Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
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One of the most conservative members of the Wyoming State Senate is Cale Case (R-Lander). He favors approval of a medical marijuana bill and says there is a surprising amount of support for such an effort among older, conservative Wyomingites. I happened to be with Case during his recent talk to the Lander Rotary Club. He asked the crowd of 50, how many would favor such a measure? Some 35 hands were raised – 70 percent! Earlier, Cale had joined our Fox News All-Stars coffee group (average age 69...
My immediate thoughts about predicting the first part of Wyoming’s upcoming year 2017 include some not so joyous conclusions. This is because the year starts with the Legislative session. Due to retirements of some experienced players and the unfortunate defeat of folks like Rosie Berger and Mary Throne, we find ourselves with a representative bunch that will have a difficult time. While many of the legislators are pretty green, other folks active in our legislative process are super e...
When I look back on 2016, it seems to me that Wyoming people need to face a true reality check. It is time for people to realize that the current “bust” might be what we should be considering the “new normal” here in the Cowboy State. Instead of considering our economic conditions booms or busts, we need to identify these kinds of times, which are predictable, and consider them the norm. This is what 2016 was like and how 2017 will continue to be. To business owners and managers, 2017 will be a...
Ken Smith of Laramie has a great idea for an ideal Christmas gift – he thought someone should go around the state and “bundle up” all the different craft beers and market them as a package. Not sure how that could be done, but sounded good to me. Ken is a University of Wyoming professor and has shared a cold one with me now and then. Actually I was the guy who recruited him to Wyoming back in the 1980s to be publisher of the Green River Star. Today, he heads the journalism department at UW. I wa...
My new favorite baseball cap says “Wyoming versus BYU,” except that this cap is 20 years old from the 1996 WAC football championship held in Las Vegas. We were at that game and now it is Déjà Vu all over again. Wyoming is again playing BYU, this time in a bowl game on Dec. 21 in San Diego. Not sure we can make that one, but as I write this in a Laramie motel room (where the temperature is -20 on Dec. 8), the thought of sunny San Diego sure sounds good. Legend has it that cities that host bowl...
Welcome to the Cowboy State – home of the most powerful voters in America. And these voters care a lot about voting too, as record numbers turned out on Nov. 8. Some counties like Laramie, Fremont and Johnson recorded 100 percent turnouts of registered voters. This is amazing in a country where barely half of the eligible voters turned out. Because we have the smallest population of any state in America, it takes just 187,923 voters in Wyoming to cast a single electoral vote. In California it ta...
With our nights getting longer and colder, this gives me an excuse to watch my favorite movies that take place in our state, feature our state or include themes about Wyoming. Here is my list of favorites: Most recently, the best movie of the year according to the Academy Awards was The Revenant, which has over-riding Wyoming themes with much of it filmed as if it were here. A very cold, wintry Wyoming was depicted. Other western movies dominate these selections. In Hollywood jargon, cowboy movi...
During University of Wyoming home football games, War Memorial Stadium in Laramie becomes the fifth largest city in the state. And just about every one of those fans on Saturday, Nov. 19, was jumping for joy after a big cliffhanger victory. It has been a long, long time since Wyoming sports fans could enjoy their UW Cowboys sporting an 8-3 record. I am writing this on Nov. 19. We have a lot to cheer about. The Cowboys are pretty much guaranteed to play in a bowl game, and as of this moment,...
Wyoming got good economic news early Wednesday morning with the national election of Donald Trump as president and Liz Cheney as our new U. S. Representative. Sometimes when you live out here on the frontier, you could assume that what happens in a presidential election probably would not have much impact on your small-populated rural state. Not so. For example, the two candidates for President in the Nov. 8 election had strikingly different plans concerning some big ideas for a state like...
Just about any sunny afternoon of the year, the famous (and infamous) Wyoming wind blows its hardest across the high prairie. While it has been cursed millions of times for its velocity and consistency this is, in fact, an economic blessing for the people of the state. And it is during mid-afternoon when the demand is highest for electricity in hot places like southern California, Arizona and Nevada. State legislatures in states like those have been turning to renewable energy sources like...
The problem with our times is that the future is not what it used to be, oops then, again, perhaps it is! – A modified famous old quote. Back to the future. Same old song. Here we go again. The more things change the more they stay the same . . . well, you get the picture. Back in 1978, Wyoming voters went to the polls to vote for or against a young candidate named Cheney, who had spent most of his adult career out of the state. But this candidate had a resume that anticipated that he might m...
Is it possible that you can learn more about your home state by spending some time in and traveling through some adjoining western states? Maybe. Here goes: In Wyoming, a person often contrasts the flat high prairie of southeastern Wyoming with the mountainous high country of the northwest part of the state. It is almost as if a diagonal line were drawn across our big rectangle with the goal of making the place half prairie and half mountain. Folks involved with agriculture on the high prairies...
When you have been fortunate enough to travel all over the world, why would you then spend so much time wandering around Wyoming? I get that question a lot. The answer is simple – there is just so much to see and do in our great state and we want to experience all of it. Earlier in our lives, we were fortunate to visit Canada and Mexico. I earned a Masters Degree in Cardiff, Wales. We used to own a company that promoted the Rocky Mountain States in Europe. We visited Hong Kong to line up g...
There are stretches of Wyoming that seem to go on forever. Our tongue-in-cheek state motto of the Big Empty really makes sense when you are driving across these vast places. My late dad used to complain about that stretch of Highway 26 from Casper to Shoshoni as “96 miles of nuthin.’” There have been some boring afternoon trips that would qualify for that assessment. Recently, we were in the Eden-Farson area, which to those who do not know, is between Rock Springs and Pinedale. North of Farso...
As readers of this column know, I am no fan of the “new” JC Penney Company. It is my contention that old James Cash Penney (whose first store was right here in Wyoming, in Kemmerer), is spinning in his grave as to how his successors have managed to ruin that company. But I loved the old Penney’s. I took a trip down memory lane at that company’s long-time store on Main Street of Sheridan recently during a recent trip. There, smack in the heart of the town, is an old-fashioned Penney Store,...
Owning and taking care of horses is obviously one of the great joys for a lot of Wyoming people. To me, I like to ride them, but have never had the urge to own one. Imagine my surprise back in the 1970s, when one of my former business partners (and my boss) Bruce Kennedy asked me to spend a week at his Greybull house, looking after his property and mainly, babysitting his prize horses. I also helped to manage our newspapers in Greybull and Cody, but most of my memories are about taking care of...
A unique part of the four-year curriculum at Wyoming Catholic College in Lander is a three-week wilderness course taken by all freshmen just before starting college. The wilderness trip is a true spiritual experience as these young people from all over the USA (students come from 38 different states) as they bond with others and attend religious services with the two priests who tag along. The Catholic faith involves communion with wine and bread in the form of hosts. This is where this story...
Pow! Pow! Pow! That was the sound of the explosions coming from the high-powered revolvers used by some rough-looking, tough-talking cowboy-types in front of the Irma Hotel in downtown Cody. We were there in July and my granddaughters held their hands over their ears in shock at just how loud a high-powered pistol could be. The Cody Gunfighters have been staging their downtown shootout six nights a week from June to September since the 1980s before big crowds in front of the historic Irma...
An old grizzled editor told me 50 years ago that during my career I should always to be on the lookout for real life heroes. “If you are lucky, you might get to know at least one in your life. If so, spend time with them. You will never regret it,” I was told. During my 46 years in Wyoming, I have known many great men and women around the state who achieved national and international stature. Here in my hometown, despite being a small town full of big characters, two men stand tall as I loo...
Not sure how to weave Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian and the First Lady serving duck at a Native American event into a column, but here goes: It had been a while since my wife Nancy and I spent any time with U. S. Sen. Mike Enzi and his wife Diana, but we shared a quick breakfast during their visit to Lander on primary election day Aug. 16. As usual, Mike was full of news. Most interesting is the fact that GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has been reaching out to members of the Senate for...
The biggest political mystery to me over recent years is who in the world convinced Liz Cheney to go after incumbent Mike Enzi in the 2014 U. S. Senate race? Ranking as probably the single worst political decision in Wyoming history, it resulted in embarrassment for Ms. Cheney, as the immensely popular Enzi appeared to be on his way to crushing her by a gigantic margin. Then, a family health crisis intervened and Liz dropped out to the relief of just about everybody in Wyoming. Last fall, she...
Back in 1978, I hired a group of young men in their mid-20s who all grew up to be powerhouse publishers. But back then, they were raw, ambitious and a handful to deal with, for sure. My wife Nancy and I recently both enjoyed and endured hearing about some of those earliest Wyoming experiences during a mini-reunion of some of these former colleagues here in Lander. Recalling those early Wyoming days of the late 1970s was like going back in a time machine and experiencing them all over again....
While I had earlier predicted Liz Cheney, Wilson, will win the Wyoming GOP nomination for U. S. House, now she is enduring being on the butt end of a funny commercial by her competitor State Sen. Leland Christensen, Alta. Christensen has a long social media post about what he considers to be the three biggest mysteries he is aware of. He equates Liz with the Lochness Monster and Bigfoot as “rarely seen” imaginary legendary creatures. He contends she is not “indigenous” to Wyoming and can onl...
If this were a horse race, the announcer might say that front-runner Liz Cheney of Wilson is holding off challenger Leland Christensen of Alta on the last turn while early leader Tim Stubson of Casper is still running hard but might be starting to fade. But it is not a horse race. This is the race for Wyoming’s lone Congressional seat and there are eight men and one woman working very hard to convince voters that each is the best person for the job. This is the most interesting statewide race i...
So, there I was. Hiking as fast as I could at 9,642 feet above sea level. This was a spooky, surreal and spiritual place. This is America’s Stonehenge, the famous Medicine Wheel, high in the mountains between Lovell and Sheridan. And I was totally alone. The sun was going down. It was breezy and getting cool. My chest ached from walking along this lonely ridgeline as fast as my 61-year old legs could take me. It was September 2007. I had been trying to drive from Jackson to Gillette in one d...