It was a few minutes after noon, and only a handful of teabags were steeping in the brine of outrage.

This trio of teabaggers were holding signs along 24th Ave., which runs by the Wyoming Capitol Building. I believe they were trying to goad passers-by into honking, but weren't having much luck. The signs read: "What would George Washington do?" and "Memo to Barry (a.k.a Pres. Barack Obama): 1. America is Judeo-Christian; 2. We don't bow to anybody!; 3. Give better gifts." The third sign read: "Save our auto companies -- get rid of the unions."

What would George Washington do? Probably go to the dentist, as dental care was sorely lacking in The Father of Our Country's time. I was a bit puzzled by the "give better gifts" part of the memo to Barry. Did I miss something on Fixed News? I do know about the bowing reference. As for saving the auto companies by getting rid of unions? Ha, ha, ha. Funny teabagger.

I like the juxtaposition of these two signs. The one in the foreground is held by an African-American on a cell phone. The one held by an old white guy in the background reads: "Deport!!! All Illegals! Close the Border! Preserve America."

Wandering through the crowd, I heard one grey-haired guy quip to another: "This is like spring break for old people." The average age of Tea Party attendees was about 60. There were some young people, but they were few and far between. Lots of men wearing "Vietnam War Veteran" and "Korean War Veteran" caps. Cheyenne is heavy on ex-military.

The gentleman on the right tried to put his "Bring troops home now" sign on the Nellie Tayloe Ross statue in front of the Capitol. And he succeeded -- for a few minutes. A dour gentleman came by and whispered something to the old guy and he reclaimed his sign. Maybe he said something like "Why do you hate the troops?" or maybe "get that sign out of here or I'll see that your taxpayer-funded V.A. benefits go away."

That's what I was thinking, looking at all the veterans and their anti-government signs. Who do you think paid your salary for 20 years? Who do you think pays for your health care? Just asking...

This was a very nice young mother who posed with her baby and sign. The other side of the sign said "7 months old and in debt." She was the one who really made me think. This is a huge debt burden we are leaving our kids and grandkids and beyond. Many of these people at the rally are genuinely concerned about their kids' future. They have enough gumption to go to the Capitol Building, baby in tow, to make a statement. Later, KGAB Radio talk show host Dave Chapman told the crowd not to blame the Democrats or Republicans or anybody else. Just look in the mirror -- and then take action. Dave's the guy who keeps us updated on road and school closures on snowy days.

Who can argue with that?

A guy and his tea bag hat

More signs of the times

Right-wing kooks on the march

A report from the Department of Homeland Security says membership in right-wing extremist groups may be increasing. Here are some of the details via an online CNN story:

Though the nine-page report said it has "no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," it said real-estate foreclosures, unemployment and tight credit "could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past."

The report, prepared in coordination with the FBI and published April 7, was distributed to federal, state and local law enforcement officials under the title "Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

It compares the current climate the 1990s, "when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs, and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers."

It cites proposed restrictions on weapons as likely to increase membership in extremist groups and expresses concern the groups might try to recruit veterans.

The election of President Obama is cited as a key recruitment tool.

"Many right-wing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearm ownership and use," the report said.

"Celebration of Wind" in Rawlins

The entire I-80 corridor, from Pine Bluffs on the Nebraska border to Evanston on the edge of Utah, is wind country.

Rawlins doesn't seem to be any windier than Cheyenne, but it is is adjacent to one of the largest wind farms in the state. The city is hosting its "Celebration of Wind" on Friday and Saturday, April 24-25. The event includes lectures and demonstrations on wind energy, activities in the schools, dinners, kite flying, weather stations, radio-controlled helicopters and display booths. Locations include Rawlins High School, 1401 Colorado, and the Depot, 400 W. Front St., and Carbon County Fairgrounds. Most events are free.

FMI: 307-328-9274, http://www.cchec.org.

Thanks to Nancy Sindelar's e-mail newsletter for this info.

More Earth Day activities April 18 in Cheyenne

The Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne will hold an Earth Day Festival on Saturday, April 18, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

Sixteen organizations from around Cheyenne will be set up booths to inform visitors about conservation, recycling, wildlife, ecology, and other topics related to maintaining a clean and healthy environment for Wyomingites. This is an educational family event that will include a scavenger hunt and free t-shirts for kids, face painting, refreshments, and a bake sale. There will also be a cell phone recycling booth, so please bring your old cell phones!

FMI: Sue Castenada, 307-777-7021.

Earlier, hummingbirdminds wrote about an Earth Day Festival at the Cheyenne UU Church. The two venues are only six blocks apart. Catch one, and then the other. Both precede the actual Earth Day date of April 22.

Pres. Obama takes on student loan industry -- and it's about time

Reporter David M. Herszenhorn reported in the New York Times April 12 about the brewing student loan clash in Congress:

The private student lending industry and its allies in Congress are maneuvering to thwart a plan by President Obama to end a subsidized loan program and redirect billions of dollars in bank profits to scholarships for needy students.

The plan is the main money-saving component of Mr. Obama’s education agenda, which includes a sweeping overhaul of financial aid programs. The Congressional
Budget Office says replacing subsidized loans made by private banks with direct government lending would save $94 billion over the next decade, money that Mr. Obama would use to expand Pell grants for the poorest students.

But the proposal has ignited one of the most fractious policy fights this year.

I'm backing Obama on this one. The private lending industry has abused our trust. The whole system is out of whack and we need a new -- and better -- one.

Why are Wyoming Republicans protesting taxation without representation?

One person's protest in another one's pointless exercise.

I'm a long-time supporter and participant in protests and marches. The protest is usually against something, but isn't that what they're supposed to be about?

Ruffin Prevost writes in today's Billings Gazette about so-called "tea party" protests on April 15 in Montana and Wyoming. You may have heard about these protests on Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly -- any of those Fixed News shows. Ostensibly, these protests are against high taxes and taxation without representation.

"Taxes have always been too high, but I think this year, what's going on has really concerned Americans," said Eric Olsen, an organizer of a tax day "tea party" protest scheduled in Billings, Mont. Olsen, who owns an independent oil and gas company, said he has been politically active for years, and writes his congressional representatives weekly. His most recent letters have focused on stopping federal bailout and stimulus spending."What it's going to take is a bigger collection of Americans standing up and talking, and I believe we'll see that this year," he said. He expects 2,000 or more to show up at noon Wednesday in front of the Yellowstone County Courthouse.

That's a pretty good crowd. These people have neen energized by wingnut radio hosts and right-wing advocacy groups. Hey, they deserve some time on the streets too. Progressive activists pretty much dominated the protest circuit during the last eight years. Turnabout is fair play.

I'm just not sure what the protestors are protesting. Reminds me of some of the Lefty anti-war gatherings during Bush's rush to war in Iraq. Speakers would rant about homelessness and greed and the military-industrial complex and the 9-11 conspiracy and poisons in our food and just about everything else under the sun and moon. Worthy topics (except for the 9-11 hoaxers) but the message got mangled amongst all the diatribes.

So I'm not sure about the tea party message. The original Boston Tea Party protested taxes levied by the King in a faraway land called England. The merchants dumped the tea into the harbor rather than pay the taxes. That's a pretty good protest. Something big was at stake. Something real.

Organizers will circulate petitions opposing federal bailout spending, budget priorities and tax rates, he said. David Kellett, owner of a computer networking support business, said the protest he is planning in Powell is one of nearly 2,000 in the works across the country, all modeled after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which protested taxes on tea without legislative representation.

April Poley, who operates a home-based business in Buffalo, has set up a blog and Facebook page to publicize a tea party she is helping to organize in Sheridan."I sent out a little e-mail and very quickly, within 24 hours, started receiving e-mails from people I don't even know, all wanting to help," she said. The Sheridan protest, planned for 5 p.m. at Grinnell Plaza, in front of City Hall, has attracted people of varying political backgrounds, Poley said. "It doesn't matter what your politics are, you can still be angry at spending and Washington not listening to you, although we're fortunate in Wyoming in that our representatives have listened to us," she said.

So Wyomingites already have taxation WITH representation. If you're a Republican. I've been protesting taxation without representation in Wyoming. I'm being taxed to pay for a pointless war in Iraq, Cold War military weaponry that is useless in guerrilla wars, and no-bid contracts for Halliburton war profiteers who pay fewer taxes than I do. Every time I brought up these expenditures to our Wyoming delegation during the past decade, I was basically told: "Hey buddy, there's a war on. Why do you hate the troops?"

And here's the kicker:

U.S. Census data put Wyoming 10th in 2007 in federal spending per capita, while Montana ranked 20th. Both states are perennial net federal spending winners, with Wyoming receiving $1.11 back for every dollar paid in federal taxes in 2005, while Montana got back $1.43.

Taxation without representation in Wyoming and Montana? Give me a break. Our delegation really brought home the bacon during the Bush years. Let's see what happens now.

Student loan borrowers "too small to help"

Arthur Delaney reports this on Huffington Post:

A new report released Thursday on the private student lending industry offers a bit of deja vu.

"It's the same sad story: irresponsible lending," says Deanne Loonin, author of the report and director of the National Consumer Law Center's Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, in an interview with the Huffington Post.

The report (PDF), titled "Too Small To Help: The Plight of Financially Distressed Student Loan Borrowers," laments that "unlike the lenders that made these loans" -- potential beneficiaries of the government's TALF and TARP bailouts -- "the borrowers are 'too small' to help."

Private lenders like Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo, and Citi relaxed their standards as the economy boomed and extended private loans to more students at lower-tier schools -- students often already maxed out on federal loans and unlikely to able to pay up.

The report calls out the newly infamous process of securitization for fueling bad lending: "Creditors made and sold loans to borrowers, but with the specific goal of selling them to investors. Loan products were thus developed for the repackaging rather than to provide the most affordable and sustainable products for borrowers."

Loonin's report says the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program for modifying mortgages should be a blueprint for student borrowers. The report says the government should require lenders benefiting from bailout funds to work with borrowers, restore bankruptcy rights to student lenders, and increase industry regulation in the areas of underwriting and interest rates, among other things.

A poem to accompany "The Disappeared"

"The Colonel" (From The Country Between Us, by Carolyn Forche.)

What you have heard is true. I was in his house. His wife carried a tray
of coffee and sugar. His daughter filed her nails, his son went out
for the night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol on
the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on its black cord over
the house. On the television was a cop show. It was in English.
Broken bottles were embedded in the walls around the house to scoop
the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his hands to lace. On the
windows there were gratings like those in liquor stores. We had
dinner, rack of lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes, salt, a type of
bread. I was asked how I enjoyed the country. There was a brief
commercial in Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was some
talk then of how difficult it had become to govern. The parrot said
hello on the terrace. The colonel told it to shut up, and pushed
himself from the table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to bring groceries
home. He spilled many human ears on the table. They were like dried
peach halves. There is no other way to say this. He took one of them
in his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a water glass.
It came alive there. I am tired of fooling around he said. As for
the rights of anyone, tell your people they can go fuck themselves.
He swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held the last of the
wine in the air. Something for your poetry, no? he said. Some of the
ears on the floor caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears
on the floor were pressed to the ground.

"The Disappeared" still haunt us

Nothing prepares you for the exhibition currently at the University of Wyoming Art Museum.

"The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos" brings together the work of 26 living artists from Latin America who, over the course of the last 30 years, made art about those who have disappeared.

I viewed the exhibit last week when I was in Laramie for the UW Art Museum's public art symposium.

The largest of the works shows a Guatemalan flag made from the exhumed bones of those killed during the country's dirty wars, which really were Cold War proxy battles between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Many of Latin America's killer thugs were military men trained at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Not all, of course. Paramilitary bands roved Guatemala and Argentina and El Salvador and Uruguay. They operated with the sometimes explicit -- and always implicit -- consent of the ruling juntas.

One of the most depressing works of the exhibit shows couples who were disappeared. Their crimes? Subversive activities. Belonging to student activist groups. Consorting with suspicious characters. Complaining about the government. Some couples were married and some weren't. The women were pregnant and they and their babies still are missing. The legend under the pictures read: "Baby was born on or about April 5, 1979" or "Baby thought to be due in December 1977." The mother was bayoneted or thrown from a chopper or beat to death while pregnant. Or the baby was born but never seen again. Neither was the mother and -- oftentimes -- the father. These were young couples who looked a lot like couples I knew when I was in my twenties in the 1970s. They looked like pictures I have of my wife and I. Happy. Together. But we're alive and they aren't.

"Exhumations: Appearing the Disappeared - Uncovering Repressive Archives in the Recovery of Historical Memory in Latin America" will be the topic discussed by Kate Doyle at the next Art Talk hosted by the UW Art Museum. Her presentation is set for Monday, April 13, 7 p.m. Doyle is a Senior Analyst for the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her talk will focus on uncovering the truth of military actions in Latin America during the mid-20th century, and the people who disappeared as a result.

Art Museum Director Susan Moldenhauer notes, "This talk comes at an historical moment in time, given the current news regarding the conviction of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori for crimes related to the death squads in that country." Doyle considers Fujimori’s conviction to be a landmark event. She states, "He is the first democratically elected president to be convicted of human rights crimes by his own country... in the world! Ever!"

The National Security Archive campaigns for the citizen’s right to know, investigates U.S. national security and foreign policy, and uses the Freedom of Information Act to obtain and publish declassified U.S. documents. Doyle directs several research projects on U.S. policy in Latin America for the Archive, including the Mexico Project, which aims to obtain the declassification of U.S. and Mexican government documents on the Mexican dirty war, and the Guatemala Project. Since 1992, she has worked with truth commissions in Latin America, including in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to obtain records from secret U.S. government archives in support of their human rights investigations.

Doyle’s public talk is in conjunction with the UW Art Museum’s current exhibition The Disappeared/Los Desaparecidos exhibit. Doyle will also be giving a Gallery Walk Through of the exhibition from 10:30 a.m. to noon on Monday, April 13 at the Art Museum.

FMI: UW Art Museum at (307) 766-6622 or visit www.uwyo.edu/artmuseum
or the museum’s blog, www.uwartmuseum.blogspot.com/.

The museum is open Monday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.

Interesting to see that the exhibit originated with the North Dakota Museum of Art. N.D. poet Thomas McGrath would be proud.

Exhibit photo: Fernando Traverso from Rosario, Argentina, made a wall of silk "tombstones" emblazoned with the ghost image of a bicycle, one for each of his fellow resistance workers disappeared during those dark years of dictatorship. Why the bicycle? Because if someone went missing their abandoned bicycle served as early evidence of their fate. Entitled "In Memory, 2000-2001," the work consists of 29 silk banners, each 10 x 3.5 ft. with screened images of bicycles. Courtesy of the North Dakota Museum of Art.

Earth Day Fest April 18 at UU Church

The local Unitarian Universalist Church actively supports issues relating to peace and justice, the arts and ecology.

On Saturday, Aprul 18, the UU Church will sponsor an Earth Day Festival from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Vendor tables will feature info from conservation groups and sale items by companies with green products. Students will display arts and science projects, and there will be screenings of environmental films.

Donate aluminum cans to Habitat for Humanity, eyeglasses to the Lions Club, or prescription meds to the Laramie County Centralized Pharmacy. Recycle your printer cartridges and safely dispose of your hazardous materials.

This free event will take place in the Social Hall of the UU Church, 3005 Thomes Ave.

FMI: Green Coalition of Cheyenne at 307-632-7521.

Hippie-dippy posters at Denver Art Museum

I spent several hours Wednesday revisiting the past. Chris and I, along with 16-year-old daughter Annie and friend Brandon, toured the Denver Art Museum's psychedelic poster exhibit. I didn't actually see any of these original posters in their first incarnation on the streets of San Francisco. But I do remember most of the bands -- even saw a few of them in concert. The great thing about the poster exhibit was the stories behind the work. Rick Griffin, a guy who grew up in the Southern California surfing scene and then moved to San Francisco in the mid-sixties to discover LSD and rock. I remember his Griffin & Stoner comics in Surfer Magazine. Later, I tried to decipher Griffin's work in Zap Comix.

One of the oddest aspects of the exhibit was the wall devoted to work advertising concerts at The Family Dog on West Evans in Denver. Chet Helms, founder and purveyor of concerts at the Avalon Ballroom, decided to expand his psychedelic territory by opening another joint in Denver. I wondered why he chose Denver and not Portland or Seattle or L.A. According to the exhibit descriptions, the Denver cops were not happy about such a hippie-dippy venue place landing in their fair city. Denver cops of that era were not known for their tolerance. In fact, the force was just coming off the biggest scandal in its history. In 1961, 42 cops and former cops were indicted for burglary, embezzlement and other assorted crimes in the biggest such scandal in U.S. history. Over the years, Denver cops have been involved in a variety of nefarious schemes, including a massive snooping campaign aimed at anti-war and anti-nuke activists.

So, in 1967, the cops kept their eyes on the hippies and other nogoodniks. During its three short months, the Family Dog featured some of the big names: Grateful Dead, Blue Cheer, Mothers of Invention, even the Allmen Joy, who contributed to rock lore a few years later under the name Allman Brothers. The Family Dog's closure was due as much to hippie-era mismanagement as to police harassment. Besides, it was a long way from Market Street to Evans Avenue, both in miles and in culture. The museum narrative said that the closing of The Family Dog was the beginning of a long string of business setbacks for Chet Helms.

In San Francisco, the beat went on, even after the so-called Summer of Love was over and the Haight was claimed by addicts and hucksters.

Another interesting aspect of the exhibit was about a band I've never heard of: The Charlatans. Band members dressed in Old West garb and were known mainly for playing bars in Virginia City, Nevada. They came out of the mountains and into San Francisco and were thought to be "the first band to experiment with the fusion of rock ‘n’ roll, blues, folk, and jug band music that became known as the San Francisco Sound. Other bands on the scene included Blue Cheer, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane." That comes from the museum's descriptions. So, I've heard of all these other groups. But The Charlatans? And their Butch Cassidy and The Wild Bunch duds? As we now know, there were a lot of Wild West influences in the bands of the S.F. scene. Many of the exhibition's posters include images of cowboys and Indians -- mostly Indians, as the Native-American cultures were fascinating to hippies.

I'm now formulating an idea for an old-fashioned melodrama that combines the wild-and-wooly aspects of the Old West with the wooly-and-wild characteristics of the New West hippies.

Wish me luck.

Poster art: "Denver Splash" poster from 1967 advertising a concert by Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band and Solid Muldoon at The Family Dog, 1601 West Evans Street, Denver. Art by Rick Griffin and Victor Moscoso.

Gardening begins at White House, Wyoming still a month (or so) away

In the High Lonesome, we're more than a month away from planting our gardens. Seeds have been sprouted, plans have been made, but the planting comes somewhere between mid-May and Memorial Day. Even then, we can get snow -- which isn't so bad -- and frost -- which is bad. This is why many of us plant container gardens. And the rest of us keep a ready supply of old sheets and other frost-defying coverlets. Watch the sky!

Meanwhile, in the White House low country, Michelle Obama and kids from Bancroft Elementary School were turning the soil and putting in the crops including heirloom varieties from jefferson's Monticello). A press release from FLOTUS (First Lady of the United States) had lots to say on the subject. Gardening is good for kids, it can help with the obesity epidemic, drives the wingnuts crazy. I made that last part up. It's true, but the White House won't say it in print. But the wingnuts start foaming at the mouth when any mention is made of ecology, gardening, Michelle Obama, locavore, global warming, peace & justice, etc. Almost anything can make them foam at the mouth.

I read an article the other day about people in more temperate climes replacing their water-sucking front lawns with vegetable gardens. I have contemplated this. But our growing season is so short that the blooms don't stay around and come October we're left with dried-up stems that looks like weeds. Better to have a brown lawn than a weedy rock garden. We're challenged to intersperse the plants with evergreens with rocks with ground covers and mulch and possibly some yard art. Looks better. But it's a chore.

I'm revamping my entire yard this summer. Stay tuned for the painful details.

Lefties hang their heads in triumph

Fox News celebrated the fall of Baghdad six years ago today with some trumpeting by Dick Morris:

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."

My head is hanging so low, so low. Thanks to Greg Mitchell for this quote. He's editor at Editor & Publisher and author of the book "So Wrong for So Long" about the media and the Iraq War.

On May 1, we will mark Pres. Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. What, exactly, was the mission? What, exactly, have we accomplished?

Hear that old lonesome whistle blow

Mead Gruver wrote a groovy April 9 AP story about the possibility of passenger rail service returning to Amtrak's Pioneer Route. The route passed through Cheyenne and across southern Wyoming along the old route of the Union Pacific. It didn't actually stop in town at the old depot. Instead, you had to get into an old horse-drawn buggy with a gang of dusty coal-miners and get hauled out to a breezy way station where you were lucky to get on the train before freezing to death.

The route was abandoned by Amtrak in 1996 due to a whopping budget shortage. Unlike olden times, travelers prefer (and still do) the interstate to an aging passenger train that travels slower than the average car and much slower than the average interstate truck. It's a well-known fact that the Rawlins High School track team used to work out by racing the Pioneer through town, usually winning the contest with enough time left over to chug a couple beers and wave at the train as it chugged by.

I rode the old Pioneer in 1980. I was living in Denver at the time and decided to visit my brother in Santa Barbara. Instead of doing the sensible thing -- flying from Denver to L.A. in two hours -- I decided to take the 24-hour train ride. I boarded the train at Union Station, an historic building that still looked a lot like it did when my father left it for Army basic training in 1942. Probably looked about the same as it did when my Irish immigrant grandfather worked there in the 1920s.

The ride was scenic, I'll give you that. The windows were big and you could view the great outdoors with ease. As we left Denver, a passenger from California said he thought that the city's train yards were ugly. You know, he was right but I wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him. If he could only see those rail yards now. Not a train in view. Unsightly tracks ripped up and replaced by condos and coffee shops and a Six Flags and a big retro-style baseball stadium. The only warehouses have been turned into artist studios and galleries. If Amtrak decided to run the Pioneer through Denver, I'm not sure where the passengers could get on. Do any railroad tracks remain at Union Station?

My 1980 trip was mostly uneventful. I viewed the Wyoming scenery on a pretty September day. Changed trains in the middle of the night in Utah. Disembarked in steaming Las Vegas for an hour. And rode through the endless expanses of metro L.A. on the way to its Union Station. I didn't see that California guy on the train. If I had, I would have shared my opinions about the ugliness of the L.A. train yards.

Seems silly that I haven't been on a passenger train since. I've ridden plenty of subways and light rail lines, including the one in Denver. But I would like to see the return of train travel, preferably the high-speed variety. We need options to leave our cars behind. I can only imagine how pleasant it would be to get on a train in Cheyenne in January and zoom across the mountains and high prairie to Rock Springs, leaving the white-knuckle winter driving to others.