HE'S COMING! HE'S REALLY COMING!

But I've blown it, too. It's been a little over a week since I posted here, and I could have been beating the drums all along. Mea culpa, dear readers, mea culpa.

But it's not me who's the author of this wonder, that being the fact that SAM WESTERN will be in town TOMORROW NIGHT to speak at the Saratoga Inn. So it's not 100% my fault that very few people around the valley seem to be aware that SAM WESTERN will be in town TOMORROW NIGHT to speak at the Saratoga Inn.

Sam Western, longtime LIANT readers may recall, is the pamphleteer behind the most talked-about book about Wyoming, maybe ever, Pushed Off the Mountain, Sold Down the River: Wyoming's Search for Its Soul. He's now making the rounds as a speaker through Wyoming's humanities endowment speaker's bureau, and his next stop is here tomorrow night!

Very longtime LIANT readers are aware of my enthusiasm for this man and his book, and of my own efforts to bring him here to be the speaker for our chamber of commerce banquet in January, efforts that, alas, got the kabosh from the higher-ups.

So it's no suprise that I'm VERY EXCITED that SAM WESTERN will be in town TOMORROW NIGHT to speak at the Saratoga Inn.

But why don't you know about this?

Politics, I guess. Politics and misplaced faith.

Last I heard, this wonderful, wonderful news was all set to appear in our local newspaper and on the chamber's big purty marquee, but it is not, today, Thursday, the day before SAM WESTERN will be in town to speak at the Saratoga Inn.

I'm sure the Soroptimists, who are the brave and wise souls who are bringing my proto-hero to town, are going to want the newspaper editor's head on a plate, but I also know what the editor will say back to the pitchfork and torch crowd: the only way to guarantee that a specific announcement is going to appear in a particular edition of a paper is to buy an ad. Which will only make them madder, but as my deeply experienced coffee buddies constantly counsel me, it is highly unwise to pick a fight with a guy who buys ink by the barrel.

So anyway, I'm doing what I can to help spread the word.

Once again, SAM WESTERN will be in town TOMORROW NIGHT to speak at the Saratoga Inn.

7:30 p.m. Refreshments and stuff. Book signings. I'll be at the front of the line waiting to shake the man's hand.

Woo!