THINKING AND WONDERING

It's a beautiful, seriously wintry night outside, an answer to our many prayers for more and better snow, but I don't know of anyone who is enjoying it. Everyone here is still in shock, because something that never happens here, happened here today.

We won't really know for quite sometime if a crime of passion or a suicide happened today in our valley, but that hasn't stopped anyone from speculating, accusing, thinking and wondering.

And certain of my friends' expressed opinions to the contrary, that's the way it should be.

It's just as natural an immediate response to want to complain about rumors and call for silence on a matter like this as it is to want to talk about it. The difference lies, I think, in a person's individual emotional makeup.

BUT... I submit that while it IS an expected response to be pissed off at the grapevine which passes on speculation and misinformation and warps narratives beyond recognition, that grapevine is still a good and natural thing.

Gossip has a bad rap, but gossip is, at bottom, a sign of the community's interest in a person or situation. In a twisted way, it is a sign that the community cares about one – issues of approval notwithstanding. For instance, I personally find amusement rather than irritation when I hear that people are speculating about me and a male friend of mine; it means I'm still interesting.

And in a larger sense, the kind of talk going around our valley today is also how a community deals with big events, be they tragedies or triumphs. When something extraordinary happens, what do you do first? What is your basic, physical and intellectual response when, say, a bartender does a backflip behind the bar while pouring two drinks and lighting a patron's cigarette?

Your head whips from side to side, between the scene of the deed and the person sitting next to you; the implicit question in your eyes if not on your lips being "Did you see that?" The first impulse is always to confirm that something really happened; that it wasn't just something imagined.

Think back, for a second, to September 11, when something a lot more horrifying on a much larger scale happened. Wild speculations immediately followed, had begun even before the second plane hit. Nationwide, everyone had a theory, everyone had an opinion, everyone had to say something, to look to his or her side and say "Did that really happen?"

And that's what the kind of talk, the exchange of stories, second-hand, third-hand, made up, posited, really is. A young woman we all knew and at least some of us liked is dead, and not by accident or by natural causes. Maybe she killed herself, maybe her lover shot her, we don't know at this point, and might not know for some time.

Is that any reason not to talk about it? No! Because what is happening now is the start of the grieving process.

It's grieving even if the person speaking didn't like her, even if he or she didn't know her. It's grieving if the speaker is a lifelong chum of her lover who is already worrying about the potential damage to that man's reputation or to his children's well-being.

It's grieving because something has changed here, and not in a way that any community would wish for itself. We don't want to be a place where an entertaining, active, passionate young woman would want to kill herself, and we don't want to be a place where a crazed angry man murders his girlfriend at the crack of dawn.

And while the more analytical among us might want immediately to tell everyone to shut up about it and to point out that just because this happened once doesn't mean it's going to become commonplace, the impulse, the need to mourn this change is nonetheless valid and should be accepted as such.

Myself, I liked the girl who died this morning. She was no angel and we were not what anyone would call close friends, but we had fun together, shared in each other's lives, accepted each other's strengths and weaknesses, drank a beer or two together now and then, bitched about men from time to time, and never wished one another ill. I'm sad that I'm never going to see her again, or will be once it has actually sunk in that she's dead.

It still doesn't seem real to me – so unlikely, so surprising, so soap opera-ish, so much like something that only happens on, say, the evening news in Denver or someplace. I haven't seen her for a while, but when last I did she seemed very much herself – boistrous, intense, a little abrasive, wickedly funny, and very much alive.

And now she's not?

Hell yeah, I'm going to talk about this. And write about it. And think and wonder – even long after we have the official verdict, the government's final version of the story.

And so will everyone else here.

Rest in peace, sweetie. Sorry I didn't get to say good-bye.

MARCH MADNESS?

I am, as I am sure I have established on this web page and elsewhere, not much of a basketball fan. Yes, I enjoy high school and middle school games here in the valley, but that's mostly because I know the kids, their parents and grandparents, and get a lot of business done in the bleachers (excited parents whose children are sinking three-pointers or being grossly fouled or have been singled out by the referees for inhumane treatment are at their most vulnerable and are thus wonderful targets for volunteer recruiting efforts for things like selling beer out at the chariot races, for example).

I've even been known to enjoy a University of Wyoming game or two despite myself, though that's largely through vicarious partying with my parents, with whom I have not attended a single game since I turned 21 for some ill defined reason that is probably best explored in another column altogether.

But the big stuff, what the Dunk Mob tends to refer to as the NzBA and the whole college basketball thing pretty much make me yawn, even if by some miracle UW is in the big tournament.

So why am I writing a column with a title like "March Madness"?

Because March Madness isn't just about college basketball.

Here in Saratoga, we enjoy about eleven months or so of truly frenzied activity, starting in April or so with a brief but intense season of riding the whitewater up at the headwaters of the North Platte River. Come May we're taking more leisurely floats and getting all the businesses and attractions in shape for tourist season (and this year, just for extra fun, we're holding a brand new special event, a birdwatching festival). In June we are awash in tourists and summer road crews and events like the kids fly fishing clinic. July has the usual big holiday early on, followed closely by an outdoor arts festival, then later in the month an amateur open rodeo accompanied also by downtown "Crazy Days," rubber duck races, a 5k fun run and the like. August features everything from a combination microbrew festival/bullriding event/chili cook-off to street dances to antique car rallies to stuff that we haven't even got on the calendar yet. September brings hunters and late season fishermen to keep us all hopping and busy, and most of us like to go hunting and fishing as well (a big part of why we all live here). October brings more hunting and Halloween, which we celebrate in a pretty serious way. November is when we start all the holiday season stuff, which goes on at a pretty constant rate right through New Year's Eve - there are raffles, parades, business open houses, nighttime shopping hours, wine tastings, you name it. Then in January we have the ice fishing derby. In January or February we have a winter carnival that is just manic with sporting activity - snowboarding, cross country skiing, skating, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, gambling... and speaking of gambling, in February, too, are our beloved chariot races.

Which brings us around to March. By March we're all exhausted. We've survived another year of good times (we're the "Good Times Valley," you know. And while we have a good time, too, it's also a lot of work making it fun for the visitors). We've been staring at the snow on the ground for some four or five months and have gotten tired of skiing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, etc. We're tired of being cold. We're tired of being more or less stuck here in the valley because the (ahem) individuals who mapped out the route for Interstate 80 listened to landowner interests instead of their surveyors, consciences and common sense and routed the road through the windiest, snowiest hellholes the region has to offer, meaning road closures are an occurrence so common they wouldn't even make the evening news (if there was such a thing around here - remember the nearest TV stations are more than 100 miles away and have much more important things to report on, like NCAA basketball). We're watching the snow melt and want, really want, to believe that means spring is coming, but we all know better.

And we know that pretty soon we're going to have to jump back on the hamster wheel and make another year whiz by in the valley – an exhausting prospect right after we've just gotten down from the wheel to take a breather.

And speaking of breathers, we don't really know how to take those, anyway. We've just spent 11 solid months making everything go and inertia being what it is, well, most of us are so used to frantic activity that it's hardwired in our systems, so that even when we sit of a dull March morning in our coffee klatsches we don't really relax and visit. We sort of sit there, twitching and staring at each other and trying desperately to talk about something new and interesting. But there really just isn't any, is there?

So, everybody talks about basketball. At least that's my explanation for this bewildering phenomenon. And even though I don't like it very much, and really don't have anything at all to say about it, I actually wind up being pretty glad when the topic comes up as often as it does this month, because otherwise conversation goes something like this.

"Yup."
"Uh huh."
"Yup."
"More coffee?"
"Yup."
"What's the stock market doing?"
"Up."
"Is that good?"
"Uh huh."
"Yup."
"More coffee?"
"Uh huh."
"Say, is it true someone was shooting at a cop down in Encampment last night?"
"Nope."
"Oh."
"Yup."

Etc.

So while I'd warrant most people think March Madness IS all about the basketball, and refers more directly to the frenzy of the fans in the field houses and auditoriums and glitzy sports palaces of our fair nation, what it's really about is the prevention of madness. Good god, if it wasn't for this stupid basketball tournament, what would we talk about this month? Popcorn?

WOW, WHEN DID WE GET SO DUMB?

"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian Senate. And I do believe that if the Almighty has not decreed that man shall never be free (and it is blasphemy to believe it), that the secret will be found to be in the making himself the depository of the powers respecting himself, so far as he is competent to them, and delegating only what is beyond his competence by a synthetical process, to higher and higher orders of functionaries, so as to trust fewer and fewer powers in proportion as the trustees become more and more oligarchical."
--Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell

It may yet remain to be seen if the 2002 Wyoming State Legislature will truly bear comparison to the above named autocrats and aristocrats, but it would appear from bits of legislation that are gaily passing through one house or the other of this most august body that it has become a goal for its members – or at least those in the House, who recently passed House Bill 43 with a 49-1 vote (the NO came from Rep. Louie Tomassi-R-Lincoln/Sublette).

On this surface this bill, which treats in 57 steaming pages (engrossed copy) on the tender topic of school capital construction, looks reasonable, and has surely provoked in many a casual reader a response along the lines of "well at long last they're doing something!"

And doing something they most certainly are. Among the things they are doing:

1) Establishing a seven-person commission, only one of whom has been directly elected (that being the State Superintendent of Public Instruction [and let me just stick in one little additional editorial comment on this score: thank goodness for term limits]), one member of the state board of education (so okay, he or she is sort of elected), and five gubernatorial appointees with "expertise" in building, etc.

So far not so bad; we seem to create commissions and fund studies all the time nowadays. Much easier than actually dealing with problems directly. But guess what: this isn't just another advisory board, because among other things, HB 43 would empower it to (text condensed from the actual bill):

(1) Adopt policies, standards and guidelines for the comprehensive assessment of school buildings, school district facility plans (and review and certify each district's plans)

(2) Develop policies and criteria for use in determining renovation, replacement or discontinuation of buildings

(3) Enter into construction or renovation project agreements, as appropriate, with school districts to select professionals for a project, review and approve project plans and specifications, review and approve project changes and change orders, establish establish payment schedules involving state funds and take all other necessary steps to ensure construction or renovation project management and to review and approve the process for approval of the completed project, with assurances that the commission is not responsible nor liable for compliance with construction or renovation project schedules or completion dates.

Getting a little creepy already, isn't it? And we're only on page six! And we've taken how much autonomy away from our locally elected school boards again?

But of course there is more. The commission will also be empowered to develop criteria for making enhancements to existing buildings, determining what buildings are "surplus," disposing of old buildings, establish prototypes for buildings for uniformity (I can't argue with that much, I guess, except that it is buried in all of this other muck), and develop criteria for approving and acquiring building sites (again, not horrible, but I'd still not rather have this in place if it means having all of this other crap with it).

AND, for those times when these poor little commissioners to be named later get to feeling like the legislators who dreamed them up, those same legislators who cry "study" every time someone asks even a simple yes or no question and will soon, no doubt, feel the need to hire consultants to tell us what kind of weather we're having, there is this tidbit:

"The commission may contract with appropriate expertise and professionals in administering this act and performing duties imposed under this act."

I'm sure many of these will come from California, just like the geniuses who brought us the school finance bill.

I won't even get into the creation of another salaried papa bureaucrat, along with a staff of baby bureaucrats, to handle the day-to-day minutiae the commissioners can't or won't. I rant about that stuff all the time and don't want to bore you more than I already have.

But I can't let this bit pass without comment: "If a building owned by a district meets the applicable standards under this subsection for use by the district to educate students and was previously used for the purpose of educating students, no municipal or county zoning requirements shall be construed or applied so as to prevent the district from using the building for the purpose of educating students," which looks to me like a wholly unnecessary swipe at the authority of municipal governments and also suggests that there's not a lot that could stand between your houses, Saratoga, and the development of a full-on swine pen behind the high school if the school feels like putting it there for the purpose of educating students.

In addition, it requires all school districts to file a comprehensive long-range facility management and development plan with the state, a plan written to minute state standards and sure to take up much extra time and effort simply to render it into proper bureaucratese, which no doubt will be much more important than the actual contents of the plan. Once these plans are filed, they must be updated every five years and will be enthusiastically micromanaged by the commission and its senior staff member.

What does this all boil down to? A loss of local control, of course, to protect us from the no doubt well intentioned fumblings and bumblings of the dunderheads we local yokels choose to govern our school districts. In matters of school building repair and construction, they are to be lobotomized, turned into a mere rubber stamping authority on what this new state commission decides is best for us.

Look - I'll take a leap here and say that I'm one of the few people even remotely associated with this web page, let alone living in this area, who has actually been to a school board meeting in the last several years. Until very recently I attended their meetings every month, and since it was my job to tell the rest of you what happened there, I paid very close attention indeed to what they did, what they said, what they were planning for and how they were going to make their plans reality.

Now, it's true that I disagreed a lot with some of the decisions they made and did so very loudly. But at least I respected their right and their duty to make them, and I still do. I was and still am able to go down the street to a regular public meeting and watch most of the process by which their decisions are been made, and can make comment on them to people whom I know personally and whose priorities I understand. I know their timetables, their budgets, their procedures. I know the staff members who are "making it so" after the board adjourns.

And I know for a very real fact that at least the members of Carbon County School District No. 2's Board of Trustees have been paying very close attention to the state of the school buildings under their care, and have been fixing whatever they can – i.e. it's not like local officials are blowing off or incompetently carrying out their responsibilities, necessitating this drastic step on the part of state government which will be taken if HB 43 passes.

Of course, said passage is not yet a done deal. The bill sailed through the house with essentially no opposition, but has yet as of this writing to be acted upon by the senate. There is, therefore, still a chance to urge that this thing be tossed out with the other trash. We can write to or talk to or e-mail or otherwise share our opinions with our senators and see if they listen... and when we do, let us remind them of something else that Jefferson said:

"[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant." --Thomas Jefferson to M. de Marbois, 1817.

LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW (PLEASE) LET IT SNOW!

It seems funny even to me to be worrying about snow on the last day of February. Not only are there two, maybe even three more months left of what is winter in fact if not by the calendar, but the ground and the rooftops and the windowsills at my office are nicely dusted with a light new snowfall, as they have been for the last several mornings. It’s a very pretty sight, if one isn’t sick of it.

But even those who are sick of the sight of snow – and their name is legion, by the end of February, but most of those who are, are aware of how sick they get of the sight of snow and make their plans accordingly so they can be elsewhere (Arizona, Nevada, Rock Springs) in March – have to admit that matters are troubling this year.

First of all there is the quality of the snow itself. I think we need a new name for the stuff that is prettily dusting my windowsills and cars’ windshields and giving the raised lettering on business signs a temporary white accent. “Snow,” according to Dictionary.com (I have yet to acquire the 20+ volume Oxford English Dictionary of my dreams – every time I have a few thousand dollars to spare, something truly dreadful happens to my car – so I’m afraid this will have to do this morning) (I know it’s devastating, and I feel my failure keenly – far more than you feel disappointment in my resorting to lesser references, I assure you) is defined as:

1. Frozen precipitation (“Any form of water, such as rain, snow, sleet, or hail, that falls to the earth's surface”) in the form of white or translucent hexagonal ice crystals that fall in soft, white flakes.
2. A falling of snow; a snowstorm.
3. Something resembling snow, as:
a. The white specks on a television screen resulting from weak reception.
b. Slang. Cocaine.
c. Slang. Heroin.
(emphasis mine, of course)

Hmm. This authoritative pronouncement on what is and is not “snow” begs consideration of a point that hadn’t occurred to me before: perhaps what is lightly and prettily dusting the sidewalks, what gently frosted and froze my morning paper to the sidewalk, what is lazily drifting desultorily downwards past my windowpane is actually cocaine, in which case Saratoga’s economic development woes are over, at least until the DEA comes in, guns a-blazing, and makes our lovely town look like Beirut.

But I digress, but not much, because whatever it is that makes our bare, leafless trees look like cunningly spun silver, whatever it is that lands on our heated sidewalks downtown and disappears on contact, whatever makes visitors to the hot pool look like French aristocrats who got a bit too enthusiastic with the powder, there ain’t no water in that there “snow.”

If it were snow, it would contain water. If there were water, the aforementioned heated sidewalks would show signs of telltale moisture where the flakes had melted on contact. They do not.

If there were water, snowflakes caught on the tongue or scooped en masse off the ground (after one has carefully made sure that said flakes are of no xanthian hues; as Frank Zappa said “Watch out where the huskies go/And don’t you eat that yellow snow”) would give one at least a tiny drink of water. They do not.

Instead the sidewalks stay mysteriously dry, and the mouth feel (to borrow a term from wine connoisseurs) of this snow is most reminiscent of Dippin’ Dots, the Ice Cream of the Future, the weirdly freeze-dried ice cream developed for the space program, which goes into the mouth a light and airy solid that reminds me of nothing so much as those halcyon days of my youth when my sister and I dined largely on styrofoam packing peanuts – remember those days? Ah, it makes me weep to see them passed – and then it, it... you know, there’s not really a verb that comes to mind to accurately describe what happens next. “Vaporize” and “Evaporate” both imply a transition from a liquid to a gaseous phase (so I was taught at dear old Saratoga High School by the man who is now my chamber office’s maitre d’marquee – be sure to wave cheerily at him, even honk if you’re so inclined, when you pass him by on the highway. Offer him brandy if you’re feeling charitable; changing the letters on that sign in the freezing cold and the wind and the “snow”fall is a task of staggering unpleasantness), which in turn implies that there is some kind of liquid involved. “Sublimation” (direct transition from the solid to the gaseous phase) comes close, but that still implies that there is a gas sitting in my mouth after the process is completed and there is... just... nothing.

Maybe this “snow” dancing merrily outside, swirling around car tires to demonstrate the principle of microclimates (still trying to prove to the maitre d’marquee that I was sort of, kind of paying attention in his classroom while I sat in the back and read stupid “dragons and dumdums” novels with my sweetheart) is actually some kind of slight intrusion into our dimension of “snow” falling on an alternate earth. On that alternate earth it is wonderful, water-rich snow, light and powdery to satisfy the skiers, but bearing in it enough water to satisfy the river scum of summer (my brethren and I are now busily at work trying to invent a raft that can deliver the thrills of big water at North Gate whilst floating the calm and placid surface of the Hugus-Mullison ditch. It’s a hideous, Rube-Goldberg contraption that reminds one of nothing so much as the Magic Fingers beds in cheap motel rooms, but we still have a month or two to perfect it). But here it is just some kind of abstract, impressionist representation of snow to stand in for the real thing.

Or maybe what we have is “snow” the same way the polar caps on Mars contain “ice.” It looks like frozen water there, as we gaze at the red planet through a good telescope, but it is really frozen carbon dioxide, the maitre said (see? see? We were multitasking in science class!). Maybe we can start a fire extinguisher farm.

I can joke badly about this snow that isn’t a snow all I want, but the fact is this year is looking a little grim so far. Fact is, the lack of water in that snow is downright scary. We’ve got a call already on the North Platte River, meaning all water rights younger than those of the Pathfinder reservoir downstream are useless at least until May 1. Saratoga has just enough right older than Pathfinder’s to allow reasonable municipal use, as long as nobody goes banantas watering his lawn or anything. But outside Saratoga, where the countryside is blond for winter and likely to stay that way? Well, put it this way, my ice fishing buddy, who is in “real” life a firefighter for the BLM, is anticipating a lot of work this spring.

And the worst thing about it all is that there is nothing I can do, though that doesn’t stop my townsfolk from asking me what I’m going to do.

Pray, I guess. To whatever gods seem likely to listen. Though historically, we do have to be careful what we ask for. Sandbagging isn’t much fun, either.

BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB TIME!

Well, the month is almost over and I'm sure you are all dying to know what comes next on the LIANT recommended reading list. I can hear you all clamoring out there (or cursing if you took my advice about last month's selection) for more of my advice as you survey the steaming piles of remaindered tomes at your local bookstore, reminders all of the wisdom contained in Sturgeon's Law ("99 percent of science fiction – of anything is crap").

Originally I was going to revisit a book from which I quoted at great length back in December when I wrote about "Happiness and Islands" (check the archives of this blog and go to the December 1 entry), Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva, OR The Bomb Party, but in light of certain crises coming to light in the Archdiocese of Boston, crises breaking the hearts and inciting the anger of Catholics worldwide, I offer instead another of Greene's late works, which is one of the sweetest portraits, fictional or otherwise, of a priest I have ever encountered.

Monsignor Quixote
By Graham Greene
New York: Washington Square Press, 1982

I won't mess much with the parallels to the original Quixote, Cervantes', because unlike, say, James Joyce's allusions to The Odyssey, Greene's to Cervantes are elegant and clear even to those who have not slogged through the old Spanish classic. Those parallels are clever and enjoyable – the gentle madman is here a parish priest in Franco-era Spain, his Sancho the communist ex-mayor of the nearest village, a nearly decrepit Seat 600 is their Rocinante – but not intrusive and have little impact on one's enjoyment of the overall book.

Where MQ is most enjoyable is in its surprising little moments – a visit to the monstrous monument that was meant to be the Generalissimo's tomb, where Quixote prays "for him, for you and me, and for my church," the monsignor's continuing reluctance to wear the purple bib and socks due his rank which his friend the mayor insists are their best defense against the fascist Guardia still in charge of almost everything in Spain, a visit to a pornographic film in Madrid, and a passage I find worth quoting in full that, more than anything I have ever read before or since, explains and exemplifies the perplexing construction that is Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma (at least to filthy heathens like me). What follows is an excerpt from fairly early in the duo's travels, as they are first realizing that they have more in common than not:

"What puzzles me, friend, is how you can believe in many incompatible ideas. For example, the Trinity. It is worse than higher mathematics. Can you explain that to me? It was more than they could do in Salamanca."
"I can try."
"Try then."
"You see these bottles?"
"Of course."
"Two bottles, equal in size. The wine they contained was of the same substance and it was born at the same time. There you have God the Father and God the Son and there, in the half bottle, God the Holy Ghost. Same substance. Same birth. They're inseparable. Whoever partakes of one partakes of all three."
"I was never, even in Salamanca, able to see the point of the Holy Ghost. He has always seemed to me a bit redundant."
"We were not satisfied with two bottles, were we? That half bottle gave us the extra spark of life we both needed. We wouldn't have been so happy without it. Perhaps we wouldn't have had the courage to continue our journey. Even our friendship might have ceased without the Holy Spirit."

A page later, Quixote is regretting his grievous error in representing the Holy Ghost with a half bottle, which is "Anathema. It was condemned expressly at I forget which Council. A very early council. Perhaps it was Nicea... There is no sin worse than sin against the Holy Ghost."

Sancho the mayor gallantly agrees only to remember that there were three bottles in Quixote's example – a deed that in some ways is the essence of friendship when the two parties are so very different as this priest and this ousted communist. The Mayor is bewildered by the priest's concern that he has belittled a perplexing and mysterious idea, but does not chide him about its strangeness; he penetrates immediately to the best way to honor his friend's concern and at the same time put it to rest.

Twenty years after I first read this book, I still love Father Quixote and the Mayor, their curiosity about one another, their concern and respect for one another's perceived spiritual and political errors, their humor (for this is after all a funny book, too; for every theological dialogue there is a scene like the one in the inn when Quixote completely fails to recognize a condom when he sees one).

Sadly, the book is presently out of print, but used copies are still widely available and worth the searching. Next time you're a little blue or in despair about the state of your faith, your polis or yourself, you could do worse than to take a little trip with Quixote and the Mayor.

THEY CRIED "UNCLE"!!!!!!!

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
- Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)

To quote that immortal culture hero, Homer Simpson (from the TV show, not the Nathaniel West novel): "WOOHOO!"

(Or in Secular Johnson vernacular, Wough Hough! Same thing)

I received a caller this afternoon that made my day, if not my week, if not what's left of my month.

As I was busy pounding out the details of yet another grant request, lo and behold, a kid from Boston came crashing into my office, a Harvard student productively spending his time off from classes researching the latest update to the school's popular LET'S GO travel guides. He had sought me out especially, because the kid who came around last year had become my particular friend, had even traveled around the state with me a bit, and had told this kid that if he got to Saratoga he simply had to look me up.

But that's not what made my day, though it's always fun to talk to someone who is stomping around my old stomping grounds.

No, what was wonderful about this visit is that I have a witness for the call that made my day, if not my week, if not what's left of my month.

Right as I was updating Young Mastah Hahvahd about the Sierra Madre Winter Carnival, the Donald E. Erickson Memorial Chariot Races and the Great Corn Pop-Off (coming soon to a chamber of commerce very near you) (well, at least near my Saratoga readers) (but the rest of you are welcome to join us, too, of course!), my telephone rang, as it has the particular habit of doing only when I'm enjoying a conversation with an office visitor.

(Cue swell of ominous music so swelling and so ominous that it could almost have come from the Sewer King's overwhelming and house penetrating sound system, except, of course, that system is broken, so I guess I should come up with a more appropriate analogy) (But why bother, since I only added this aside to tease him) (I would definitely qualify as his worst friend maybe ever) (but I pour a good pint of Guiness) (OK, back to the narrative thread previously established before this rude and cheeky interruption; just had to make sure everybody knows it's really me and I'm back and mostly well and feeling, well, rude and cheeky)

It was THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU! They had FIGURED OUT WHO I AM!!!

But it wasn't either of the ladies who had originally come calling lo these several weeks ago, nor was it their supervisor in Rawlins.

No! It was, allegedly, the Regional Director in Denver, and she wanted to apologize for whatever it was her representative had done that had made me so mad.

This alone was kind of satisfying, but I had firmly resolved not to be easily mollified after the rash of bad behavior in which the bureau has engaged in pursuing data for its American Community Survey. After all, it wasn't really the census taker who came to my door who made me mad (although she could have been more pleasant and less officious; still, as one dear friend of mine has chided me, it's foolishness to expect better from a federal employee, after all).

No, as readers of my page here know, it was the bureau's lack of notification of its intended targets (i.e. me, personally), the local government of the community it was surveying (i.e., the town council - my four colleagues and I, or barring that, our police department, whose time and effort wound up getting put to no good use in tracking down whether my nighttime visitors were legitimate at all), or the local press (there are two newspapers in Carbon County, and neither of them is exactly overwhelmed with content to stick in the newsholes).

My displeasure was then compounded when I was propaganda-bombed and threatened.

I gladly shared all of this information with Ms. Regional Director Person, who quickly realized that I was a Curmudgeon On A Tirade and there was no getting any words in edgewise. A minute or so into my spiel she stopped trying to interrupt and contradict me, stopped insisting that an advance letter had been mailed to me after I informed her that our mail comes by post office boxes and all of the propaganda and threats her agency had sent to me had been going to "Current Resident" at my street address, and just bucked up and took it – with more grace than I've yet perceived in anyone associated with the Census to date.

Then she tried a new tactic – trying to convince me that the data they were collecting was vital to the efforts of my local chamber of commerce in trying to attract new businesses and residents to the area! "All that data you use in your reports comes from us, you know, Ms. Sherrod."

But alas, even there she was quite mistaken. I use population numbers provided by the Census, but that's all. The qualitative data on housing, schools, etc. is stuff taken from research conducted locally by people I know well and trust, people for whom I have genuine personal respect and affection: members of Saratoga 3000! None of whom ever have been or will be Census takers.

I almost felt sorry for this woman, who was surely doing her job and must have been quite put out to be having to directly phone the single data point her agency is trying to collect for the Town of Saratoga (but really guys, am I at any way at all representative of Saratoga's population? Would my answers produce even remotely accurate statistics that represented anything about Saratoga? Let's see... I'm white anyway. But... I'm the only registered "big L" Libertarian in the whole damned county, I'm single, my primary mode of transport is a crappy old bike, I speak eight languages (most of them badly, but still), I play with insects for fun, I have migrated from "Red" America to "Blue" America and back again and oh, yeah, for religion I routinely refer to myself as a Manichaean.

Yeah. My data is really worth the effort to collect. And look, I shared some of it willingly (though just in case anyone is interested, I lied on two items in that litany. And I ain't tellin' which two, ever).

So yeah, I almost felt sorry for this woman, but then, as her final effort to persuade me to cooperate, she pulled out that Title 13 nonsense.

So I shared with her the observation I shared with you all last week, namely that no language in the sections of Title 13 of the U.S. Code in any away applies to me, let alone compels me to answer their nosy questions about how many bathrooms I have or how much money I spend on insurance or what is my preferred method of controlling nose hair.

And here's what still has me hooting, just before my bedtime on an otherwise pretty dull Monday night: This woman, purportedly the Regional Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, did not have a comeback to refute this observation. She backed down completely on the matter.

A minute later (now about 20 minutes into the phone call, placed on her nickel, your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen, and think fondly of this fact and this story as you're signing your tax returns, and be sure to write "Under Protest" next to your signature), she was docilely agreeing with me that all the U.S. Constitution or the U.S. Code really required me to share with her was how many people were living at my address – the exact same data I sent the Census taker away with in 2000 after he threatened me with legal action for burning my long form; the exact same data I sent her two minions away with a few weeks ago when they interrupted my nap.

Then she thanked me for my time and wished me a pleasant afternoon.

The Hahvahd Boy (remember the Hahvahd Boy?) had been following my side of the conversation all along, and had proven a most appreciative audience for the whole thing, so when I hung up, he jumped up from the couch, strode across my office, shook my hand, and demanded to know if my favorite beer was still Guiness (guess I really had made an impression on his predecessor). A bit bewildered by the question, I told him as a matter of fact it is, and said maybe we could squeeze in some time at the Lazy River Cantina later that night if he'd like.

Alas, he had to mosey on over to Laramie directly after our interview, he said, or that would be pretty cool.

O'well, I thought, and told him about WYO 230, which might prove a nicer route to his next stop than more plodding along the Interstate. He thanked me and left, still grinning and shaking his head at what he'd witnessed.

It was my turn to grin and shake my head when, 15 minutes later, he came bounding back into my office with a four-pack of Guiness Pub Draft as a tribute to my curmudgeonly grandstanding.

I had apparently befriended the only registered "big L" Libertarian in all of Harvard University.

At this point, therefore, I am officially proclaiming the case of K8E vs. the Census closed and furthermore closed with a happy ending.

Any story at all that ends with a tribute of Guiness is a good one in my book.

CEMETERIES AND STATEMENTS...

"The cemetery really isn't a place to make a statement."

- Mary Elizabeth Baker

Ms. Baker made this statement about a tombstone in Concord, MA located near those of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau which read "Who the hell is Sheila Shea," so her remarks may or may not be entirely germane to the issue that is now troubling me, but I had to start somewhere, folks.

Our cemetery board asked me and my fellow town council members tonight to use our cemetery to make a statement of sorts, you see, and it's one that I'm not entirely comfortable with, namely that preventing vandalism is more important than allowing the public to have access to a treasured and emotionally important facility.

Now, I can understand the Saratoga Cemetery Board's point of view, I really can. A lot of work and money has been put into making our cemetery a beautiful and thoughtful place; the pavilion built there has lent dignity to many a memorial – and Memorial Day – service, the grounds are well-kept, and in general it's a place of which we can be very proud. Even visitors to our town have noticed how nice this place is, and have remarked to me and to others on how much that says about our town (to those who judge a town by the condition of its cemetery, anyway).

And yeah, it's terrible that kids or whoever go in there after dark sometimes in the summer and make a mess. It's disrespectful and winds up costing money and may cause much alarm to people visiting the cemetery legitimately. And yes, I'd really rather it didn't happen.

And yes, there are ways of dealing with the problem, but instead of first asking for tougher enforcement of our existing 10 p.m. curfew for kids under 16, a curfew that precludes their having much time between sunset and our police sending them home in which to work much mischief and one which it should be much easier to enforce this coming summer now that our police department has five officers instead of two and a very dynamic new police chief, the cemetery board's solution has been to ask the town council to consider drafting and passing an ordinance prohibiting entering the cemetery between the hours of dusk and dawn.

And we voted tonight to draft such an ordinance. It will probably be ready sometime next month, and then it will go through the required three readings, and if it passes all three readings it will become law.

BUT... will it actually solve the problem? Or will it just be another curtailment of everyone's liberties in order to prevent a few people from behaving badly?

Think for a moment about those people who have legitimate business in the cemetery. Is such a measure fair at all to them? Sure, they're free to come during daylight, but what if for whatever reason – their schedules, their emotional needs (I remember well what it's like the first year after losing someone special, that awakening in the middle of the night or the turn after something amazing has happend when you want to see if your companion saw it too only he's not there. And I've felt the need to go to sit with him at his place in the ground in the middle of the night, and was damned glad to be able to do so. Oh yes), a wish for privacy – they are only able, or only need to visit after dark?

So the question I'm posing to all of you is, which is more important: freedom to visit the cemetery when you can and want and need to, or protecting some structures from vandalism?

Me, I value freedom over protection or prevention any day, and am sure this is a surprise to none of you. And if I don't hear some pretty compelling arguments to the contrary during the course of our debates on this ordinance proposal, I'm going to vote against this thing.

But what do YOU want?

NOW I'M REALLY BACK

As frequent readers of this webpage know, I've begun a quixotic enterprise: tangling with the almighty U.S. Census Bureau. They came a-knockin' unannounced about two weeks ago and I chased the Bureau's two representatives away with all due alacrity, since the survey they were peddling was one of which I have never heard, I had not received the alleged letter the Bureau had sent me in the mail, I didn't know either of the two rude women who were standing at my door, and I was sick and tired.

Still feeling snarky and more than a little wigged out about the whole enterprise, I called the police on them for good measure, since the more I thought about it (and discussed it with my admittedly slightly paranoid ex-cop father) the less legitimate my surprise visit seemed.

Update time!

Our fair berg's single lady cop devoted much time and energy trying to contact the Bureau over the next few days to find out if this survey was actually the real thing and if it was being done here. After running into lots of disconnected Bureau numbers and interviewing lots of disconnected Bureau employees and spending even more time than I did on the Bureau's stunningly uninformative website, she concluded that my nighttime visitors had contacted me on legitimate business.

Interestingly enough, the Bureau still hasn't made any contact with the Town of Saratoga or any of its agencies to tell us that they're doing something here, what they're doing here, etc. The only contact the Bureau has had with us, in fact, has been with the lady cop!

But, they're still hot on my tail. One of the ladies came by and caught me as I was heading back to work from my lunch break and again asked for 30 minutes of my time and I again told her no. She left me with an envelope containing a cringingly polite letter apologizing for making me mad, demanding my phone number and name, and asking me for "a few minutes of my time" so she can "explain what this new survey is all about."

She also left me an entertainingly vague but very slickly produced brochure purporting to explain what the American Community Survey is all about, but the "Questions and Answers" contained therein are all just about whether or not we are required by law to respond to the survey. Touchingly, close to half of the questions presuppose that the pamphlet reader really really wants to spill his or her guts to the Bureau but is handicapped or uncertain about his or her ability to help, and the answers offer helpful solutions to such people, solutions like "the respondent may designate another person to help complete the questionnaire" (OK, I want Linda Lay to help me).

But that's not all!

The darling lady also provided me with a copy of Title 13, the much-mentioned part of the U.S. Code governing required participation in Census stuff. The paper she gave me lists, I guess, only the most germane portions of the title, including §222, Giving suggestions or information with intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population, §223, Refusal, by owners, proprietors, etc. to assist census employees, and §224, Failure to answer questions affecting companies, businesses, religious bodies and other organizations; false answers.

Now, §222 can't apply to me because I gave out no false information the first time they came around: I informed them truthfully that there is one person living in my apartment, and that I am she.

Nor can §223 apply to me, though at first glance it would appear to (and I'm sure they're counting on this). Once again, though, the devil is in those pesky details. From §223:

Whoever, being the owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent, or agent of any hotel, apartment house, boarding or lodging house, tenement or other building, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary or by any other officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof, acting under the instructions of the Secretary, to furnish the names of the occupants of such premises, or to give free ingress thereto and egress therefrom to any duly accredited representative of such Department or bureau or agency thereof, so as to permit the collection of statistics with respect... blah blah blah I won't bother you with the rest of it, because it's those words I put in boldface that actually matter.

I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent of this apartment building. I am a tenant. I did not prevent the Secretary or any other Department of Commerce employee from entering or leaving this building, which features direct street entrances. True, I did not furnish my name or any other tenant's, but then again, since I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent, I am not required to.

Nor does §224 apply to this matter, since these people were not asking me about (quoting Title 13 again) any "company, business, institution, establishment, religious body or organization of any nature whatsoever"; they wanted to know about me personally.

Look, I'd not be making a big deal of this if this jackass agency had made any effort at all to tell me, either as a person or as a town council member, that they were coming. The fact that now they have singled me out for frequent propaganda bombs, even resorting to Fed Exing me yet another copy of Title 13 and a letter trying to convince me that these sections of Title 13 with which we have just frolicked somehow compels my compliance makes me less, not more in helping them out.

Yeah, I'm being needlessly stubborn. But they are being needlessly idiotic, discourteous, and now threatening, so someone has to be.

I'll share a final tidbit, from the letter Fed Exed to me over the weekend, before calling it a night:

"Your federal, state and local government depend on your answers to tell them where to build schools, hospitals, roads and community centers." (emphasis mine, of course)

Well gee, that convinced me!

OK, OK...

As a certain wag who will go nameless pointed out to me this morning, if that Chris Witty person can win a gold medal with mono, I can certainly write a column, so I guess I'm back, folks... if anyone is still looking in. It seems like it's been months since last I posted here.

And yes, I have been idle! Nothing like a virus for which one's doctor's prescribed remedy is somewhat sizeable doses of liquid opium (OK, OK, codiene cough syrup) and instructions to spend the week "drinking lots of fluids and lolling around in narcotic heaven" (the two aren't quite mutually exclusive, though there are certain consequences to increased fluid intake that make prolonged episodes of lolling somewhat uncomfortable, if not messy) to keep one flat on one's back and thinking about nuthin', which is actually pretty nice. Chariot races? Poof! What chariot races? Septic tank ordinance? Poof! What septic tank ordinance? Fishing derby and winter carnival paperwork? Poof! What paperwork? Joint Powers Board meeting? Poof! What meeting? Etc.

Never in my life has it been so easy to dismiss so much, at least not since it stopped being really fun to take long train rides. I can almost see why some people get addicted to that stuff.

But of course, the problem with making everything go poof! is that it all really only goes poof! inside one's own little head. Meanwhile, the outside world keeps on turning and deadlines keep approaching whether I'm paying attention to these facts or not.

And while I'm back at work more or less full time and while I'm back to coaching starting tomorrow and while I'm heading off to the Wyoming Association of Municipalities' annual Elected Officials Workshop (which I really could have used last year as a newly elected official, but which I wound up missing because I had the flu - Eliot was wrong when he said April is the cruelest month. No way. That would be February), still I feel like someone snuck up on me while I was sleeping, popped open my battery case and slipped in a few spent AAAs in place of the monstrous truck battery on which I am accustomed to running.

On the other hand, I sleep very well, and probably do so for longer and more often than I ever have.

I'll bet you that Witty chick crashed and burned HARD last night after all that skating.

Of course, she's a month ahead of me on the disease thing.

I sure hope I can skate like that when I get over mono!

ALL ALONE IN THE NIGHT

I haven't written to this blog for a while because I've been home sick and miserable, having sunk down into that depression that accompanies all illnesses that last more than a few days, having succumbed to those fears – what if I never get better? What if my voice never really comes back? What if my fever does brain damage? Not to mention, will I ever catch up on all the work I'm not doing while I'm home gasping for breath?

It's probably just the drugs talking, but I'm not going to know that for a while yet.

So, things haven't been pretty chez moi and so I have chosen not to inflict it on you. It's not that I haven't had anything to day during this epic-length downtime; it's just that most of the time I'm too doped up to say it coherently (and I don't think the world needs another William S. Burroughs wannabe). And when I come out of my hydrocodone haze I'm too acutely uncomfortable and unhappy to do anything but whine, which nobody likes to hear or read about.

For instance, right now, just at midnight (a midnight that put an official end to the very worst weekend of my entire life), I'm having trouble breathing again, or rather doing entirely too much breathing, so much breathing so fast that it's making me tired, but not tired enough to sleep so mostly I'm sitting here breathing and typing between breaths. You didn't really want to hear about that, did you?

But please don't desert me, dear readers, just because it's been a few days since I've put up something new here. I promise, I'll make up for the lost time when I get better.

There's a lot more stuff going on that we need to consider.

THE WACKINESS CONTINUES

I guess I finally made it into valley lore today, to judge from the way the story I'm about to relate spread around town.

My evening visitors from yesterday were still very much on my mind and even followed me into my dreams, which featured a severe Secular Johnson problem in the form of some deadly piece of system-destroying e-mail that had allegedly originated with us and was now on its way to wreaking worldwide havoc and everyone in the world was calling for our heads even though nobody knew who we were. The dream went on and on and into the morning and I woke up in a most unusual state of mind that I carried with me into my morning ablutions.

Just before I'd gone to bed last night, I had taken my worried father's advice and propped a kitchen chair under my front door's knob to prevent unwanted intrusion, as the lock on said door has not been working properly for several months. I checked before I went to shower to see that it was still there, and remember puzzling over how that was supposed to work, anyway as I went about my business.

Just as I had a head full of shampoo, I heard an ominous sound. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.

Groggy, annoyed, vulnerable and still lingeringly angry from last night's visit, I immediately screamed in rage at the sound (thus trashing once again a throat still only barely capable of making speech-like sounds) but sensibly continued to wash. Whoever was at the door, it can't have been one of my friends who all know better than to bug me at home on a workday morning, that was for certain - and for anyone else, well that's what the notepad on the door is for.

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.

Cranky, irritated, wet and now a little tripped out – must be those "Census" ladies come to pick on me again, I remember thinking – I leaned out my bathroom door and screamed out rudely that I was in the shower and could whoever it was please buzz off (except I used a term other than "buzz").

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM CRASH!!

So... however it is the chair under the doorknob is supposed to work, I have not mastered it. Someone had gotten inside!!!

I jumped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me, and quickly cased the bathroom for something, anything with which to defend myself. All there was, was a toilet plunger.

A toilet plunger.

A toilet plunger! With a viscously chewed-up handle, looks like the devil's own Doberman has been gnawing on it, the wood a mass of splinters and slivers waiting to happen. Just the thing some random jackass would not want shoved up his fundament.

Howling obscenities I came hurtling out of the bathroom, ready to turn that toilet plunger into a weapon the Geneva convention surely would ban.

I came very near to using it, too, because it's been a long time since I've seen my father's friend, the Bard of Booger County himself, who was calmly getting ready to set to work on fixing my doorknob.

"Hi sweetie, your dad just asked me to drop by," he said as though a screaming wet redhead howling for his blood and inches from murder were a commonplace in his world.

I finally recognized him and regained my composure and told him to carry on. Actually, I wasn't nearly that calm. I was still cursing and wet and waving my weapon around.

"Go finish your shower, it's all right."

("Away put your weapon, I mean you no harm" Yoda said when Luke Skywalker first menaced him. Star Wars moments occur to me at the weirdest times)

Nonplused, but vowing to have a little chat with my father about giving a girl a little warning before sending early morning visitors her way the very day after she has her very own X-Files incident, I put down the plunger and finished my shower, dressed and sat down to check my e-mail before work.

My dad's friend had already tried three times to fix the doorknob with disappointing results.

It was his turn to cuss.

But I'm the one who's now famous for it.

C'est la guerre...

Oh, and to follow up: Nobody, not our mayor, not our police force, not any of my coffee buddies, NO ONE had any kind of encounter with any kind of "Census" ladies of any stripe last night, nor, apparently, was there any trace of them today.

Thank goodness I have a witness.

GOOSED BY THE GOVERNMENT, OR...?

OK, guys, it's late, I'm still very sick, and now I'm grouchy and completely pissed off, so I can tell you right now this is not going to be up to even my very uneven standards. But something happened tonight that disturbs me greatly, and disturbs me more the more I think about it.

You see, I had a very weird and suspicious visit a few hours ago that's left me feeling thoroughly goosed and even a little bit scared. I thought I'd share it with you all, if for no other reason than to prepare you if you, too, have been selected for the kind of special attention which I received tonight!

It was about 7:30 p.m. I was thoroughly flaked out, watching a movie with a friend and almost asleep (still trying to get over many varieties of crud, and just for the record no, I don't know for sure if it's mono but thank you all very much for your concern!) when there came a surprising pounding on my chamber door.

Since over the last few days I've had many kind visitors, including my own dear personal parents delivering tomato soup and movies for me to watch, I assumed it was another one of these. We paused the movie and I tried my best to sort myself and not look like I'd just been dozing because that is very discomposing even when it's just a pal who's stopping by.

It was no pal of mine, to be certain.

What it was was two strange women (strange in that they are unknown to me and people I've never seen before, not, necessarily, strange as in "weird" though perhaps that remains to be seen) flashing fancy looking IDs claiming to be from the Census Bureau and trying to push their way into my apartment for "30 minutes of my time."

In 2002?

"You received our letter in the mail, miss."

"Um, no I didn't, and the census was two years ago."

The women handed me a photocopied letter purportedly FROM THE ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU that read, in part, as follows:

"The Census Bureau is taking a survey in your community. Decisions about child care, jobs, health care and more will be based on the answers.

The American Community Survey is not a census of all Americans. That census is taken every ten years. This survey will provide local and national leaders with more timely information between censuses. Because your address has been specifically chosen for this survey, your replay is very important to us."

The letter goes on to remind me that my response is required by Federal law and so on, to assure me that my privacy will be protected, blah blah blah boogeda boogeda boogeda.

Nonetheless, I sent these ladies packing, finally having to get quite rude to do so. But that's not all, of course (when is it ever all with me?)

I did some checking later this evening, and while there is such a thing as the American Community Survey, nothing on the Census Bureau's website says anything about one being conducted this year, except HERE where appears a list of communities being in some way looked at between 1999 and 2002. Note that there is nothing indicated for anywhere in Wyoming.

So far it's only slightly fishy and creepy. But of course, if you're me, it gets worse.

As most of my readers know, I am a local leader, duly elected to the Saratoga Town Council. If this survey is being conducted in part, therefore, to provide me with more timely information between censuses, wouldn't logic and common sense dictate that I would have been previously informed that it was going on in the community for which I am responsible?

Furthermore, I am something of a news junkie. As frequent readers of these screeds of mine know, I have a pretty heavy and varied media diet of local, regional and national newspapers, political and cultural magazines, foreign periodicals, and the Weekly World News. Not to mention that the entertainment of choice at my morning coffee klatsch (aside from the antics of two shaggy brown boys named Gunnar and Whiskey) is CNN Headline news.

Surely I am not the only one to be somewhat skeptical that I've managed to completely miss the news that this survey was being conducted somewhere at least?

Even if it is "legitimate," however, it still strikes me as freaky. As I told my parents, whom I called a little while after the visit, I don't know which creeps me out more, the thought that it was real census people harassing me, or that it was something else.

Full disclosure time: When it comes to the Federal government, I am suspicious as hell just as a matter of principle. And I am very vocal about this, and take pride in being regarded as something of a rabble rouser on the subject of the rights and duties we enjoy as citizens.

When I got the Census Bureau's loooooooooooooong form two years or so ago, therefore, I threw it away. And when Census employees came to visit me to follow up, I gave them only the short form information: my address, which they already knew, how many people lived here (just lil' ol me), period.

Of course I was a little suspicious, then, when two strangers showed up unannounced wanting to take 30 minutes of my time because "my address has been specifically chosen for this survey."

Maybe it's just paranoia on my part, but I don't care. I don't appreciate being disturbed this way, don't appreciate this kind of prying from anybody, and I won't stand for it, and neither should you.

And besides – what if they aren't with the Census, something that still seems to me very likely given the fact that their coming to me, of all people, was such a surprise.

They really wanted to come inside, and got more pushy and hostile by the minute when I kept them standing out in the cold and told them that all they needed to know was that I was one person, living here. I repeated to them several times that this was the only information they were going to receive, the only information that the Constitution allows them to demand (and that only when the actual Census is being conducted) and they got more unpleasant until finally I just came out and told them to please leave.

Then, on the urging of my retired cop father, I called the police on them, gave full descriptions, etc. The dispatcher to whom I spoke was equally surprised at the thought of the Census Bureau conducting any kind of survey in Saratoga.

So, I think this is deeply, deeply bogus. These people are up to something, and it smells. At least that's the way it looks right now.

Just remember – you don't have to tell anybody anything. Even if you're arrested for something: you have the right to remain silent.

ADDENDUM - HOURS LATER:

I still can't sleep, and in my continued pique I ran a Google search on "Census" and "sucks" and found a page for someone who may be my new hero. Check out a man who burnt his Census looooooong form on the steps of the Missouri State Supreme Court. Check it out RIGHT HERE

THROAT CULTURE?

Oh my, I just got another lesson in paying attention to what I say and to whom I say it.

As frequently happens (it's so common I'm sure I don't even have to describe the setting to you, but I'll do so anyway, just to keep in practice) I was sitting around my apartment with a buddy of mine arguing about the finer points of the classic Gnostic poem "The Thunder: Perfect Mind" when I found myself in a most uncomfortable situation – and one that had nothing to do with doctrine or the inherently contradictory message of a line of scripture that declares "I am the saint and the prostitute."

I felt like I was choking. Gagging, actually, and on my tonsils of all things, the last gasp of the bug that wouldn't die.

Distressed, annoyed, sick of taking antibiotics and generally pissed off at the situation, I made some offhand remark to my friend about how great it would be to just be able to rip out said tonsils and never be bothered with them again.

Quite forgetting that said friend has a certain background.

"Sure," he said as I finished delivering my eloquent complaint. "When do you want to do it?"

"Oh, I'd better wait until my health insurance kicks in, don't you think?"

"No, I can take care of it. I've got a pocket knife."

Horrors!

"Ha ha, very funny, but I think that might hurt a bit. I'll wait until I've had general anaesthesia, thanks."

"No, really. I've got some. It works for horses, cows, pretty much any large animal. It'll zone you right out so you won't even care!"

This delivered with a level of enthusiasm that I'll go ahead and characterize as scary.

He then told me a short but amusing tale of how once upon a time he was accidentally dosed with some of this anaesthetic - a horse kicked, a syringe got mis-aimed and he was sent on a surprise trip to la-la land... but all I could focus upon was the eager gleam in his eyes, the opacity of his gaze, the overall earnestness with which he made the offer.

I'm still not entirely sure that he was kidding.

I bet this never happens to my friends in Chicago.

ANOTHER ADVANTAGE TO HOME TOWN LIVIN'...

...Is residing just blocks away from home cookin'. I probably had no business driving tonight (yup, I'm still down with some bug or other) (and the jokes about how it must be especially rough for me to be unable to talk – at best I manage something that sounds like a half-strangled frog – just keep on getting funnier; thanks everybody!) but it was worth it even though I now feel like complete ass because my own dear personal mom made one of my favorite dishes just for me: linguine with red clam sauce, a dish I always love but tonight, tonight it was even more special.

Because tonight, tonight I could taste it. Schiller's Ode to Joy resounded, fireworks exploded, burqas were ripped from heads and machine guns fired straight into the air (the bullets miraculously evaporating before they could harm anyone on the ground).

So I must be on the mend, at least a little bit.

If only I could tell someone.

Not that I could hear his or her reply...

Anyway, thanks, Mom. That was really, really, really good.

COMMUNITY CENTER, SCHMOMMUNITY CENTER

The title of this entry should tell a lot of people a lot of things already. But for those of you just joining us...

Supposedly a lot of people here in Saratoga think the absolutely most important thing we could possibly do to assure a viable and prosperous future for this town is to build something called a community center.

Why do I say supposedly?

Because the only evidence we have that any significant number of people want such a thing comes out of the Wyoming Rural Development Council's community assessment of Saratoga (my opinion of which I believe I made clear on Tuesday in this very space); through the initial listening sessions and a follow-up meeting or two in which a large group of Saratogans took a stab at prioritizing the mishmash of ideas that came out of those sessions, the number one priority of the whole project turned out to be a community center.

I'm not sure that I would take these results as gospel, however, as more or less the exact same phrasing has come out of more or less the exact same mouths as a more or less automatic response to the ever-tempting question "What do you want/need in Saratoga?" for something like 30 years.

Nonetheless, a committee was formed to start putting it all together and make it happen. It was going to be the first real achievement to come out of this whole process, a justification for the tax and other money spent to make the WRDC and these assessments go, and of the increasingly great amount of time and effort those of us on the steering committee that grew out of the community assessment were putting in.

The only thing this committee has settled on to date is how this facility is to be paid for, that being out of your pocket and mine through the sixth cent capital facilities tax that will either be up for a vote in November or in May of 2003 (depending upon to whom the Carbon County Commission finally decides to listen), a tax that is already going to be huge and long-lasting because its primary purpose is to build a new county jail that can't help being expensive in principle and is steadily becoming more so in practice. As municipal projects large and small for each of the nine incorporated towns in this county get tacked on, the tax gets bigger and bigger. The bigger the dollar amount, the longer we're all paying it off, and, incidentally, the longer we are prevented from developing any other capital projects in the county.

That's not the only problem dogging this community center, either. Actually, it's not even the biggest or most important.

See, what never was settled in the early or the later stages of this thing (plan? project? these words imply too much order and deliberation for it) is what constitutes a community center. Some say what's really needed is a sports center (i.e., indoor pool, raquetball, dwarf-tossing, whatever.). Some say it's a performing arts center (stage, lights, sound, seating). Some say it's a convention or meeting center, with a banquet hall and break-out rooms, etc.

Of course, nobody agrees, and no one is willing to compromise, not even, it appears, to listen to each other. The committee that was going to make this all happen hasn't even bothered to meet since November because the factions are sick of squabbling over what this center is ultimately going to be.

And while a few very vocal, very wise, very passionate people, the kind we are most fortunate to have living here, the kind that I would wish for every community, are still making known the view that this community center has "just got to be built," I don't see any of these vocal, wise, passionate people stepping up to organize an effort.

Indeed, the most common sentiment I have heard expressed in the days since our last Saratoga 3000 meeting has been "You can't let this die, Kate. It's too important. It's not for me to do, but it has to happen."

News flash. It's not for me to do, either, because I don't think this nebulous fantasy facility is a priority at all, even if somehow it winds up not being paid for with tax dollars (a notion that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone except me and a few of the more realistic members of the Platte Valley Arts Council, who are wisely pursuing their own venture to build a performing arts facility with private donations).

There are a lot of other, more appropriate things to do with the people's money.

Not to beat a dead horse (that I first started whipping in my town council campaign speech in 1999 that none of you were there to hear anyway), but taxes are paid by every citizen, and are paid on a less than voluntary basis. People go along with them, usually grudgingly, because it's better than the alternative (jail, property seizure, having to forgo buying gasoline, food, etc.) and because according to the tacit social contract under which we all live, that money is going to be spent by the government in ways that benefit everyone, to provide things that everyone needs but no one could effectively provide him- or her-self on any other basis: things like roads, police protection, ambulance coverage, water and sewer services, civil and military defense, etc.

A useful nutshell phrase is "protection of citizens from force and fraud" which I would couple with the provision of certain amenities that we in western civilization have come to think of as necessities, like sanitation and running water, roads along which all the goods of our consumer economy can reach us, etc.

Some would make the argument that a sports center or an arts center or a convention center would also benefit everybody, but what they usually mean is "everybody who wants the same things we do." But suppose I don't care for swimming or raquetball or volleyball. Suppose what I really want is a professional grade roller derby arena.

My point is that no facility can satisfy everybody, so inevitably some will get what they want while others will not. Those who don't get what they want will still be forced to pay for the facility – as will those who don't use it at all.

No, when you're getting into something like this, it is a matter for the private sector.

I think there is a niche, a demand for all of these things I have mentioned here. I would love an indoor pool (but, unlike most of those few fellow citizens of mine who are still clamoring for one, I have looked into what it costs to build and maintain one, and have seen that it creates a burden that our present population and tax base cannot currently afford. Not even close! Not even if the indoor pool fairy flew over our town and magically gifted us with one out of thin air. I will provide numbers if anyone who reads me is really interested). I definitely see great potential for a convention center here.

And if some entrepreneur wants to pull it together, raise the capital and build one or more of these wonderful things, more power to him. And since his would be the risk, the effort, the investment, his alone would be the reward – making it worth his while to be absolutely sure he was giving this town's citizens and visitors what they want and would use the most in the long term and the short term (I am leaving alone, for now, what happens down the road when the novelty of the shiny new facility wears off and the tragedy of the commons sets in).

Or, if an individual or group wants to take this on and raise the money privately – if the project you have chosen is truly what the people want, financial support for it will be generous indeed, as the Town of Riverside discovered last year when it put out coin cans to help pay for mosquito spraying and routinely found $20 bills in amongst the spare change. Conversely, if no one is all that interested, raising that money will be proportionately more difficult, perhaps sending a message that something else is wanted.

I would wholeheartedly support either of these ways of getting something built (provided, of course, that there's something in it I like; after all, it's my money, and if someone wants it, they have to persuade me to part with it. That's the way a free society works, folks).

But I will not support some half-assed attempt to build something that only a few noisy people want and a lot of people are going to be forced to pay for. I won't support it and I certainly will not organize or coordinate or spearhead such an effort, as many around town have strongly suggested I do.

If nothing else, folks, shouldn't the person who's leading the troops be someone who believes the battle is one worth fighting?

You wouldn't have put a draft-dodger in charge of the bombing of Kabul, would you?

But I will tell you this: it's going to take someone that actually wants to see this happen, and wants it badly enough to quit flapping his or her jaw and start rolling up his or her sleeves to accomplish anything on this. And if no one steps up, guess what?

Nothing, that's what.

WHAT ISIN A TITLE?

A recent discussion on National Review Online about the policies of the New York Times and other papers as to who does and does not get cited as "Dr. So-and-So" provoked one great reader response from a guy who is just learning the pleasures of working closely with young enthusiasts:

“I’ve always thought that the coolest honorific one can have is ‘Coach.’ It was just bestowed on me this year, as I’m coaching my four-year-old’s T-ball team. When you have a bunch of kids and parents calling you ‘Coach [Smith]’ or just ‘Coach,’ it makes you feel pretty good. Forget all that ‘Dr.’ bunk; ‘Coach’ is where it’s at!”

I bet that's true, not that I would really know, of course. While for the first time in my life I am officially an assistant speech and debate coach for my alma mater, Saratoga High School (it's even in the minutes of the January meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees! They formally ratified my hire along with an assistant middle school basketball coach or something. And I'm getting paid to do it! Wough!), I have yet to be addressed by that title. Nor do I get the expected (stuffy, politically correct) "Ms. Sherrod" or the less-expected (stuffy, old-fashioned) (but what I actually prefer, curmudgeon that I am) "Miss Sherrod."

No, what I usually get is "Kate," as in "Oh jeez, we'd better knock it off or we're going to kill Kate" – an actual remark one of my kids made during yesterday's practice.

I still haven't shaken the fishing derby flu entirely, you see, so it's been a little dangerous to make me laugh, as I tend first to wheeze, then to gasp, then to cough, then to choke, all the while making barely audible laugh-like noises and shaking my shoulders while my eyes water and my face turns purple... which is of course a very funny sight and one that is bound to produce further witticisms, which make me laugh more, which produces more choking, etc. on and on ad infinitum until one of my more compassionate charges makes an observation like the one quoted above.

But in the context of speech practice, it's pretty much impossible not to make me laugh!

Those of you who enjoy blooper shows on TV or the outtakes that sometimes run at the end of movies nowadays would really, really love speech practice, the barely controlled chaos of which is like a two hour-long blooper reel every single day.

It takes a certain kind of person to get up and do an oral interpretation, repeating eight or nine minutes worth of the exact same words every day, accompanied with the right tones of voice, character placements, gestures and facial expressions – and invariably, the kind of person who can do all that is a) not going to get it perfect every time, b) going to flub in some wildly amusing, frequently Freudian way, and c) going to react wildly amusingly to said flub.

It's then my job as coach to get that person back on track, which is not easy when said person is still bouncing around in front of me, launched into a five-minute riff on whatever mistake he or she made, its background in the day's events, a plea for cutting out the source of the flub (usually a strange word or a corny phrase), or just a weird little dance... I have one student who sort of hops every time she blows a line, another who trips off in to weird rhymes on whatever word she mispronounced, another who I cured of looking at the floor by means of a note I placed on the floor in front of him that reads "Don't look at the floor, dummy" so now he looks at his duet partner (a no-no in the rules for duet interpretation), still another who starts giggling sort of freakishly whenever I look at him...

Usually the performer rights him- or herself, eventually and we wander back on track, but not before sharing some funky moments for which I would trade nothing in the world.

I can see in their faces that they think I'm the dorkiest thing they've ever encountered, and they're not far from wrong – man, when did speech kids get so cool, so fashionable, so knowing? When I was in high school, my mother rightly referred to my teammates and I as "the nerd herd," and for the most part, it was painfully awkward, out-of-it things that we were, living for the weekends when we could slip into the phonebooth (Okay, a school bus), do our quick change (Okay, drive for six or seven hours to places like Powell or Jackson or Gilette) and be Superman for a day before having to go back to plain ordinary school on Monday – but they indulge me and listen to me and occasionally put my suggestions into practice, which is of course incredibly gratifying.

James Hillman has observed that the reason a lot of people dislike or avoid being around adolescents is because their own adolescences were so painful, and I think that's true. It's a horrible, awkward, scary time for most people and it's natural to want to forget about it or at least avoid any reminders of it more concrete than a nostalgic song. Raising a teenager or being a high school teacher and putting up with all of it all over again at close range is considered heroic largely for this reason.

BUT, there's a lot to be gained for those who put this instinct to avoid aside as I have. Yes, it's really weird to be wandering again the very same halls I hated at age 16, to see on one wall my 18-year-old face peering out of a composite of senior pictures (my hair short and badly cut, my frame shrouded in a huge baggy sweater, my eyes rimmed with smeared eye make-up because I insisted the photo be taken outdoors and I had not yet, at 18, found any real cure for my rampaging pollen allergies... god, I hate that picture, but there it is, for all time) and to see roaming those halls the kids and grandkids of people I've known my whole life as rough contemporaries and friends. It's hard to watch the kids struggling as I struggled, making mistakes I made, expressing opinions I once had but have since outgrown (oh, how many of them tell me how they can't wait to get out of Saratoga! And they don't really see the irony of this at all).

BUT, it's also, as I've already illustrated, really, really fun. There's a lot of good stuff that happens then, too, and it's mostly the good stuff that I get to share as a speech coach. School is out but they're not yet home with mom and dad; they're in a zone in between, semi-autonomous, with room to experiment. And so am I.

And... it gives me a new perspective on my own time within those halls. I see a lot of me, then and now, in a lot of them, and that rekindles my fellow feeling in general, which is always a very good thing.

Yup, coaching is great, with or without the title.

(Of course, I have yet to make a road trip with this crew, so, so... well... all of the above sentiments are probably subject to change. Especially since the head coach, who was once upon a time my coach, still has a lot of bad habits like shopping and McDonalds, two things I still hate. But time will tell on that one. Time will tell. Stay tuned.)

THE WRONG WAY, THE RIGHT WAY, AND...

I'm fading fast, so I'm just going to give an executive summary.

I think a bunch of my colleagues and I learned a very important lesson tonight: Big, ambitious, worthy projects don't happen because a bunch of people got together and then said "Hey, this is a great group, bet we could really do something with a group like this, uh huh, uh huh" and then said "Okay, so what are we going to do?"

NO. Big, ambitious, worthy projects happen because a need or is perceived for something in particular, and a few people decide that fulfilling that need is so important that it's worth a sacrifice of time and effort (sacrifice in that, in order to do one thing, one is always sacrificing the opportunity, the possibility, to do a hundred other things) to do it, and those people make a plan, and start gathering resources and help and more people, and they do it.

There is nothing more useless than solvers in search of a problem, which is, I'm afraid, what was created when a certain state-level bureaucracy came to town and sold us a top-down bottle of snake oil.

I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people in saying this, but then again, I think a lot of the people who are going to be pissed off are people who weren't at that meeting.

Look, ordinary, dedicated, busy, intelligent, caring people just like (and pretty much including) those in Saratoga 3000 have done some really amazing things here recently. A good example is the Saratoga Community Playground Project, in which a bunch of busy parents put coin cans all over town and had funky little nickel and dime fundraisers and taught themselves to write rather impressive grants and put in a rather impressive brand new playground structure smack in the middle of a local park.

The difference between that group and Saratoga 3000? The problem came first! Not the solvers. Did the Playground Ladies sit around for months and months and stare at each other and say "what should we do with all this abundant free time we have?" No. They knew what they wanted FIRST, decided they wanted it badly enough to roll up their sleeves and do something about it, and then the went out and did it.

Anyway, I challenge any of my readers to tell me one true life success story that started out with a bunch of do-gooders who assembled first and then tried to think of some good to do second. It seems to me, more and more, that such an approach leads at best to some pretty half-assed good, and at worst to a pantload of wasted energy and time.

Certainly, it looks like a very poor method for polis-building.

But I'm trying to keep an open mind about this. So really, dear readers, if you have an example to share, please E-mail it to me.

(Note to my out of town readers: Saratoga 3000 is an ad hoc organization formed after the Wyoming Rural Development Council came to town in November of 1999 and conducted a "community assessment" for Saratoga, an exercise in which WRDC experts of one stripe or another conducted "listening sessions" with various segments of the population in order to "identify" our town's strengths, weaknesses and possibilities, as well as develop some kind of picture of "what people want to see happen here". The WRDC presented the town council and the chamber with a thick, steaming report summarizing what they had learned about us. The report included suggestions for "where to go next" now that we know ourselves, and of course strongly recommended that a committee be formed to act on those suggestions [yes, we're all still getting over the shock of the notion that a government agency recommended forming a committee]. The committee came to be known as Saratoga 3000 about a year later [the name was my idea, and there are still those who mock me for it] after the group finally hashed out that the overall goal would be to get Saratoga's population up to 3000, a figure that research suggests might be a good critical mass for sustainability but is not above what our current infrastructure can support])

DANGEROUS READING...

...And in the constant reading of orators, historians and poets his intellect took increasing delight in observing between the remotest matters ties that bound them together in some common relation. It is these ties that are the beautiful ornaments of eloquence which make subtleties delightful.

- Giambattista Vico in his Autobiography, Fisch & Bergin translation

...There are three planets... that are extremely favorable to contemplation and eloquence: the Sun, Venus and Mercury. Moving together with equal steps, they leave us when night is coming on and only when the day begins do they rise and revisit us...Thus, those people who study at night when these planets leave us, or who get up in the daytime after sunrise, when these planets are entering into the prison-house of darkness, lose out. On the other hand, those people who at sunrise are there seeking, rising, to contemplate and to write when these planets also rise – only these people think with sharpness, only they can write and compose their work eloquently.

- Marsilio Ficino, Book of Life, Boer translation

One can never serve two masters, and this early morning finds me caught between two formidable ones, my two favorite Italians ever (Vico wrote in the 1720s, Ficino in the 1480s or so). And they're both right. So I'm pretty much screwed.

Most of you who read me know the experience I'm caught in right now: you borrow or buy or steal a new book, dip into it at an odd moment, are intrigued but think you can save it for later, take it easy, let it dissolve slowly into your brain... but then something in it grabs you and won't let you go, and even when you put the book down and away still a part of you is reading it, fully engaged in it instead of what you should be doing, whether that's running a meeting or measuring a fish or sleeping.

A really good book, like either of those from which I've quoted or like the one I'm almost finished reading now at 4:46 a.m. of a Monday morning, makes me see "between the remotest matters ties that bind them." Making connections between what I am reading and have read or watched or seen or written about is more fun than anything; when I really get going I can hardly believe it is my brain at work as the ideas and connections mimic the oysters in "The Walrus and the Carpenter": "thick and fast/they came at last/and more and more and more." Damn! There went another one! Won't they stop?

But of course, I don't really want them to stop. As I've observed before, it's our capacity to be distracted that makes us who we are, keeps our lives interesting and worth the living.

It would be nice, though, to have at some point gone to sleep tonight – not that I didn't try. The book I've been reading, however – I won't go into detail over it now lest this become my most bloated blog entry ever, but it's a nifty new discourse on military history and the rise of Western civilization – went to bed with me and I kept reading it, arguing with it, drawing connections from it to everything from my beloved Ajax (I now have yet another interpretation of him to play with) to the singular phenomenon about a year and a half ago when a group of about 30 untrained and inexperienced Saratoga volunteers spontaneously and without leadership assembled a large and complex array of playground equipment in two days flat.

All that went on in my head at about 2 a.m.

By 2:30 I'd gotten up, taken a shower, gotten dressed, made some coffee, and taken up my book again. I know myself: I'll read right through until I'm late for work (how fortunate that my commute is less than a block!), so I'd best get everything else done before – including, as I realized at about 4 a.m., this blog entry, for I have a very, very busy day today, one in which I have planned to do my very best to catch up on all that didn't get done last week because I was home tripping out on cold medicine. Which means that when my day, at the office and then up at the school (speech practice! I've not even seen my kids in over a week! I'm going straight to coaching hell!), is finally over I'm going to collapse right at my doorstep and luck alone will steer me towards the couch or (less likely) my bed.

And until then I'm going to be a wreck. All because of a new book.

It's unhealthy, so unhealthy to proceed in this fashion, even if you don't believe Ficino (on either a literal or metaphorical basis – either way, it is wisdom). My friends around town who will be getting up in an hour or so will be well equipped to handle whatever this Monday throws at them (and at least a few of them will be annoyingly smug about this fact when I stumble blearily in for coffee in, oh, five hours to see their smiling, perky faces, the jerks) while I'm going to be a complete wreck by lunchtime (though, for once, my hair will be dry at lunchtime) (hey, we take our boons where they're granted).

I'll make it through, though. I always do – this happens rather a lot, I'm afraid. You'd think I'd have learned to deal with it, or prevent it, or minimize it, but I haven't. I just muddle through and trust in all of you to indulge me if I look a little bleary-eyed and occasionally mutter about something not even remotely germane to what we've been talking about.

It just means I've observed another tie between the remotest matters, and am going to lose out because of it.

WAITING TO CATCH A STAR

Bucking yet another major trend of my generation, recently I took the plunge and actually subscribed to a newspaper. Not a web edition or an e-mail digest, either: an actual, physical, stain-your-fingers, clutter-your-living-room, wrap-your-fish newspaper.

I did that a week ago today.

I started getting it on Wednesday.

Now it's Sunday morning, just past 7 a.m., and I just caught myself pacing and peering out my window and wondering "Where the %#@$& is my newspaper?"

I've been up since 4 a.m. (wages of sin and cold medicine and a wildly irregular schedule) and I've spent most of that time online. I've read most of the New York Times, El Pais (very informative little cartoon there detailing the accommodations at the Gitmo Hilton, where the Taliban/Al Quaeda prisoners are enjoying their surprise vacation HERE, the Washington Post, the Singapore Straits-Times and National Review Online, and Atlantic Unbound (The Atlantic Monthly online), so you could say I'm about as up on current events as anyone without cable TV could wish to be (only thing I miss about cable is C-SPAN. Well, C-SPAN and the Sci-Fi Channel, but C-SPAN was my real addiction; I lost entire weekends to that weird little portal on Washington and other wonk stuff).

So why am I so annoyed that I don't have my Casper Star-Tribune? It's Sunday, for crying out loud! The legislature isn't in session yet (for which we should all give thanks), I don't care about sports particularly (my interest pretty much tops out at the Saratoga and Encampment High School level – except for every four years when I pretty much disappear for the entire month of June to watch the FIFA World Cup) (might have to get cable or something for that. Hmm. Do they offer just one-month subscriptions?), and I've read about all I care to about the state's budget for now. What else will be in there? A follow-up to the alleged Enron suicide? More European protests about our stuffing Koran misreaders into cages in Cuba? Maybe something more about the mostly bad alternatives to just letting people snowmobile in Yellowstone?

Bah!

No, what's really at issue here has nothing to do with current events and everything to do with basic psychology: one's demands always adjust upwards.

I've gotten used to having that paper right at my doorstep every morning already. It only took four days for newspaper delivery to go from pleasing novelty to basic human right in my head.

Of course, now that the sun is up, another possibility bears investigating: maybe my paper is here and I just couldn't see it in the dark. I'd better go look. Of course, in looking, I know that if I find it the last two hours I've spent reading other material and stewing over its absence will be rendered pretty damned silly... but much of the rest of my life is pretty damned silly anyway, so what's one more morning.

Here I go.

And there it is. Way out on the sidewalk. Almost under my car. I'm going to have to put on a robe and slippers and pad out there in the frost to go get it.

MOST dissatisfying.

There'd better be something good to read.