Living foods do not bite back

The Cheyenne Tuesday Farmers Market has a nifty web site that gives details about the farmers, handmade food purveyors and artisans that sell their wares at the Sears parking lot off of Dell Range.

It seems fitting that local food and art are being sold in the shadow of the mall, home to enough Made in China stuff to stock every garage in Cheyenne. I don't have a garage, so someone will have to take my share.

At the Saturday market at Depot Plaza, I've been buying some of Yoga Oasis's delicious cashew cheese pate and healthy flatbreads made from "sprouted nuts, seeds and grains," some with fruit and veggies. Yoga practitioner, artist and chef Debbie Matthew is the proprietor and sometimes is accompanied to the market by her son, who also makes a mean banana bread. I haven't purchased any of her art, nor do I plan to travel to Laramie for yoga classes, but I am eating her homemade "living foods." Too early to tell if they're good for me, but they do not bite back like some other things I've eaten.

Since my heart attack in January, I've been searching out foods that won't contribute to another one. I eat heartily on vegetables from my garden and the farmers' market. I'd eat my lawn if I thought it had any nutritional value. I've cut way back on the salt and the red meat. I eat fewer snacks. My ice cream cravings have been tempered by the memory of constantly beeping hospital room monitors. Too bad -- I love ice cream.

I am trying to be good. I spend countless hours clogging up the grocery store food aisles while I try to grok the sodium and saturated fat contents on food labels. I am beginning to understand that the grocery store may not be the best place to find edibles. Eighty percent of the store's foodstuffs are bad for you.

It's clear that I can only buy some foods from farmers markets. The season is short in the Rockies and budgets are lean.

If you haven't already, go to the market today from 3-6:30 p.m.

Is Cheyenne on the map yet?

Dan Danbom was waxing quite eloquently Thursday in The Denver Post about "putting Denver on the map." It was a clever piece about the phrase "putting ______ on the map," the ______ in this case being Denver.

I am a Denver native and I know Denver's need to be on the map, to be a part of the national conversation. Denver has always had a knack for keeping itself on the map. When the Union Pacific bypassed the burgeoning mining supply town in favor of a Wyoming cross-continent route, William Byers and fellow civic boosters cajoled politicians into getting a spur built from Cheyenne to Denver. Byers was the founder of The Rocky Mountain News and newspapers needed growth for advertising revenue and transportation was essential for that. The railroad beat the heck out of thousand-mile covered-wagon or horseback treks or just plain walking.

Denver had already proven itself to be a breeding ground for hucksters with the great gold rush of 1859. Gold was discovered along Cherry Creek and Denver City entrepreneurs blared the news to the rubes back East, who had no clear idea of the difference between an actual gold field and golds flecks embedded in a river bank. The madding crowd rushed to Cherry Creek with their picks and shovels, only to find that the gold was way up yonder in Central City and Gold Hill and Idaho Springs. While you're in Denver, prospector, why not avail yourself of our white lightning and fleshpots and buy some supplies while you're at it?

Denver was born, and got a place on the map.

By the time I was born in Mercy Hospital almost 100 years later, Denver had not only managed to survive but thrive. It had weathered the boom and bust cycle a dozen times and, in 1950, was booming, thanks to all those WWII vets who had trained in Colorado, liked it and decided to desert their villages in Illinois and New York for life at 5,280 feet. The suburbs and the ski industry was born, which eventually led to the birthing of many Baby Boomers such as myself. We transformed Denver into a pretty cool place to be in the sixties and seventies. Boulder became a counterculture Nirvana and Denver a sports-loving, ski-crazy city with Red Rocks and Rainbow Music Hall and a singles scene with lots of wet T-shirt contests. Gentrification followed, and then came the lattes and craft beers and the Broncos, at long last, winning a Super Bowl and putting Denver on the sports map.

I digress.

I'm not sure why Danbom needed to write about putting Denver on the map at this late date, unless it was to cast stones at other, less map-worthy burgs such as Cheyenne. Here's his comment about Cheyenne:

You have to wonder: Why does Denver have to be on the map? When someone promises that something will put us on the map, the implication is that we are currently not on the map and instead in some sort of obscure, anonymous place that no one has ever heard about and therefore is destined to dry up and blow away. Like Cheyenne.

Danbom may not have been up north in awhile. But Cheyenne is still here. Yes, it is dry and the wind blows, but thus far it has not picked up Cheyenne and blasted it to smithereens -- or to Nebraska. We are pretty well anchored here in southeast Wyoming, just across the border from Colorado. We don't plan on going away any time soon.

Yes, life is slow in Cheyenne. We are a Capital City just like you, but growth is slow in this place and that is how many Wyomingites like it. Not me, but, to borrow a nicely-turned phrase from the Pope, "Who am I to judge?"

Wyoming has always gone its own way. If growth comes at all, it comes slowly. The search for oil and gas and precious minerals often fuel the booms. Just look at Gillette. If the coal gives out, or those dern Obama EPA bureaucrats get their way, Gillette may be as ephemeral as Jeffrey City, the uranium boom town that has pretty much dried up and blown away, except for the crazy artists at Monking Bird Pottery and the barflies across the street at the Split Rock Bar & Cafe.

Cheyenne has been on the map for many years, but maybe not for the reasons that urban hipsters imagine. No, not for Cheyenne Frontier Days, although that's what the organizers imagined when they nicknamed it "The Daddy of 'em All." And no, not for our legislature which has become one of the nuttiest in the West.

We got on the map big time during The Cold War, when the Russkis had Cheyenne and its nukes as one of its primary targets. That's one heck of a map. It may be getting a bit frayed around the edges since The Wall came tumbling down. But maybe not. Putin's Syrian policies and Mr. Snowden and Pussy Riot and anti-gay legislation could dust off those old maps and give us all a reason to live again.

Live, or die.

Thanks to Ken Jorgustin at the Modern Survival Blog for this cool map. Here's what he had to say: "Oh, and there is no way I would want to be living near the three large zones in Montana, North Dakota, and the corner of Wyoming-Nebraska-Colorado where there are evidently numerous nuclear missile silos."

Republicans agree on one thing -- denying health care to our neighbors

Including thousands of our friends and neighbors in Wyoming. Read more about Pres. Obama's Friday press conference at  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/obama-obamacare_n_3733933.html

Cardiac Chronicles: Heart blockages happen

I spent much of my blogging time in the mid-2000s giving grief to Pres. George W. Bush. Samples may be read here and here.

And now he has a stent, as do I.

Docs in Houston caught Pres. Bush's arterial blockage before he had a heart attack. This is a good thing, as about a third of first-time heart attacks kill. Seven of ten heart attacks are by first-timers, with fewer than 200,000 repeaters.

The big three risk factors are high blood pressure, high cholesterol (LDL) levels and smoking. I was guilty of one of three -- high cholesterol levels. I have never had high blood pressure, except when watching Republican debates while off my meds. I quite smoking 29 years ago, when my wife Chris was informed that she was pregnant. After almost three decades, you'd think that the bad effects of smoking would have wended their way out of me. Every time I go to the doctors, I'm asked if I smoke. I always answer "Yes, but I quit 29 years ago."

I watch the nurse type in "Ex-smoker."

I wonder: "Why are you an ex-smoker whether you quit smoking 29 years ago or 29 weeks ago or 29 days ago?"

Those first 29 days are the hardest. Followed by the next 29 days. And then the next. And so on. It's easier once you get to years.

So I send healing thoughts and prayers to Pres. Bush. He plagued my waking and sleeping hours for eight years. But mortality comes to us all. We share that.

Coming soon to Wyoming: Ca phe da at 8,000 feet

Billboard for Wyoming's newest roadside attraction

An entrepreneur from a city named for a Southeast Asian revolutionary whose heroes were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson buys a tiny town and its convenience store at 8,000 feet in Wyoming's windswept Laramie Range with the plan of cornering the U.S. coffee market with healthy servings of ca phe da.

If this isn't an illustration of the American/Vietnamese Dream, I don't know what is.

Pham Dinh Nguyen of Ho Chi Minh City bought Buford (pop. 1) last year for $900,000. On Sept. 3, he will debut Buford PhinDeli Town. It will dispense coffee and gasoline, not necessarily in that order.

I am curious and plan on stopping by. How about you?

Art Design and Dine lights up Cheyenne on Aug. 8

Art Design and Dine gets cranking this Thursday, Aug. 8, 5-8 p.m. Fine art to peruse all around town. Down on 15th Street, within spitting distance of the railroad tracks, is Clay Paper Scissors Studio and Gallery. Featured artist is Luke Anderson -- get a peek at his artwork above.

And remember that the Ancient Sage at 18th and Capitol is now the Art Corner Co-op. Drop by and see the array of work by co-op members.

Get more info at http://artdesigndine.org.

"Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" and "Even Cowboys Carry Cell Phones"

This anthology debuts Sept. 15 with one of my short stories and work by Wyoming pals Echo Roy Klaproth of Shoshoni (our new poet laureate) and Rick Kempa of Rock Springs. Reserve your copy now at http://www.upcolorado.com/book/New_Titles/2894

My piece is called -- appropriately enough -- "Cowboy Stories." It has a little something to do with Cheyenne and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and PETA and drinking and branding and a few other things Western.

Homegrown tomatoes a hard row to hoe in Wyoming

Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes

So sings Guy Clark in "Homegrown Tomatoes." He'll be in Wyoming next weekend, playing at the Targhee Bluegrass Festival at the Grand Targhee Resort at 7,850 feet on the west slope of the Tetons. Not many maters grown at that altitude. Not many grown anywhere in Wyoming.

One two things guaranteed in WYO
High altitude and a short growing season

And, sometimes, hail in July.

So I'm no Guy Clark. But you know what I'm talking about. Homegrown tomatoes are a tough chore here, even if you live in a Banana Belt community such as Lander or Buffalo.

This urban gardener has six plants this year. Plenty of fruit on the vine. Barring a hailstorm or Biblical plague, I expect a fair crop this year. Best not to get too optimistic. Not exactly sure how farmers deal with the vagaries of growing things on a large scale. I was reading yesterday about a hailstorm that decimated the barley crop in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin. The barley plant is at its peak and ready to harvest just when hail season is at its peak. That doesn't seem fair, does it? The blooming barley is delicate and ripe for destruction. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. Barley, of course, is one of beer's main ingredients. The barley crop in the Basin is bound for big brewers, craft brewers, and home brewers. Whiskey distillers, too, such as Wyoming Whiskey in Kirby.

No barley, no beer. I weep.

Hailstorms tend to be localized so it's likely that some plants survived when the wind tore through the barley. We send our best wishes to the Basin barley growers.

And now, for this gardener, there are tomatoes to tend.

Wyoming Equality hopes to set new attendance record at Rendezvous on Aug. 7-11

Joe Corrigan at Wyoming Equality sends this notice about next weekend's annual Rendezvous in the Laramie Range:

Rendezvous is fast approaching, (Aug 7-11) and we want to let you know that you have an opportunity to participate in what we’re hoping will be the biggest and best Rendezvous ever! Online and mail in registrations have been unprecedented! We are really hoping to beat our old attendance record of 450.

And it’s no wonder folks are lining up to help celebrate the 21^st anniversary of this camp out! Have you seen the agenda?  This year we are featuring live entertainment every single day!  We will have everything from singing around the camp fire, karaoke, the bluegrass band “Beatgrass” will be performing Saturday, and of course our headliner this year is nationally known comedienne Vickie Shaw!

The forest looks green and plush and should make for excellent flora and fauna hikes, ATV rides, kayaking and everything else the Medicine Bow National Forest has to offer!

So what are you waiting for? Get your camping gear together and help us make this year’s Rendezvous historic and record breaking!

Text, email or Facebook your friends.  Let’s make this another record breaking year!

Text, e-mail, Facebook and blog! Here it is, Joe... 

Register at Wyoming Equality.

Cheyenne salutes Laramie's food-loving, coffee-loving, book-loving locals

Night Heron Books in downtown Laramie is now publicly growing some of its own food in a mini-greenhouse on the sidewalk in front of the store. Funding came from a grant through Feeding Laramie Valley, a nonprofit "dedicated to achieving local food equality and justice." Night Heron staff grows greens for salads, basil for homemade pesto, and herbs and spinach for soups and sandwiches. So, you can eat some yummy local greens with some locally made bread while you read one of Wyoming's excellent authors. Tastes great in August but will really taste great in January as wicked wind-driven snow attempts to rip your face off on your way into the store's warm confines. You have to admire the resourcefulness and creativity of our pals who live at 7,200 feet. By comparison, those of us on the other side of the hill in Cheyenne attempt to grow things at a mere 6,200 feet. 

 

  

 

New vid from Wyoming Democrats: "Wyoming GOP Too Extreme"

WYO wingnuts to stage "Impeach Obama" protests

Some people are hot under the collar and will stage an anti-Obama protest tomorrow from highway overpasses in Casper. This news comes from the Billings Gazette:

Jacqueline Judd, Wyoming leader of Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment, said participants in the national movement want the president of the United States to answer for his “tyrannical, treasonous, unconstitutional actions.”

--clip--

Judd... said there’s proof Obama forged his birth certificate, declared war on Libya and funded the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida. They want Obama impeached now because they fear he will revoke the right to vote by next fall and seek a third presidential term.

“Many of us believe that if we wait until election time for senators and representatives, we the people will be no more,” Judd said. “We will be under a socialist, communist country, no doubt in my mind.”

Lest you think that Casper will be the only place in Wyoming with wingnuts waving signs from highway overpasses, Judd says that Cheyenne will also hold an overpass protest. Plan on being there from noon-7 p.m. And remember to stay hydrated, people.

You all are a big late with the overpass idea. The innovative Overpass Light Brigade has been stringing lighted protest signs over highways for years. Here's a neat one from Madison, Wisc.:

Thanks to Meg Lanker-Simons at Cognitive Dissonance who tipped me off on the Casper protest. I'm going to miss you, Meg. Give 'em hell in law school.

Healing salves of meds and stories

From Elephant Journal:

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman or medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: 

When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence? 

Where we have stopped dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, or finding comfort in silence is where we have experience the loss of soul. 

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves.

I have always depended on the kindness of Prozac, Remeron and its related SSRIs. I also believe in the healing salves of art and stories and solitude. Exercise, too, especially swimming. Walking too -- I write as I walk.

Hanna hit with satirical blast

It could have been Any Town, U.S.A., but it was Hanna, Wyo.

A satirical post on National Report carried news that the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") was requiring government-assisted citizens in Hanna to be implanted with an ID chip.

Tea Partiers went wild. "We warned you!" Satire-lovers had a good laugh. And nobody will get sued -- probably.

Sandra Davidson, a communications law professor at the University of Missouri School Of Journalism, said it’s doubtful any legal action will come of the story, even if some take it seriously.

“If it can’t be taken as literally true, it can’t be defamatory,” she said. “In this country, we have a broad First Amendment right to satire,” Davidson said.

Read more about it at the Billings Gazette. 

Why We Write

Why I write, and why I continue to blog. Flannery O'Connor wrote scores of letters during her short life. She might have been a blogger, especially as she stayed close to home during the illness that killed her at 39 in 1964. Thanks to The Bloomsbury Review for posting this on Facebook.

High Plains politics getting more interesting all the time

If you're bored with regional politics, you're not paying attention.

In Wyoming, State Superintendent Cindy Hill has been stripped of her powers by fellow Republicans in the Legislature. She's now suing the state and plans to run against our sitting Gov, Matt Mead. Many Tea Party types have come to Hill's aide, pledging their support in 2014 in the form of votes and crazy letters to the editor. This week I saw Cindy Hill riding in an old-timey carriage in the Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. She smiled and waved from the carriage. Hardly anyone smiled and waved back.

Liz Cheney, daughter of Dick, has announced a run for Mike Enzi's seat in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Enzi is a soft-spoken, well-read man who votes with his party 99 percent of the time. If you've seen Liz Cheney on Fox, you know that she swallowed the same bitter pill as her old man. In fact, she is a bitter pill. Maybe that could be her slogan: "Liz Cheney: A Bitter Pill Who Hates Obama More Than Mike Enzi Does." In an op-ed in this morning's Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (and on Wyofile July 23), Kerry Drake interviewed former legislator and fellow blogger Rodger McDaniel about Ms. Cheney's run for the Senate. Rodger ventured that she could spend up to $4 million in the primary race. Enzi, in the other hand, has never spent more than $3.50 to defeat any challengers. I jest. He did spend in the low six figures last time out, but he better get on the 2014 money-raising stick PDQ, as Liz is rich and is spoiling for bear.

North Colorado -- like North Carolina or North Dakota. Some say that has a nice ring to it. A handful of denizens of north and east Colorado want to form a 51st state, North Colorado. They are fed up with all the liberals from Denver making all the rules. Bans against high-capacity magazines and automatic weapons. Anti-fracking laws. Pro civil unions for all. Pot legalization. The state is going to heck in a handbasket and secession is in the air. While reefer heads in Boulder experience flashbacks to 1969, good ol' boys in Sedgwick County are riding on the way-back machine to 1861. According to the AP, more than four dozen people showed up to a secession meeting in Fort Lupton this week. More than four dozen? That doesn't seem like many, unless you know that the population of some of those plains counties is five dozen.

I have a modest proposal for the secessionists. Join Wyoming. We're a no-nonsense state on issues such as guns, same-sex marriage and pot. A big yes on the first and a resounding no on the last two. Fracking? Hell, you can frack in your own backyard and the feds and the staties will leave you alone. We don't have any state income tax either, which means you can keep all that fracking loot to buy guns and high-capacity magazines. We have plenty of wide open spaces for shooting practice. People just think those are firecrackers from our thriving fireworks industry. Another thing -- our Legislature hates Obamacare. In fact, if you join Wyoming you can buy any darn health care plan you can afford, as thus far the state has refused to go for Medicaid expansion or any of that socialized medicine nonsense.

One suggestion, though. I know that the Weld County commissioners were the ones who put you up to the idea of North Colorado. But if I were you, I'd ditch Weld County. It's home to the city of Greeley which is filled with Democrats. It has a university, too, and you know that they're the breeding ground of radical liberal educators who keep brainwashing our rural kids in the ways of Howard Zinn and beatnik poets. I was in Greeley last week and saw a merry band of hipsters walking down the sidewalk toward the local brewpub. You know what they say -- cities breed hipsters and Democrats, not the other way around. See if it's possible to excise Greeley from its county, That way, when you join Wyoming, you're not bringing thousands of registered Democrats with you.

You may have to give up the name "North Colorado." Still, Wyoming has a nice ring to it, don't you think? One of your counties is already named Cheyenne. You may not know this, but "Wyoming" means "freedom." Not literally, but you know (a wink and a nod) what I mean when I say "freedom" surrounded by quotes. Freedom!

And South Dakota still has only two senators?

I've been on the Wyoming escalator beat for almost a week now, so I wonder how I missed this story in the Saturday Sioux Falls Argus-Leader:

Unlike remote Wyoming, it’s [South Dakota] got at least six sets of escalators — or five, if one doesn’t count the stairless moving ramp that takes pedestrians between floors at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport.

S.D. has scads of people-moving elevators, too. And 309 grain elevators.

Read the rest here.

Makes sense that Wyoming has two escalators and two U.S. senators

Nate Cohn at The New Republic doesn't think that Wyoming deserves two U.S. Senators.

And not just because Liz Cheney is running for one of them.

It's our low population numbers. It's been pointed out before, but Wyoming (pop. 576,000) has fewer people than many urban counties. Cohn trots out the numbers:

—There are at least 100 counties with more people than Wyoming. [I've lived in three of them: City and County of Denver and Arapahoe in Colorado and Montgomery County in Maryland.] 

—Rhode Island’s largest county has more people than Wyoming. 

—Fairfax County (VA) has twice as many people as Wyoming. There are more Romney voters in Fairfax County than voters in Wyoming, the second reddest state. 

—There are almost as many Romney voters in wildly Democratic Brooklyn as there are in Wyoming.   

—The student body of the University of Wyoming (13,992) would be the state’s seventh largest town.

And so on.

That's the real problem with Liz Cheney's decision -- now everybody in creation knows that there is such a place as Wyoming and that we have two U.S. senators, just like those big states. Mike Enzi is one of them (for now). Dr. John Barrasso is the other. Our little joke about Barrasso is that the most dangerous place in the world in that patch of real estate between Barrasso and a news camera. I saw him yesterday evening on our local Channel 5. He's in town to ride a horse in today's opening Cheyenne Frontier Days parade. WYO politicos have to know how to ride a horse. In D.C., they wear dark suits  and ride in limos as do others of their ilk. In WYO, they wear Wranglers and boots and a cowboy hat. Writes Nate Cohn:

Wyoming is a place with two escalators; it probably shouldn’t get two senators.

Again with the escalators. It's quaint, isn't it, to live in a state that has fewer escalators than your average station on the D.C. Metro? Have you ever taken a ride on the Dupont Circle escalators? Wyomingites have been known to quaver in fear when confronted with a ride from the sun-drenched city streets into the murky depths of the subway. Even our coal mines don't have murky depths. We don't have traffic either. Cohn notes that he's visited Wyoming and drove through our biggest city in two minutes. He must have been speeding; it takes me at least 5.27 minutes to drive I-80 through Cheyenne, starting at the Wal-Mart Distribution Center and exiting at Campstool Road, site of the Lowe's Distribution Center. We love our distribution centers.   

Just goes to show that people in other places are fascinated and repelled by Wyoming. We should use our entrepreneurial skills to showcase some of the odd things about the state, things that would interest our urban cousins. The "Wacky Wyoming Tour" would showcase our two escalators in Casper along with the place near Jackson in which gravity causes objects to roll uphill. We could show tourists the Casper elementary school classroom where Liz Cheney had her first Neo-Con revelation.

Other suggestions for stops on the Wacky Wyoming Tour?

Liz Cheney candidacy exposes Wyoming's aircraft carrier and escalator gaps

Liz Cheney, offspring of Dick and Lynne, declared her candidacy yesterday for U.S. Senate. She will be challenging Sen. Mike Enzi, who once had the temerity to work with a Democrat, the late Ted Kennedy.

Mother Jones carried a story today, "Ten Important Facts about Liz Cheney." Number 1: She just moved to Wyoming last year. Number 2: She's the daughter of Darth Vader Dick Cheney. And so on.

At the end of the piece, MoJo had this to say about Wyoming:

Wyoming, a state with two working escalators, has two senators in Washington due to the infallibility of the Founding Fathers. The official state dinosaur is the triceratops. In February of 2012, legislators in Cheyenne briefly considered building an aircraft carrier to prepare for a societal collapse.

Wyoming may have only one escalator. But since when does the escalator count determine a state's status? Wyoming long ago got rid of its escalators in favor of stairs in order to give its citizens better cardio workouts so that they would be in tip-top shape to bushwack through the wilderness to shoot wolves. And how many wolves does MoJo have? That's right -- none. That's exactly the number of official dinosaurs it has -- zero. Wyoming not only has an official state dinosaur, but it also has a state insect, a state fossil, a state grass, and a state code, The Code of the West, the best rootin' tootin' code you can have. The first precept of the code is "Dance with the one that brung ya." The second precept is "Don't take any wooden nickels." The thirds precept is "Never play cards with a guy named Doc." The fourth is "Take off that stupid cowboy hat when you're in my house, you moron. Didn't your mama teach you any manners?" And so on. This code is recited before every session of the legislature, which makes about as much sense as the legislature itself. How many official codes do you have, MoJo?

And how many aircraft carriers do you have? None? I thought so. We don't have one either. We would have, if it wasn't for those lily-livered Liberals that control the Wyoming State Legislature. Some of our knowledgable conservatives thought it would be prudent to prepare for the day when the United States went to hell in a handcart and we would have to fend for ourselves. The best solution they could think of was an aircraft carrier. I know, it may seem strange to have an aircraft carrier in a dry, landlocked state. But that's just what we wanted to enemy to think. Remember this precept of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" -- "Anyone who excels in defeating his enemies triumphs before his enemy's threats become real." Our legislators were only planning for the day that Idaho or Montana gets an aircraft carrier or possibly an entire fleet. Colorado will never be a threat because its Liberal leaders are unilaterally disarming and soon all the available conscripts will be soundly stoned. But if we ever get that neighboring 51st state, the one that will be made up of a dozen rural Colorado counties and led by Tea Party types, that will be a state to look out for. That will be a state that may beat us to the punch, aircraft carrier-wise. That may be a state that will out-loony us.

One more word about escalators. The Atlantic Online carried a piece today about our state's escalator gap. It turns out there are two escalators in WYO, both in Casper. That number could be four if you count the up and down escalators as separate conveyances.

Nothing like a Fox Network wingnut/East Coast carpetbagger declaring a run for the Senate in the loneliest state in the union to focus the media's evil eye of Sauron on Wyoming.

Yarn bombing yields explosion of flowers in downtown Cheyenne

Yarn bombing is a wonderful trend. Also called yarn storming or graffiti knitting, its practitioners create colorful displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fiber to dress up impersonal public spaces. I there ever was an impersonal public space, the fence at The Hole in downtown Cheyenne has to be one. Thank you, graffiti knitters, for adding a dash of color to an eyesore -- and drawing attention to it in the process. Find out more about the art of yarn bombing here.