Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
Serving all of Eastern Laramie County since 1908
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Cold equals misery in my book. During the winter, I am forced to get up 20 minutes earlier than usual to be greeted by the cold and a car that doesn’t want to start. Once it does start, I continue my morning ritual by brushing and scraping the snow and ice from my windshield. If I am very lucky, the wind isn’t blowing during the whole process. Just writing about it makes me cringe. However, despite being frostbit every morning, I enjoy this time of year for reasons I don’t quite under... Full story
"Books and booze," is how one of my coffee buddies answered, when I asked his ideas for the perfect Wyoming-oriented Christmas gifts. He had been giving out bottles of Wyoming Whiskey and Koltiska liqueurs over the past years plus he bought six of my Wyoming's 7 Greatest Natural Wonders books and a bunch of Chuck Box and Craig Johnson western potboilers. It is hard for me to argue with his selections, but this column is my annual attempt to compile a list of wonderful Wyoming-oriented books...
As I was driving to work, I noticed a bull standing close to his fence gazing longingly over to the other pasture. Now, if you were raised with even a smudge of country on your jeans or "genes," you know he wasn't admiring the greener grass on the other side of the fence. He was looking at the cows. I would take the bet that this bull has not gone "without" his whole life. He most certainly knows how to work a corn field, if you know what I mean. Otherwise he would have been a steer or under...
Obamacare failures "The president has said several times that this is settled law and that there can't be any changes. Yet, he changes two things a week that wind up to be deathly for Obamacare. He says Republicans don't have any ideas. We have been sharing ideas with him for four years, he just hasn't been listening. I have a 10 step plan that is on my website that would have done more than Obamacare and been paid for. It would be sustainable. It would have let you to keep your doctor, keep...
To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do. ~ Victor Hugo Thanksgiving is a time when the world gets to see just how blessed and how workable the Christian system is. The emphasis is not on giving or buying, but on being thankful and expressing that appreciation to God and to one another. ~ John Clayton...
In 2011 What To Do With The Kids® polled our followers and we asked them to give us their list of the top Christmas or Holiday Movies or Television Shows that the whole family can watch. The list was well received and judging by the feedback was very popular. Two years later however we decided to ask our followers again and there has been quite a shift in popularity of some of those classic movies. It seems that black and white movies are now out. Many parents suggested that once the movie...
Just about everybody who was alive in America in the last 40 years can remember a pivotal life event that occurred on Nov 22, a half century ago. Where were you when President John Kennedy was killed? My story is somewhat unique and so are many others. Clay James of Jackson was in the Marines. His officers armed him and the rest of the soldiers with wooden rifles and sent them to the coastline. They thought the Russians might be invading us. This was in the height of the Cold War. Such an event...
A few months ago I heard someone talking about the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Environmental Quality checking Wyoming's air quality. The test was very scientific. These scientists stood in one location, Location A, and focused on another point, Location B. And they did this random times over a few months span this summer. Or so I heard. The report from this very resourceful and intelligent study was that Wyoming's air quality was "poor to very poor." They could barely...
When I was hired I had a vision of bringing respect and trust to the police department. I believe I accomplished this goal and have received positive feedback and support from the citizens and local law enforcement agencies. Developing relationships with the school and businesses was one of my priorities. Assisting the school in emergency policies and training helped in building a great relationship. I sent one of our officers to school resource officer certification to complete that goal the...
Having breakfast with Liz Cheney recently and listening to her at our Rotary Club got me thinking about this unprecedented Republican U. S. Senate primary race going on in Wyoming. Cheney and three-term senior Sen. Mike Enzi have raised over two million dollars and the primary election is not until August 2014. Amazing. This race got me thinking about a movie. Watching the Coen Brothers motion picture, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, brings to mind some great lines in connection with the race...
Help begins with a conversation. As a co-chair of the Congressional Spouses for Suicide Prevention and Education, I'm taking the opportunity to join the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in raising awareness of the problem of suicide among our active military, veterans, and their families. It is important we recognize suicide and address it as a public health crisis. In Wyoming, suicide is currently the 7th leading cause of death – and veterans make up an estimated 20 percent of t...
The boys down at the coffee shop were in a grumpy mood earlier on this day. They had just endured their fourth heavy wet snowstorm. And it was just Oct. 28! As I write this, I am looking out my window at my poor trees, once again, leaning over almost to the ground. Their leaves covered with frozen snow and many more limbs broken. Our coffee bunch, also known as The Fox News All-Stars, can be surly. You will hear these guys complaining just about everything. Lately the complaints have been...
Not only are Wyoming’s female deputies not wearing protective vests, but they are showing too much of their breasts. That was the conclusion drawn by a Californian who called Fremont County Sheriff Skip Hornecker’s office recently. The Sheriff was being criticized for one of his deputies “having three buttons loose” on her shirt, and obviously not wearing a protective bullet-proof vest and “showing too much skin.” Sheriff Hornecker thought he better get to the bottom of the complaint a...
This year Wyoming has seen significant expansion of the infrastructure that brings high-speed internet into our communities and our schools. The impact on education is noteworthy, this year alone there has been a 700% increase in the bandwidth for our students. By the end of the school year, we will have this level of high-speed connection in all of our 48 school districts. That means the infrastructure will be in every county and every community in Wyoming. This is quite an achievement and the...
In this day and age people are clamoring for access. They want access to every bit of information about every person they know and know of. Google and Wikipedia and Bing all offer scads of information, be it accurate or not. We have Access Hollywood and the worst I think I have seen — TMZ, a mocking show bent toward making people look bad. We flock to CNN or MSNBC or FoxNews to get the latest report about who is dead, in jail, in court. We get angry when not enough is told, when the photos a...
The recent late September and early October snowstorms in Wyoming sure seemed like an anomaly. In recent years, this time of the year was just about the best time you could imagine. The Aspens are turning and the days are warm. Hunters are usually complaining about the lack of snow, which would keep the elk higher up the mountainsides. But not in 2013. And not in many places all over the region. During a recent trip we witnessed a scene reminiscent of those images of the buffalo slaughters back...
“I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt...
My oldest turns 20 tomorrow. Happy Birthday, little squirt. He does not like it when I write about him. I try to keep him out of most of my columns but for some reason he just drifts in, reminding me of his wisdom or ways he is smarter than me. Maybe he drifts in because as my first born, he has been with me longer than anyone currently in my life, excluding my mom, brother and sister. Or maybe he comes to mind simply because I am very proud of him. He is probably the first thing I did really...
The whole concept of what a lighthouse is and can mean has always been a big deal to me. The idea of a place serving as a beacon of hope and safety to desperate folks enduring their worst possible times forms a perfect metaphor to how a person may want to position himself or herself when it comes to aiding their fellow human beings. Over the years, Nancy has bought me models of lighthouses, photos of lighthouses and even a chess set made up of lighthouses. Until two weeks ago, I had only seen...
Monday was Columbus Day. On my way to work, the deejay asked what people thought about celebrating a holiday whose premise has been dis-proven. Oh, Columbus did sail the ocean blue and he did prove that the world was round and not flat. Sometimes people forget the pieces of truth when trying to get their truth heard. But Columbus wasn’t the first one to America. Native Americans and almost the entire state of South Dakota celebrates Native American Day on the second Monday in October. And, as ge...
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.” ~ D. Elton Trueblood...
After 33 years of one cold case and 16 years for the other, it has always been easy to believe that some unsolved disappearances will just never be explained. In Lander, we have pondered about two gals who vanished. Virginia Uden and Amy Bechtel both disappeared and I wrote the news stories about them while I was the local newspaper editor. Amy is still missing but the horrible fate of Virginia Uden and her two sons is now known. Ironically, both women worked for me at my newspaper. It seemed od...
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. ~ Mark Twain...
Have you ever read Aesop's fable about the farmer going out to check on his hens and emotionally yelling when he found a weasel there. The weasel exclaimed, “I wasn't doing anything wrong, just walking by.” The farmer gets yelled at by his wife for riling the dog who woke the baby. And on the story goes, never resting blame on the original source; the weasel who was intending harm yet walked away with no punishment. Isn't that often the case in life. Someone causes a ruckus and stirs doubt, gui...
From land and from the air, the outline of Devils Tower can be seen from a long way off. In the early 1980s, I owned a newspaper in Spearfish, S. D., and flew a private plane across Wyoming taking care of business there. Even though it was slightly off course, I always tried to fly directly over Devils Tower. It is tucked away in the Black Hills of Wyoming in northeast part of the Cowboy State. What a strange sight. And a great many other people from across the country share my thoughts about... Full story
