. It's possible there here in the rugged West it's the duty of the womenfolk to recycle, the menfolk being too busy wrangling cattle or shooting varmints. It's also possible that women are more attuned to the benefits of recycling and saving the planet.

Wyoming's Sam Western provides some answers to recycling's true costs in a column he wrote for wyofile.com. As befitting someone who's been a correspondent for London's Economist magazine since 1985, Sam did his homework. He estimates that only three to five percent of the state's trash is recycled, compared to a national average of 27 percent.

Aluminum cans typically go east to Anheuser-Busch's Metal Container Corporation; cardboard and paper travel to plants in Montana, Oregon, and Washington, sometimes China; steel cans and small scrap end up at the Nucor Steel plant in Plymouth, Utah.

That's a pretty long haul, paper going to China. But maybe my paper only has to travel next door to Montana. As a writer and reader, I recycle a lot of paper, both at home and at work. All those gin bottles, too, can't forget those. The good part about glass is that there's a company in Wyoming that recycles it.

Contractors in Campbell County, which imports most of its gravel from South Dakota or Johnson County, use crushed glass (called cullet) as filler around landscaping, septic drain fields, retaining wall backfill, and drain pipe bedding.

Other Wyoming companies are getting into the act, recycling plastic bottles and old tires. There's a company in Cheyenne, Tatooine, that collects computers and other electronic devices, breaks them down, and sells the parts. It's the old junkyard concept where you discard your old jalopy and gearheads use it for parts for their old jalopies, which they call classic cars.

Read Sam's entire column under the "Guest" link at http://www.wyofile.com/. He's done an impressive amount of research about trash, landfills and recycling, lassoing all those facts and figures into easily digestible bites. Sam's always been good at the details, as readers saw in his book, "Pushed off the Mountain, Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for its Soul." I ran into Sam last Thursday in Cheyenne during a presentation by photographer Adam Jahiel of Story. Sam accompanied Adam to Kyrgyzstan during a trip organized by Jackson's Vista 360. Sam interviewed and wrote while Adam shot the photos of the country's horse culture. The photos were beautiful. The landscape was reminiscent of certain parts of Wyoming. Adam made a brief mention of an upcoming book about the project, but wouldn't reveal any details.

Democrats meet Feb. 26 at Plains Hotel

The Laramie County Democrats will hold its monthly business meeting this Tuesday, Feb. 26, 7 p.m., at the Plains Hotel in downtown Cheyenne. These meetings grow larger and busier as the presidential campaign heats up. Come on down!

Lots of business to discuss. The March 8 county caucus has been switched to the Cheyenne Civic Center to accommodate big crowds. An Obama office has opened and one for Clinton is opening soon, at least according to this morning's paper. Next weekend's a biggie for Dems with a legislative reception Jan. 29 and the Nellie Tayloe Ross dinner March 1. And -- surprise -- there's money to be raised!

FMI: Call the LarCoDems office at 307-634-9001.