NOTHING GETS CHEAPER, DOES IT?
Morning strolls around Saratoga Lake with My Own Dear Personal Mom and the Collie of Folly are much noisier than a few weeks ago, as our teeming populations of migratory birds begin to return. The herons are back, with their deep, bullfrog grunts, the blackbirds have taken up residence again amongst the reeds, chirruping in their sing-song-y way.
And back at Kate's Landing, the air is thick with an early trico hatch, after which the trout have started to leap. It must be April...
Ah, spring. That time when a young woman's fancy turns to thoughts of... water rates.
Wednesday night we, your Saratoga/Carbon County Impact Joint Powers Board, a.k.a. the Sewer King and all his court (which includes Your Humble Blogger, Tad the Grocer, the Fat Cat Republican Bastard, and a few stray others who have not, thus far, done anything interesting enough to be included in these chronicles, but we can just for fun call them the Lady of the Lagoon and the Heart Surgeon*), performed a sadly necessary evil.
We voted to recommend that the town council (which also includes Your Humble Blogger, of course) approve the first increase in water rates in something like four years.
Now, really, it's not much of an increase. The base rate will stay at $14 a month for residential users and $20 a month for commercial users. It is the "step rate" – the additional charges paid by those who use more than 7001 gallons monthly – that we are adjusting, by 30¢ for each "step"**. This is more or less the same strategy proposed two years ago, when this board last visited its rate structure; the philosophy behind adjusting the step rate rather than the base being that it is wiser to impose more of the higher costs for water (and bear in mind, your bill is not just for the fluid coming through your faucets; we have to pay for and maintain the delivery, storage and treatment systems, too) on those who use more of it – the users of, e.g., 20,000 - 60,000 gallons.
Two years ago, however, you did not see this rate increase, because your mayor and council (of which number I could not yet be counted; I was still but a humble newspaper reporter. OK, not very humble, but I was still just a chronicler and not a maker of these big and weighty water decisions) didn't want to institute the rate increase at that time, choosing instead to make up the shortfall with money from the Town's general fund.
This ain't happening this time around, though, because A) It's a foolish maneuver; water and sewer services are among the only programs in which your municipal government engages that have any chance at all of paying for themselves and the way instituted by state law to make them pay for themselves is, yes, rate adjustment – while the town's general fund does not enjoy that kind of flexibility, depending as it does on property taxes (which rates we do not set), population-based shares of sales and gasoline and other taxes (over which we have no control), etc. In other words, the town is on a fixed income and the water and sewer departments are not, and B) We ain't got money slushing around in the general fund to bestow willy nilly like that this time around, either. Were the general fund to be tapped to protect high water users from a small rate increase this time around, something else would have to give. And since we're already looking at a pretty bare bones budget (the fun begins April 17! Woo hoo!) this time around, whatever had to give would probably make you guys howl even more than would a rate increase.
Such is the reasoning behind my decisions, anyway.
And really, let's have a look at the big picture for a moment.
What this does to Saratoga's average water bill is raise it from $36.10 to $40 even (and bear in mind, we were below the statewide average of $38.67 last year, and this statewide figure is bound to increase, too, so I'd be willing to bet we'll still be below the state average).
That $3.90 difference will allow us to plunk an additional $19,110 annually into the water fund, which is used to cover operating expenses for the water treatment plant (and that includes utilities – gas and electric price increases affect that plant, too, oh yes!) (oh yes, and salaries for the people who keep the plant running, come in the middle of the night when your water main breaks, etc.) and is also used to build up a reserve fund that we use for the big maintenance projects. Since time immemorial, our target amount for the reserves is $100,000, as that is a good number to conjure with when doing things like building water towers, replacing ancient water mains, or buying new ozonators like we had to do in 2001.
As it stands now, with our current water rates, we're not going to hit that magic figure, hence our proposed increase in the step rate.
Let me stress again that this is at this stage a proposed increase. It's the Town Council's decision, and we will vote on it this coming Tuesday, and there is still the possibility that I will be overruled by my colleagues on that august body.
But I'm going to vote for it, poor starving writer though I am, child of seriously yard-proud, lawn-watering parents though I be.
Nothing ever gets cheaper, does it?
*The Lady of the Lagoon being the lovely lady lawyer who owns the property adjacent to our ammonia factory-cum-sewer lagoon about which I have discoursed so eloquently elsewhere in this here blog. The Heart Surgeon gave himself the name, after regaling us (with some prompting from YHB, natch) with his recent tale of woe: he was cutting a doorway in a cinderblock wall and his masonry blade struck something unexpected, kicked back, and sliced very, very cleanly into his chest. He is very, very lucky it was a smooth masonry blade instead of something more serrated and wicked and has the pulse, optimal body temperature and rows of stitches to prove it.
**The steps being 7001 to 20,000 gallons (current rate, $1.70; proposed new rate, $2.00); 20,001 to 60,000 gallons (current $1.80, proposed $2.10); and 60,001 or more (current $1.90, proposed $2.20).
Friday, April 11, 2003
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
FLYING ELEPHANTS...?
I've seen a peanut stand,
Heard a rubber band,
I've even seen a needle wink its eye
...But I think I've seen 'bout everything, when I seen the Oracle sing.
It was a very weird weekend in LIANTland, dear readers, and not just because of the temporary stretching of LIANTland's borders.
First of all, thank you all for your condolences on the poor performance I turned in with My Own Dear Personal Dad at Saturday's cribbage tournament. I'm as baffled as you are, and can only attribute our dead-last finish to the verity of the old saw about where pride goeth.
In our defense, do you know the fates of the two teams we did manage to beat? That's right. They placed first and second.
But that, despite the startling unlikeliness of the number of completely worthless hands dealt to the pair of us, despite the stunningly bad timing with which those 20-point hands appeared just when our opponents pegged out, despite the surrealism of getting whipped by people whom I taught to play the game (and also by Famous Bill and the latest contender for the always coveted title of Town Drunk), was not, as my epigram might suggest, the strangest thing that happened this weekend.
I also went on a road trip, my first since my error-riddled trip to my best buddy's wedding in Chicago last summer.
And that, dear readers, was some strange stuff, that ol' Platte Valley Community Center Roadshow and Wet Bar...
We piled into the Oracle's Suburban early of a Sunday afternoon, the five of us: the Oracle, Napaman (distinguishable from Superman only by his lack of a cape and his dashing little red mustache), my Worthy Successor, my Rawlins Counterpart, and Your Humble Blogger, to head out on what was doubtless only the first of many fact finding missions.
Destination: Hot Springs, South Dakota and the Mueller Civic Center (no apparent relation to the current FBI director of the same name).
Purpose: See what a 27,000 square foot civic center looks like and interrogate those responsible for its erection and perpetuation.
Other purpose: Blatantly violate the Sunshine Laws by talking shop all the way there and back again. At which we failed miserably because, well, a lot of other stuff was more fun to talk about.
See, the Oracle and Napaman are both old running buddies of my dad's, and have colorfully checkered histories in their own rights besides, and love to shock and delight bright eyed young things like my Worthy Successor, my Rawlins Counterpart and myself with tales thereof.
Also, the Oracle likes to drive really fast, and Napaman likes to tease him about it.
Also, the Oracle can't stand driving on anything more elaborate than a two-lane highway, and Napaman likes to tease him about it.
Also, Your Humble Blogger made the mistake of remarking that she pretty much knows at least one person in every incorporated town in Wyoming, but left out those two important modifying terms, "pretty" and "much" and quite forgot that not every incorporated town in Wyoming is a member of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, meaning it's unlikely that I've met the mayors of some towns I keep forgetting exist – and through which we drove.
The scene there being something like this: We zip through a little eyeblink town between Wheatland and the state line at a moderately ungodly speed. As its two or three businesses blur by, Napaman chimes in:
"Hey, Kate, who do you know in (insert name of one-horse here)."
Me: "..."
Oracle: "Haw haw, see what you get for bragging, Kate?"
Me: "Tphttht!"
WS and RC" "Tee hee!"
Repeat as necessary.
(By the way, yes, these are the same two guys who routinely commemorate major holidays by turning ugly, plague-ridden poultry and other livestock loose in each other's yards, just to put this all in perspective)
In between towns, the boys regaled us with great old chestnuts like the time Napaman, MODPD and several other members of the august body known as the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department crammed themselves into my grandmother's pristine, single-owner, vintage Volkswagen Beetle and drove up the sidewalk on Bridge Street to the entrance of the Rustic, bought a case of beer and drove the rest of the block on said sidewalk (obviously this was back in the days before those big silly New England-style lightposts were installed when the town put in geothermally heated sidewalks).
We arrived at our destination, Hot Springs, S.D., only about two hours earlier than our ETA (for some reason the Oracle confined himself to a modest 85 m.p.h. for the duration of the trip), peckish and curious. We tooled up and down the streets of a town that looks like the bastard child of the University of Wyoming (home to lots of big handsome sandstone buildings), Saugerties, N.Y. (home to wildly zigzagging streets that veer left and right and up and down almost by the block) and one of Mad King Ludwig's more modest castles, while gawking somewhat at the 65 degree waters of the Fall River.
Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant (yummy!) next door to a public house known only as "The Bar." With a name like that, we couldn't possibly stay away, even though the only drinkable beer on tap was some Amber Bock. The Bar apparently caters to bikers during Sturgis Season and to biker wannabes the rest of the time.
Oracle: "Hey Kate, who plays this song we're listening to?"
YHB & WS (pausing to listen): "Steppenwolf."
Oracle: "Oh."
Napaman: "Who're they?"
Oracle: "Pardon my companion. He listens to both kinds of music."
Napaman: "Yup, country AND western."
YHB: "..."
Oracle: "So, who plays this song we're hearing now?"
YHB & WS (pausing to listen): "Steppenwolf."
Repeat as necessary.
Cut to the next morning, as the crew straggles one at a time into the continental breakfast room at the Hot Springs Comfort Inn. Among the usual rolls and cereals and single-serving packages of coffee creamer (in case the watered down decaf is too strongly coffee-flavored for one's tastes) is... a waffle iron. And lots of little cups of waffle batter. And a spray can labled "Waffle Off" which the Oracle immediately begins to refer to as Waffle Offal when the lot of us offer our unsolicited advice to any breakfast room patron who dares try to make a waffle.
The scene:
Enter Unknown Hippie Girl Breakfast Room Patron, who fumbles around looking for a teabag and discovers the waffle iron.
UHGBRP: "Cool, a waffle iron!"
YHB (excitedly egging her on): "There's batter there, too."
UHGBRP: "Cool!"
UHGBRP begins to make the waffle. YHB starts nudging the Oracle and giggling while muttering "This one's going to be good!"
We have invented a new sport: waffle watching. Were we more inclined to gamble, we might have been placing bets on how badly each BRP's waffle would stick to the iron. Were we inclined to gamble. But instead, the Oracle being a killjoy spoil-sport, or possibly just really getting off on getting to say "Waffle Offal" as often as possible, chimes in with:
"Hey. You'd better spray some of that Waffle Offal on so it doesn't stick."
UHGBRP: "Oh. Good idea." (sprays. All over. While we cough and wave the haze of petroleum distillates and artificial flavors away from our faces).
YHB: "Aww, you told her."
Napaman: "Why do you care?"
YHB: "Well, duh!" (pointing out the spectacle of waffle parts and bits and corpses strewn about the Breakfast Room).
Napaman: "You're pretty easily entertained, aren't you?"
YHB: "You should be glad I am, so that I can easily entertain you!"
Napaman: "Good point."
Oracle (catching the spirit after all): "Shh! There she goes!"
We all watch breathlessly as UHGBRP opens the waffle iron. We watch as she lifts the warped and previously melted plastic fork. We watch as she slides the fork effortlessly under the first Waffle Quadrant. We sigh as the Waffle Offal works its magic and the WQ comes free. We watch as she tackles Quadrant Two. We sigh. But then, but then, but then... Quadrant Three is stuck!!!! And Quadrant Four is also recalcitrant!
But UHGBRP is obviously a pro, and gingerly, gently coaxes the waffle from the iron with the kind of patience YHB can only muster when, well, writing one of these here blog entries. To each her own, as it were.
In any case:
YHB: "Ohhh! She's got it! Judges?"
UHGBRP scored a 10 for dexterity, a ten for style, and a 9.9 for skill. Not bad at 7:30 a.m. in Hot Springs, S.D.
And yes, the tour of the Mueller Center was delightful and illuminating and encouraging. They built the whole thing, a theater, gym, kitchen and conference rooms, for only $1.5 million!
...In 1987.
Oh, but...
1987.
How much diff–
1987.
Oh. Well.
Cut to the homeward journey, once again at impressive but not ludicrous speed, and I'm beginning to think the Oracle's brother and other frequent passengers have maybe exaggerated the weight of the Oracular Foot. We hit a few white-out blizzards, drive past a few lots filled with disgusting green tractors (we all in the car know that tractors are meant to come in only one color, the color god and McCormick intended: bright red), through a few more nameless and absurdly pretty little towns (mercifully without comment on whether or not I had acquaintances there. Napaman, unlike, say, Sketch or the Great Gay Banker, knows when a joke stops being funny) and on and on until we decide that it is vitally important for all concerned except for our Designated Oracle (who used up all of his drink tickets years ago) to have a beer in Rock River.
Our fate is of course sealed when we notice that we have, in fact, reached the exact counterpart of the tavern of the previous eve, minus a definite article. The sign at the establishment we entered said, simply, "BAR."
That was it, really, until the truly miraculous happened, something so strange that I'm glad indeed to have four witnesses.
As we round the bend around Arlington, Wyo. and see a truck sort of run off the road, the Oracle starts softly chuckling to himself, and then, inexplicably, to sing.
"I've seen a peanut stand, heard a rubber band..."
Clearly it is time for me to go see Mrs. Sketch and get my bi-annual earrigation again. Sounds awfully like the lyrics to that old song from Walt Disney's "Dumbo," doesn't it?
The lyrics to which are now playing on an endless loop in Your Humble Blogger's Humble Head. Round and round and round. I've even seen a needle wink it's eye.
Confirmation! For as we finally pull, about an hour later, into the Oracular Driveway in Saratoga, there he goes again. "I think I've seen 'bout everything/When I see an elephant fly."
I can only conclude from this that the Oracle is very happy indeed to be a grandfather, and has thrown himself into the role with gusto.
Meanwhile, rains of crabs and periwinkles can't be far behind, and I hear they've discovered oil on the moon.
And I've heard the Oracle singing each to each. I do not think he sang for me.
I've seen a peanut stand,
Heard a rubber band,
I've even seen a needle wink its eye
...But I think I've seen 'bout everything, when I seen the Oracle sing.
It was a very weird weekend in LIANTland, dear readers, and not just because of the temporary stretching of LIANTland's borders.
First of all, thank you all for your condolences on the poor performance I turned in with My Own Dear Personal Dad at Saturday's cribbage tournament. I'm as baffled as you are, and can only attribute our dead-last finish to the verity of the old saw about where pride goeth.
In our defense, do you know the fates of the two teams we did manage to beat? That's right. They placed first and second.
But that, despite the startling unlikeliness of the number of completely worthless hands dealt to the pair of us, despite the stunningly bad timing with which those 20-point hands appeared just when our opponents pegged out, despite the surrealism of getting whipped by people whom I taught to play the game (and also by Famous Bill and the latest contender for the always coveted title of Town Drunk), was not, as my epigram might suggest, the strangest thing that happened this weekend.
I also went on a road trip, my first since my error-riddled trip to my best buddy's wedding in Chicago last summer.
And that, dear readers, was some strange stuff, that ol' Platte Valley Community Center Roadshow and Wet Bar...
We piled into the Oracle's Suburban early of a Sunday afternoon, the five of us: the Oracle, Napaman (distinguishable from Superman only by his lack of a cape and his dashing little red mustache), my Worthy Successor, my Rawlins Counterpart, and Your Humble Blogger, to head out on what was doubtless only the first of many fact finding missions.
Destination: Hot Springs, South Dakota and the Mueller Civic Center (no apparent relation to the current FBI director of the same name).
Purpose: See what a 27,000 square foot civic center looks like and interrogate those responsible for its erection and perpetuation.
Other purpose: Blatantly violate the Sunshine Laws by talking shop all the way there and back again. At which we failed miserably because, well, a lot of other stuff was more fun to talk about.
See, the Oracle and Napaman are both old running buddies of my dad's, and have colorfully checkered histories in their own rights besides, and love to shock and delight bright eyed young things like my Worthy Successor, my Rawlins Counterpart and myself with tales thereof.
Also, the Oracle likes to drive really fast, and Napaman likes to tease him about it.
Also, the Oracle can't stand driving on anything more elaborate than a two-lane highway, and Napaman likes to tease him about it.
Also, Your Humble Blogger made the mistake of remarking that she pretty much knows at least one person in every incorporated town in Wyoming, but left out those two important modifying terms, "pretty" and "much" and quite forgot that not every incorporated town in Wyoming is a member of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, meaning it's unlikely that I've met the mayors of some towns I keep forgetting exist – and through which we drove.
The scene there being something like this: We zip through a little eyeblink town between Wheatland and the state line at a moderately ungodly speed. As its two or three businesses blur by, Napaman chimes in:
"Hey, Kate, who do you know in (insert name of one-horse here)."
Me: "..."
Oracle: "Haw haw, see what you get for bragging, Kate?"
Me: "Tphttht!"
WS and RC" "Tee hee!"
Repeat as necessary.
(By the way, yes, these are the same two guys who routinely commemorate major holidays by turning ugly, plague-ridden poultry and other livestock loose in each other's yards, just to put this all in perspective)
In between towns, the boys regaled us with great old chestnuts like the time Napaman, MODPD and several other members of the august body known as the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department crammed themselves into my grandmother's pristine, single-owner, vintage Volkswagen Beetle and drove up the sidewalk on Bridge Street to the entrance of the Rustic, bought a case of beer and drove the rest of the block on said sidewalk (obviously this was back in the days before those big silly New England-style lightposts were installed when the town put in geothermally heated sidewalks).
We arrived at our destination, Hot Springs, S.D., only about two hours earlier than our ETA (for some reason the Oracle confined himself to a modest 85 m.p.h. for the duration of the trip), peckish and curious. We tooled up and down the streets of a town that looks like the bastard child of the University of Wyoming (home to lots of big handsome sandstone buildings), Saugerties, N.Y. (home to wildly zigzagging streets that veer left and right and up and down almost by the block) and one of Mad King Ludwig's more modest castles, while gawking somewhat at the 65 degree waters of the Fall River.
Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant (yummy!) next door to a public house known only as "The Bar." With a name like that, we couldn't possibly stay away, even though the only drinkable beer on tap was some Amber Bock. The Bar apparently caters to bikers during Sturgis Season and to biker wannabes the rest of the time.
Oracle: "Hey Kate, who plays this song we're listening to?"
YHB & WS (pausing to listen): "Steppenwolf."
Oracle: "Oh."
Napaman: "Who're they?"
Oracle: "Pardon my companion. He listens to both kinds of music."
Napaman: "Yup, country AND western."
YHB: "..."
Oracle: "So, who plays this song we're hearing now?"
YHB & WS (pausing to listen): "Steppenwolf."
Repeat as necessary.
Cut to the next morning, as the crew straggles one at a time into the continental breakfast room at the Hot Springs Comfort Inn. Among the usual rolls and cereals and single-serving packages of coffee creamer (in case the watered down decaf is too strongly coffee-flavored for one's tastes) is... a waffle iron. And lots of little cups of waffle batter. And a spray can labled "Waffle Off" which the Oracle immediately begins to refer to as Waffle Offal when the lot of us offer our unsolicited advice to any breakfast room patron who dares try to make a waffle.
The scene:
Enter Unknown Hippie Girl Breakfast Room Patron, who fumbles around looking for a teabag and discovers the waffle iron.
UHGBRP: "Cool, a waffle iron!"
YHB (excitedly egging her on): "There's batter there, too."
UHGBRP: "Cool!"
UHGBRP begins to make the waffle. YHB starts nudging the Oracle and giggling while muttering "This one's going to be good!"
We have invented a new sport: waffle watching. Were we more inclined to gamble, we might have been placing bets on how badly each BRP's waffle would stick to the iron. Were we inclined to gamble. But instead, the Oracle being a killjoy spoil-sport, or possibly just really getting off on getting to say "Waffle Offal" as often as possible, chimes in with:
"Hey. You'd better spray some of that Waffle Offal on so it doesn't stick."
UHGBRP: "Oh. Good idea." (sprays. All over. While we cough and wave the haze of petroleum distillates and artificial flavors away from our faces).
YHB: "Aww, you told her."
Napaman: "Why do you care?"
YHB: "Well, duh!" (pointing out the spectacle of waffle parts and bits and corpses strewn about the Breakfast Room).
Napaman: "You're pretty easily entertained, aren't you?"
YHB: "You should be glad I am, so that I can easily entertain you!"
Napaman: "Good point."
Oracle (catching the spirit after all): "Shh! There she goes!"
We all watch breathlessly as UHGBRP opens the waffle iron. We watch as she lifts the warped and previously melted plastic fork. We watch as she slides the fork effortlessly under the first Waffle Quadrant. We sigh as the Waffle Offal works its magic and the WQ comes free. We watch as she tackles Quadrant Two. We sigh. But then, but then, but then... Quadrant Three is stuck!!!! And Quadrant Four is also recalcitrant!
But UHGBRP is obviously a pro, and gingerly, gently coaxes the waffle from the iron with the kind of patience YHB can only muster when, well, writing one of these here blog entries. To each her own, as it were.
In any case:
YHB: "Ohhh! She's got it! Judges?"
UHGBRP scored a 10 for dexterity, a ten for style, and a 9.9 for skill. Not bad at 7:30 a.m. in Hot Springs, S.D.
And yes, the tour of the Mueller Center was delightful and illuminating and encouraging. They built the whole thing, a theater, gym, kitchen and conference rooms, for only $1.5 million!
...In 1987.
Oh, but...
1987.
How much diff–
1987.
Oh. Well.
Cut to the homeward journey, once again at impressive but not ludicrous speed, and I'm beginning to think the Oracle's brother and other frequent passengers have maybe exaggerated the weight of the Oracular Foot. We hit a few white-out blizzards, drive past a few lots filled with disgusting green tractors (we all in the car know that tractors are meant to come in only one color, the color god and McCormick intended: bright red), through a few more nameless and absurdly pretty little towns (mercifully without comment on whether or not I had acquaintances there. Napaman, unlike, say, Sketch or the Great Gay Banker, knows when a joke stops being funny) and on and on until we decide that it is vitally important for all concerned except for our Designated Oracle (who used up all of his drink tickets years ago) to have a beer in Rock River.
Our fate is of course sealed when we notice that we have, in fact, reached the exact counterpart of the tavern of the previous eve, minus a definite article. The sign at the establishment we entered said, simply, "BAR."
That was it, really, until the truly miraculous happened, something so strange that I'm glad indeed to have four witnesses.
As we round the bend around Arlington, Wyo. and see a truck sort of run off the road, the Oracle starts softly chuckling to himself, and then, inexplicably, to sing.
"I've seen a peanut stand, heard a rubber band..."
Clearly it is time for me to go see Mrs. Sketch and get my bi-annual earrigation again. Sounds awfully like the lyrics to that old song from Walt Disney's "Dumbo," doesn't it?
The lyrics to which are now playing on an endless loop in Your Humble Blogger's Humble Head. Round and round and round. I've even seen a needle wink it's eye.
Confirmation! For as we finally pull, about an hour later, into the Oracular Driveway in Saratoga, there he goes again. "I think I've seen 'bout everything/When I see an elephant fly."
I can only conclude from this that the Oracle is very happy indeed to be a grandfather, and has thrown himself into the role with gusto.
Meanwhile, rains of crabs and periwinkles can't be far behind, and I hear they've discovered oil on the moon.
And I've heard the Oracle singing each to each. I do not think he sang for me.
Thursday, April 03, 2003
"FIVE IS GOOD..."
With just two days left before the Big Cribbage Tournament at the Crazy Liver Cantina (not its real name), My Own Dear Personal Dadand I decided it would be in our best interest to maybe start thinking about, you know, training. A retiree and a newly-minted hobo have to be careful about spending that much money to enter (the fee is, after all, $10) and we'd best make sure we finish in the money!
Of course our best course of action was to find some sparring partners, and fortunately for us, my Novel Walking Partner and her husband, Famous Bill, were available. Originally MODPD and FB were going to head off to the big city to buy some railroad ties (don't ask) but the weather has been disgustingly springlike, gale force winds, heavy snowfall, mud and all, so we all just stayed in and played instead.
My Own Dear Personal Mom, knowing that the family fortune would be at stake on Saturday, did her part by baking brownies to keep up our strength and make sure MODPD and I stay at fighting weight.
Good thing, too, because NWP and FB wound up beating us a terrifying two out of five games, though perhaps had we tracked the aggregate number of pegs the results would have been even worse... for our opponents. HAW!
Refrain of the day, sort of pitifully whimpered at the end of each round by NWP: "Five is good for a crib..."
HAW!
That's right, MODPD and Your Humble Blogger are mean (but not lean) pegging machines when it comes to cribbage, wily and sneaky and deceptive and nearly unstoppable even before the first hand is counted. As we knew would be so. Sherrods are born with a cribbage board in one hand and a deck of cards in the other (explaining, perhaps, the high incidence of Caesarian sections in our clan dating all the way back to the time when the procedure was first initiated in Paracelsus' day because he didn't want to wait around for his wife to have "natural" childbirth before counting his crib). My Own Dear Personal sister is undefeated at two- and three-player cribbage, and was so even when we were tots and played with the likes of FlyBoy Campbell, who was always trying to convince us that we couldn't count His Nibs in our hands because we were girls.
Yup, playing cribbage with a pair of Sherrods could probably be compared to trying to play Risk with a pair of Atriedes. Shouldn't even be attempted.
Be assured, dear readers, we would handicap ourselves to even up the stakes on Saturday if it weren't for the fact that, well, I'm unemployed, and MODPD likes to go play in Las Vegas and has to stake himself somehow.
And man, this is so much more fun than working.
With just two days left before the Big Cribbage Tournament at the Crazy Liver Cantina (not its real name), My Own Dear Personal Dadand I decided it would be in our best interest to maybe start thinking about, you know, training. A retiree and a newly-minted hobo have to be careful about spending that much money to enter (the fee is, after all, $10) and we'd best make sure we finish in the money!
Of course our best course of action was to find some sparring partners, and fortunately for us, my Novel Walking Partner and her husband, Famous Bill, were available. Originally MODPD and FB were going to head off to the big city to buy some railroad ties (don't ask) but the weather has been disgustingly springlike, gale force winds, heavy snowfall, mud and all, so we all just stayed in and played instead.
My Own Dear Personal Mom, knowing that the family fortune would be at stake on Saturday, did her part by baking brownies to keep up our strength and make sure MODPD and I stay at fighting weight.
Good thing, too, because NWP and FB wound up beating us a terrifying two out of five games, though perhaps had we tracked the aggregate number of pegs the results would have been even worse... for our opponents. HAW!
Refrain of the day, sort of pitifully whimpered at the end of each round by NWP: "Five is good for a crib..."
HAW!
That's right, MODPD and Your Humble Blogger are mean (but not lean) pegging machines when it comes to cribbage, wily and sneaky and deceptive and nearly unstoppable even before the first hand is counted. As we knew would be so. Sherrods are born with a cribbage board in one hand and a deck of cards in the other (explaining, perhaps, the high incidence of Caesarian sections in our clan dating all the way back to the time when the procedure was first initiated in Paracelsus' day because he didn't want to wait around for his wife to have "natural" childbirth before counting his crib). My Own Dear Personal sister is undefeated at two- and three-player cribbage, and was so even when we were tots and played with the likes of FlyBoy Campbell, who was always trying to convince us that we couldn't count His Nibs in our hands because we were girls.
Yup, playing cribbage with a pair of Sherrods could probably be compared to trying to play Risk with a pair of Atriedes. Shouldn't even be attempted.
Be assured, dear readers, we would handicap ourselves to even up the stakes on Saturday if it weren't for the fact that, well, I'm unemployed, and MODPD likes to go play in Las Vegas and has to stake himself somehow.
And man, this is so much more fun than working.
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
"CHIEFS"
"Some days it's a good day to die, some days it's a good day to play basketball."
- Victor Joseph in Chris Eyre's "Smoke Signals"
Wyoming almost never makes it to basketball's "Sweet Sixteen" and wipes out spectacularly on those rare occasions when we do.
It may, then, seem strange to those who aren't in the know to say that Wyoming is one of the great basketball capitals of the known world. It may seem strange, but it isn't.
It's just that Wyoming's basketball gods very rarely make it to college, and when they do, they don't usually make it through college. And never, ever, do these gods manifest themselves at the University of Wyoming or any other Division I school.
That's because these gods live "on the rez," as budding filmmaker Daniel Junge shows us in his documentary "Chiefs."
Junge spent two years filming the lives of several members of the 2000 and 2001 Wyoming Indian High School boys basketball teams, on and off the court, then heroically edited down all of that footage into a taut, often moving, and definitely illuminating 90 minute film, which aired nationwide last night on PBS's "Independent Lens" program.
There's a lot to love, to be astonished by, and to be saddened by as Junge's images roll on with very little commentary from the filmmaker. These boys carry the hopes of an entire nation with them onto the basketball court, and are expected to live up to a proud legacy – 20 straight trips to the state tournament, numerous state championships, undefeated seasons – ever under the watchful eyes of their ancestors (many of whom were directly involved in establishing that legacy, those record seasons, those statistical marvels, those packed gymnasiums all over Wyoming). Every team in the state, even those from schools in Casper and Nebraska and Lander whose benches hold triple the number of players as the Chiefs because their schools hold ten times as many students as Wyoming Indian, wants a piece of them, making the Chiefs' entire season into an endless repeat of the plot of "Hoosiers."
Except those Indiana boys never had to deal with the social conditions and the occasional racism that were and are a fact of life for young men like Brian Sounding Sides, Ben and Al C'Bearing, and Tom Robinson.
Wisely, Junge does not dwell on these in the maudlin muckraking way of so many documentarians observing the tragedies of indigenous peoples. Junge also wisely does not dwell on the obviously "Indian" elements of these players' lives. A quick shot of a team session in a sweat lodge, a glimpse of a drum circle, are enough, as are quick looks around the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming – an area hard to make look picturesque, and Junge didn't try.
He didn't need to.
The realities of these players' lives come through simply and elegantly on their own. They are very aware of themselves as Indians, but they also have to learn trigonometry like any other high school students, also play video games... Marijuana use is a big issue, as is the deceptive easiness of life when every tribe member gets a "cap check" representing his or her equal share of the tribe's mineral royalties, removing a lot of the urgency behind the need to plan for the future or find lasting employment after the glory days of high school basketball are gone and the player has joined the many who went before him, playing "independent" basketball in year-long intramural reservation basketball leagues.
It's almost as if these players' lives are shortened and intensified when they are Chiefs; at age 16 they may not even be six feet tall yet, but their vertical leaps of 20 inches or more and their stunning prowess at slam dunks, steals and flying alley oops that no other Wyoming high school players ever seem to reach, combined with the closeness of small town school life and the even greater closeness of tribal life make these boys living gods at their schools, with small fry clamoring for their autographs after games and everyone noting their every moves in practice, in school, and on the boards. Then they graduate.
A few each year go off to college, after a fashion. As the film progresses, we see Brian Sounding Sides boarding a plane to fly off to attend a united tribal college in North Dakota. It will be his first time flying, but more importantly, it will be his first time living a life removed from his own people, what's left of their ways, and the equally insular world of high school basketball, which brings these boys out amongst the predominantly white populace of Wyoming but tightly restricts and controls their interactions there. Play basketball. Brief visit to Target (to buy eyedrops to hide the pot-smoking). Sit in motel room. Ride bus.
Within three weeks, Sounding Sides decides he "doesn't like" college and is back on the rez. As the film's epilog shares, he now lives at home, and plays independent basketball.
A question "Chiefs" inspires but does not address is, is it possible to keep all of the qualities that make Indian basketball great but ditch the insularity, the lack of preparedness for the rest of the world that sends all but a rare few of these hoop gods back to the reservation before they've even finished a year outside? There are always a few glimmers of hope; one of the C'Bearings is a student now at Chadron State in Nebraska, we are told in the epilog, and Tom Robinson won a rodeo scholarship to a community college in Wyoming. There's two... out of how many?
God help me, I recognized some of the independent league players from the days when I was a high school student and they were playing ball lo these... 14 years or so ago?
Can this change?
I don't know the answer to that.
But I do know the happiness that is nonetheless there in these young men's stories. A Saratoga girl who grew up watching the Panthers take on the Chiefs in several sports, I have a lifetime of memories of watching the Indians' families pack even our gymnasium, hundreds of miles away from the reservation. Often there would be more Chief than Panther fans in our little gym, and even I, not the world's greatest basketball fan, hated to miss a game just for the raw excitement of being part of such a passionate gathering. These games were my first experiences of the "good" side of being part of a mob – for even though both sides really, really wanted to win, the rivalry was friendly, the action kept on the court (I understand that some of this sportsmanship has declined since my years as a student here, but that is just hearsay. I haven't been to a game since I stopped making my living covering them, but the last time I saw the Chiefs play anyone – the very state championship game that is the climax of this film – I saw sportsmanship and fair play, on the court and in the stands, that would make Gary Medicine Cloud, the team's groovy old bus driver, very proud). And the cheering was all for them! Ten or 12 of the tribe's finest players (who've grown up in a land where every single household sports a basketball hoop outdoors). Gods indeed.
A lot of people would give up a lot to experience even one game of that kind of support, of that kind of adulation, let alone a whole season, a whole four-year career. How about you?
I'm very excited that more people are going to get to see this as a result of Junge's film. But there are some things I would have liked to see more of in it, most especially the team's assistant coach, whose name I missed (it was only mentioned once, at the very beginning), an uncle of one of the star players and himself a former Chief who made good and came back to the rez to coach. I have a personal, slightly selfish interest in the stories of other people my age who have chosen to come back here and tackle leadership roles in a state that, let's face it, is not an easy place for a young person to have a life and make a living, and this guy seemed to be carrying his responsibilities well.
The other thing that's missing is the Lady Chiefs, Wyoming Indian's girls basketball team. During the years covered by this film, the girls team was not as successful as the boys, but they did make it to state at least one of those years (I'm working from memory here, just an hour after watching the film, at the Unabomber Cabin, with no live internet connection, so I can't look it up)... and I have to say, I've always admired them even more than the boys, and not just for how well they play (always, always tough, my jock sister, who faced them often, informs me).
See, I spent the 2001 Wyoming State Basketball Tournament chaperoning Saratoga's middle and high school pep band, hauled off to Casper to cheer on our boys team, through games and restaurants and malls (always malls. There are only three in the whole state of Wyoming, and woe to the team sponsor who keeps a busload of teenagers away from one of them whenever one is near) and our motel.
Which we shared with Wyoming Indian's boys and girls teams.
And a few screaming, bratty little children... babies, toddlers, the odd pre-schooler.
You see, more than one of those girls basketball players were mothers. Some had more than one child. And they were still going to high school and playing basketball, and playing it damned well, with the kids in tow even on away trips. No, they weren't state champions, and I'm not saying it's a great thing they got pregnant while still in their teens, but I'm still going to say bully for them for keeping the kids, trying to raise them, and still trying to finish their own educations.
And play boobs to the wall, tough, physical basketball.
I hope someday, someone notices them, too. Hail to the Chiefs... and also the Lady Chiefs. And the little Chiefs they're already raising and teaching to play.
And hail to Daniel Junge for showing them to us without sentimentality, without a relentless agenda, without a smothering weight of interpretation and explanation.
More, please.
"Some days it's a good day to die, some days it's a good day to play basketball."
- Victor Joseph in Chris Eyre's "Smoke Signals"
Wyoming almost never makes it to basketball's "Sweet Sixteen" and wipes out spectacularly on those rare occasions when we do.
It may, then, seem strange to those who aren't in the know to say that Wyoming is one of the great basketball capitals of the known world. It may seem strange, but it isn't.
It's just that Wyoming's basketball gods very rarely make it to college, and when they do, they don't usually make it through college. And never, ever, do these gods manifest themselves at the University of Wyoming or any other Division I school.
That's because these gods live "on the rez," as budding filmmaker Daniel Junge shows us in his documentary "Chiefs."
Junge spent two years filming the lives of several members of the 2000 and 2001 Wyoming Indian High School boys basketball teams, on and off the court, then heroically edited down all of that footage into a taut, often moving, and definitely illuminating 90 minute film, which aired nationwide last night on PBS's "Independent Lens" program.
There's a lot to love, to be astonished by, and to be saddened by as Junge's images roll on with very little commentary from the filmmaker. These boys carry the hopes of an entire nation with them onto the basketball court, and are expected to live up to a proud legacy – 20 straight trips to the state tournament, numerous state championships, undefeated seasons – ever under the watchful eyes of their ancestors (many of whom were directly involved in establishing that legacy, those record seasons, those statistical marvels, those packed gymnasiums all over Wyoming). Every team in the state, even those from schools in Casper and Nebraska and Lander whose benches hold triple the number of players as the Chiefs because their schools hold ten times as many students as Wyoming Indian, wants a piece of them, making the Chiefs' entire season into an endless repeat of the plot of "Hoosiers."
Except those Indiana boys never had to deal with the social conditions and the occasional racism that were and are a fact of life for young men like Brian Sounding Sides, Ben and Al C'Bearing, and Tom Robinson.
Wisely, Junge does not dwell on these in the maudlin muckraking way of so many documentarians observing the tragedies of indigenous peoples. Junge also wisely does not dwell on the obviously "Indian" elements of these players' lives. A quick shot of a team session in a sweat lodge, a glimpse of a drum circle, are enough, as are quick looks around the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming – an area hard to make look picturesque, and Junge didn't try.
He didn't need to.
The realities of these players' lives come through simply and elegantly on their own. They are very aware of themselves as Indians, but they also have to learn trigonometry like any other high school students, also play video games... Marijuana use is a big issue, as is the deceptive easiness of life when every tribe member gets a "cap check" representing his or her equal share of the tribe's mineral royalties, removing a lot of the urgency behind the need to plan for the future or find lasting employment after the glory days of high school basketball are gone and the player has joined the many who went before him, playing "independent" basketball in year-long intramural reservation basketball leagues.
It's almost as if these players' lives are shortened and intensified when they are Chiefs; at age 16 they may not even be six feet tall yet, but their vertical leaps of 20 inches or more and their stunning prowess at slam dunks, steals and flying alley oops that no other Wyoming high school players ever seem to reach, combined with the closeness of small town school life and the even greater closeness of tribal life make these boys living gods at their schools, with small fry clamoring for their autographs after games and everyone noting their every moves in practice, in school, and on the boards. Then they graduate.
A few each year go off to college, after a fashion. As the film progresses, we see Brian Sounding Sides boarding a plane to fly off to attend a united tribal college in North Dakota. It will be his first time flying, but more importantly, it will be his first time living a life removed from his own people, what's left of their ways, and the equally insular world of high school basketball, which brings these boys out amongst the predominantly white populace of Wyoming but tightly restricts and controls their interactions there. Play basketball. Brief visit to Target (to buy eyedrops to hide the pot-smoking). Sit in motel room. Ride bus.
Within three weeks, Sounding Sides decides he "doesn't like" college and is back on the rez. As the film's epilog shares, he now lives at home, and plays independent basketball.
A question "Chiefs" inspires but does not address is, is it possible to keep all of the qualities that make Indian basketball great but ditch the insularity, the lack of preparedness for the rest of the world that sends all but a rare few of these hoop gods back to the reservation before they've even finished a year outside? There are always a few glimmers of hope; one of the C'Bearings is a student now at Chadron State in Nebraska, we are told in the epilog, and Tom Robinson won a rodeo scholarship to a community college in Wyoming. There's two... out of how many?
God help me, I recognized some of the independent league players from the days when I was a high school student and they were playing ball lo these... 14 years or so ago?
Can this change?
I don't know the answer to that.
But I do know the happiness that is nonetheless there in these young men's stories. A Saratoga girl who grew up watching the Panthers take on the Chiefs in several sports, I have a lifetime of memories of watching the Indians' families pack even our gymnasium, hundreds of miles away from the reservation. Often there would be more Chief than Panther fans in our little gym, and even I, not the world's greatest basketball fan, hated to miss a game just for the raw excitement of being part of such a passionate gathering. These games were my first experiences of the "good" side of being part of a mob – for even though both sides really, really wanted to win, the rivalry was friendly, the action kept on the court (I understand that some of this sportsmanship has declined since my years as a student here, but that is just hearsay. I haven't been to a game since I stopped making my living covering them, but the last time I saw the Chiefs play anyone – the very state championship game that is the climax of this film – I saw sportsmanship and fair play, on the court and in the stands, that would make Gary Medicine Cloud, the team's groovy old bus driver, very proud). And the cheering was all for them! Ten or 12 of the tribe's finest players (who've grown up in a land where every single household sports a basketball hoop outdoors). Gods indeed.
A lot of people would give up a lot to experience even one game of that kind of support, of that kind of adulation, let alone a whole season, a whole four-year career. How about you?
I'm very excited that more people are going to get to see this as a result of Junge's film. But there are some things I would have liked to see more of in it, most especially the team's assistant coach, whose name I missed (it was only mentioned once, at the very beginning), an uncle of one of the star players and himself a former Chief who made good and came back to the rez to coach. I have a personal, slightly selfish interest in the stories of other people my age who have chosen to come back here and tackle leadership roles in a state that, let's face it, is not an easy place for a young person to have a life and make a living, and this guy seemed to be carrying his responsibilities well.
The other thing that's missing is the Lady Chiefs, Wyoming Indian's girls basketball team. During the years covered by this film, the girls team was not as successful as the boys, but they did make it to state at least one of those years (I'm working from memory here, just an hour after watching the film, at the Unabomber Cabin, with no live internet connection, so I can't look it up)... and I have to say, I've always admired them even more than the boys, and not just for how well they play (always, always tough, my jock sister, who faced them often, informs me).
See, I spent the 2001 Wyoming State Basketball Tournament chaperoning Saratoga's middle and high school pep band, hauled off to Casper to cheer on our boys team, through games and restaurants and malls (always malls. There are only three in the whole state of Wyoming, and woe to the team sponsor who keeps a busload of teenagers away from one of them whenever one is near) and our motel.
Which we shared with Wyoming Indian's boys and girls teams.
And a few screaming, bratty little children... babies, toddlers, the odd pre-schooler.
You see, more than one of those girls basketball players were mothers. Some had more than one child. And they were still going to high school and playing basketball, and playing it damned well, with the kids in tow even on away trips. No, they weren't state champions, and I'm not saying it's a great thing they got pregnant while still in their teens, but I'm still going to say bully for them for keeping the kids, trying to raise them, and still trying to finish their own educations.
And play boobs to the wall, tough, physical basketball.
I hope someday, someone notices them, too. Hail to the Chiefs... and also the Lady Chiefs. And the little Chiefs they're already raising and teaching to play.
And hail to Daniel Junge for showing them to us without sentimentality, without a relentless agenda, without a smothering weight of interpretation and explanation.
More, please.
SKATE PARK DILEMMA
OK, dear readers, here's where your youngest councilman really, really needs your help. This is not a rhetorical request; I really need to hear from any of you who actually care about the following.
No matter how we've looked at it, in Saratoga and elsewhere, the municipal revenue situation pretty much sucks. Sales tax collections are down, and with them many other revenues we, your town government, depend on to pay for the services we provide you.
The budget sessions that will commence in less than two weeks are already looking painful, as we begin to balance interests that already compete fiercely even in good revenue years, figure out what we can and can't touch, what is already irrevocably committed and what goes on the chopping block.
In the midst of all of this, your town hall staff has presented us with drawings and a price tag for a project that was near and dear to the heart of our recently-ex-recreation director (the Minister of Fun in these pages): a skateboard park.
The departed MOF was one of the original small band of kids who built the skate park that once occupied the very spot – one of the tennis courts on Veterans Island – onto which this new equipment would be installed. They did it because they wanted it and were willing to work for it, to pay for it, to maintain it.
Tragedy of the Commons time: After the park's builders grew up and went away (they were my immediate contemporaries, ranging in age from a year older than me to about five years younger), the equipment fell into disuse and disrepair, neglected pretty much altogether until, many years later, some kids in Encampment decided they wanted a skate park down there, and cannibalized the Veterans Island equipment with the Town of Saratoga's tacit blessing.
Skateboarding is still somewhat popular today, but since the stuff at Veterans Island is gone, today's kids do it downtown, much to the annoyance of a few local business owners whose property gets damaged betimes, through accident and, alas, occasional vandalism.
A few of the youngsters approached what was then a Recreation Department of two – laughably, given my campaign stance that recreation is not a legitmate function of government and government's coercive powers, I was the second of those two – and asked if something could be done to bring back the skate park at Veterans Island.
As I recall, the MOF's response was "sure, what do we want to do?" with an emphasis on "we" because he knew very well the council's general stance on projects like that: we don't throw town money around on projects that just a couple of people want unless that couple of people can demonstrate widespread support for them in the form of, yes, donation money!
I.E., take the Playground Ladies, who held countless fundraisers, distributed countless coin cans around town, wrote countless grants, and mounted a full-on media campaign to come up with the necessary funds to buy the fancy playground equipment they installed – again as a community effort – at Kathy Glode and Veterans Island parks, as your model. They got help, cooperation, and some of the funding from the town, but they knew better than to demand that the taxpayers foot the entire bill for their little dream.
Ditto the dog park, built partially with town funds but mostly with money raised by Pals for Pets and with their volunteer labor and in-kind donations from local businesses and dog lovers.
The kids asking to revive the skate park, predictably, said whatever it took to get the MOF to start working on a plan, which he did, with some input from the young'uns as to what kind of equipment they'd like best.
The MOF even went so far as to make some coin cans for the kids to use to start collecting donations to support their project, admonished them frequently that this park was only going to happen if they took ownership of it (in the hope that because they'd invested in it themselves, they would take care of it instead of letting it get trashed or vandalized. Hey, the MOF and I are still a little young; allow us a bit of hopeful naivete from time to time, wouldja?).
Alas, predictably, as the MOF began to beaver away at a small stack of grant applications, the enthusiasm for making this a group effort appears to have disappeared. He reports the last few meetings he called to work on the project were attended by... the MOF himself and no other.
Fine, then.
We did not stop the MOF's grant writing efforts, but I personally, at least, clicked the park's icon then and there and moved it into the delete bin. If the people who say they want it so bad can't be bothered to do the work to make it happen, that tells me everything about their attitude toward it, toward us, toward the concept of public property and common resources.
BUT... (there's always an enormous "but") in the wake of the MOF's departure, others among the town hall staff have chosen to take this program and run with it.
Last night, two of them plunked a plan down on the table in front of us, and a price tag of over $30,400.
Now, there is some controversy over a grant the MOF wrote to support this venture at this point. How much is it for? When will we know if we get the funds, etc.?
With this in mind, and knowing the background of this project as I do, and knowing the ugly revenue picture we're already facing, I was prepared to give this the thumbs down last night if the issue of whether or not to spend that much money was to be forced then and there. As it was, I urged the rest of the council to wait until we knew the status of that grant before deciding on this. If we've got $25,000 coming from the Tony Hawk foundation, this becomes a bit less difficult to contemplate. If we've got to pay for the whole thing out of Town revenues... I'm inclined to say no.
But I was elected to represent you, the people of Saratoga. It's not just my wishes that count here. So I really need, within the next two weeks, to hear what you all think.
If I don't hear from any of you, on the street, by e-mail, whatever, then I am going to vote my own political conscience: town revenues are to be spent to benefit the entire populace and not just small interest groups. You as a taxpayer do not have a choice as to whether to contribute your share to the kitty; ethics thus dictate that I spend this money on things that all of you use. Roads. Fire protection. Ambulance service. Police. Bridges.
(Some have already quibbled that not everyone will use the community center that is to be built partially with sales tax. To them I point out: you get a direct choice on this on May 6 of this year, when the voters of Carbon County get to decide whether or not to approve the Capital Facilities Tax. If you don't want this facility, then vote no. BUT, shut the hell up about how we need one if you do. People have been demanding some form of this thing for my entire life, and it's getting old. It will get older still if that tax gets defeated. Get it?)
I cannot logically place a skateboard park in the same category with these other services that pretty much everyone agrees are necessary, if not essential to a town.
Can you?
But, if you guys really want one, if you really, really think this is a legitimate use of funds, you'd better tell me now.
Before you decide, though, contemplate the opportunity cost we would be incurring. $30,000 is about half the cost of a fire truck. $30,000 is more than last year's entire operating budget for the ambulance service. $30,000 is about what we lose annually in keeping the swimming pool open (and that's after we factor in the admission fees, the fees for swimming lessons, etc. – which brings up another point: there will be no financial return on a skate park. Ever. Just an operation and maintenance drain at best, if it gets used beyond the span of its novelty value). We're catching up on deferred maintenance on the streets – crack sealing, pothole filling, etc.
What do you think, folks?
OK, dear readers, here's where your youngest councilman really, really needs your help. This is not a rhetorical request; I really need to hear from any of you who actually care about the following.
No matter how we've looked at it, in Saratoga and elsewhere, the municipal revenue situation pretty much sucks. Sales tax collections are down, and with them many other revenues we, your town government, depend on to pay for the services we provide you.
The budget sessions that will commence in less than two weeks are already looking painful, as we begin to balance interests that already compete fiercely even in good revenue years, figure out what we can and can't touch, what is already irrevocably committed and what goes on the chopping block.
In the midst of all of this, your town hall staff has presented us with drawings and a price tag for a project that was near and dear to the heart of our recently-ex-recreation director (the Minister of Fun in these pages): a skateboard park.
The departed MOF was one of the original small band of kids who built the skate park that once occupied the very spot – one of the tennis courts on Veterans Island – onto which this new equipment would be installed. They did it because they wanted it and were willing to work for it, to pay for it, to maintain it.
Tragedy of the Commons time: After the park's builders grew up and went away (they were my immediate contemporaries, ranging in age from a year older than me to about five years younger), the equipment fell into disuse and disrepair, neglected pretty much altogether until, many years later, some kids in Encampment decided they wanted a skate park down there, and cannibalized the Veterans Island equipment with the Town of Saratoga's tacit blessing.
Skateboarding is still somewhat popular today, but since the stuff at Veterans Island is gone, today's kids do it downtown, much to the annoyance of a few local business owners whose property gets damaged betimes, through accident and, alas, occasional vandalism.
A few of the youngsters approached what was then a Recreation Department of two – laughably, given my campaign stance that recreation is not a legitmate function of government and government's coercive powers, I was the second of those two – and asked if something could be done to bring back the skate park at Veterans Island.
As I recall, the MOF's response was "sure, what do we want to do?" with an emphasis on "we" because he knew very well the council's general stance on projects like that: we don't throw town money around on projects that just a couple of people want unless that couple of people can demonstrate widespread support for them in the form of, yes, donation money!
I.E., take the Playground Ladies, who held countless fundraisers, distributed countless coin cans around town, wrote countless grants, and mounted a full-on media campaign to come up with the necessary funds to buy the fancy playground equipment they installed – again as a community effort – at Kathy Glode and Veterans Island parks, as your model. They got help, cooperation, and some of the funding from the town, but they knew better than to demand that the taxpayers foot the entire bill for their little dream.
Ditto the dog park, built partially with town funds but mostly with money raised by Pals for Pets and with their volunteer labor and in-kind donations from local businesses and dog lovers.
The kids asking to revive the skate park, predictably, said whatever it took to get the MOF to start working on a plan, which he did, with some input from the young'uns as to what kind of equipment they'd like best.
The MOF even went so far as to make some coin cans for the kids to use to start collecting donations to support their project, admonished them frequently that this park was only going to happen if they took ownership of it (in the hope that because they'd invested in it themselves, they would take care of it instead of letting it get trashed or vandalized. Hey, the MOF and I are still a little young; allow us a bit of hopeful naivete from time to time, wouldja?).
Alas, predictably, as the MOF began to beaver away at a small stack of grant applications, the enthusiasm for making this a group effort appears to have disappeared. He reports the last few meetings he called to work on the project were attended by... the MOF himself and no other.
Fine, then.
We did not stop the MOF's grant writing efforts, but I personally, at least, clicked the park's icon then and there and moved it into the delete bin. If the people who say they want it so bad can't be bothered to do the work to make it happen, that tells me everything about their attitude toward it, toward us, toward the concept of public property and common resources.
BUT... (there's always an enormous "but") in the wake of the MOF's departure, others among the town hall staff have chosen to take this program and run with it.
Last night, two of them plunked a plan down on the table in front of us, and a price tag of over $30,400.
Now, there is some controversy over a grant the MOF wrote to support this venture at this point. How much is it for? When will we know if we get the funds, etc.?
With this in mind, and knowing the background of this project as I do, and knowing the ugly revenue picture we're already facing, I was prepared to give this the thumbs down last night if the issue of whether or not to spend that much money was to be forced then and there. As it was, I urged the rest of the council to wait until we knew the status of that grant before deciding on this. If we've got $25,000 coming from the Tony Hawk foundation, this becomes a bit less difficult to contemplate. If we've got to pay for the whole thing out of Town revenues... I'm inclined to say no.
But I was elected to represent you, the people of Saratoga. It's not just my wishes that count here. So I really need, within the next two weeks, to hear what you all think.
If I don't hear from any of you, on the street, by e-mail, whatever, then I am going to vote my own political conscience: town revenues are to be spent to benefit the entire populace and not just small interest groups. You as a taxpayer do not have a choice as to whether to contribute your share to the kitty; ethics thus dictate that I spend this money on things that all of you use. Roads. Fire protection. Ambulance service. Police. Bridges.
(Some have already quibbled that not everyone will use the community center that is to be built partially with sales tax. To them I point out: you get a direct choice on this on May 6 of this year, when the voters of Carbon County get to decide whether or not to approve the Capital Facilities Tax. If you don't want this facility, then vote no. BUT, shut the hell up about how we need one if you do. People have been demanding some form of this thing for my entire life, and it's getting old. It will get older still if that tax gets defeated. Get it?)
I cannot logically place a skateboard park in the same category with these other services that pretty much everyone agrees are necessary, if not essential to a town.
Can you?
But, if you guys really want one, if you really, really think this is a legitimate use of funds, you'd better tell me now.
Before you decide, though, contemplate the opportunity cost we would be incurring. $30,000 is about half the cost of a fire truck. $30,000 is more than last year's entire operating budget for the ambulance service. $30,000 is about what we lose annually in keeping the swimming pool open (and that's after we factor in the admission fees, the fees for swimming lessons, etc. – which brings up another point: there will be no financial return on a skate park. Ever. Just an operation and maintenance drain at best, if it gets used beyond the span of its novelty value). We're catching up on deferred maintenance on the streets – crack sealing, pothole filling, etc.
What do you think, folks?
Monday, March 31, 2003
SAVE THE SNOW SNAKE!
aka "Lynx, schmynx"
Let me start off this entry with a great big "mea culpa."
I've been totally wrong in my attacks on the Medicine Bow National Forest's draft management plan. Totally wrong.
Oh, don't get me wrong; I still consider this document to be 25 lbs. of the worst quality of crap imaginable. I have just been laboring under a delusion that this was so for all the wrong regions.
I got my first hint that something was amiss when I realized that your Forest Service was concerned, not with Canada Lynx themselves but with lynx habitat. See, it really doesn't matter that there ain't never been no such animal in the Snowy Range, at least not since the last ice age (perhaps); it's the habitat that's important.
You know, in case any lynx want to drop on by sometime. Wouldn't want to be churlish and not have a guest bedroom ready, would we?
So, I started thinking that I needed to ease up on these poor folk who just want to make our forest friendly for the animals who don't live there... but then, as I leafed through the thick sheaves of 25 lbs. of crap over this last weekend, I noticed something truly horrifying.
Dear readers, I am stunned and dismayed to learn that there is not a word in this thing about your favorite and mine, the common snow snake (Thamnophis sosemanuk).
Ahh, the snow snake! Winter sports enthusiasts are doubtless familiar with Sosemanuk, the popular Cree Indian game inspired by this remarkable creature, in which two or more players chuck sticks or "snakes" down a snow-covered hillside to see whose stick slides the farthest. Opinions differ on whether or not actual specimens of T. sosemanuk were once used where sticks are employed today, but it is generally agreed that the practice of using live snakes today would both impractical and unethical due to the increasing rarity of these creatures.
But even without the use of live T. sosemanuk in sport, it is a certainty that of all the animals in the Bow whose habitats are threatened by human activity, the snow snake is the most vulnerable. Why, just yesterday in the Sierra Madre mountains above Encampment I personally observed a cross country skier (who will of course remain nameless) wantonly skiing right over a snow snake trail (snowsnake trails being easily recognizable by their two-track appearance, as these creatures always travel in parallel pairs) without any concern for disturbing the noble animals which had created what he doubtless thought was an easy track laid down just for him.
On this particular trip, I did not see any actual snakes, but their trails were everywhere. I could only conclude from this evidence that we had harried them into hiding, as they are known to be a most introverted snake, or that the animals who had made the trails I observed had been cruelly run over by a skier and killed.
It is also possible that they were there but I just didn't see them, for they are of a mottled white and grey pattern on their scales to allow them to blend in with the wintry landscape in which they thrive, escaping predation from lynxes and sphinxes alike (and no, I've never seen a sphinx up there, either, but that doesn't mean they're not there, surely?).
Friends, how long are we going to allow this to continue? Sightings of these lovely creatures are becoming more and more seldom as the years progress. It may already be too late!
Time is running out on the comment period for this management plan! Write our local forest ranger, his district master, whomever you can, and tell them to help save the snow snake.
You know you won't be able to live with yourself until you do.
aka "Lynx, schmynx"
Let me start off this entry with a great big "mea culpa."
I've been totally wrong in my attacks on the Medicine Bow National Forest's draft management plan. Totally wrong.
Oh, don't get me wrong; I still consider this document to be 25 lbs. of the worst quality of crap imaginable. I have just been laboring under a delusion that this was so for all the wrong regions.
I got my first hint that something was amiss when I realized that your Forest Service was concerned, not with Canada Lynx themselves but with lynx habitat. See, it really doesn't matter that there ain't never been no such animal in the Snowy Range, at least not since the last ice age (perhaps); it's the habitat that's important.
You know, in case any lynx want to drop on by sometime. Wouldn't want to be churlish and not have a guest bedroom ready, would we?
So, I started thinking that I needed to ease up on these poor folk who just want to make our forest friendly for the animals who don't live there... but then, as I leafed through the thick sheaves of 25 lbs. of crap over this last weekend, I noticed something truly horrifying.
Dear readers, I am stunned and dismayed to learn that there is not a word in this thing about your favorite and mine, the common snow snake (Thamnophis sosemanuk).
Ahh, the snow snake! Winter sports enthusiasts are doubtless familiar with Sosemanuk, the popular Cree Indian game inspired by this remarkable creature, in which two or more players chuck sticks or "snakes" down a snow-covered hillside to see whose stick slides the farthest. Opinions differ on whether or not actual specimens of T. sosemanuk were once used where sticks are employed today, but it is generally agreed that the practice of using live snakes today would both impractical and unethical due to the increasing rarity of these creatures.
But even without the use of live T. sosemanuk in sport, it is a certainty that of all the animals in the Bow whose habitats are threatened by human activity, the snow snake is the most vulnerable. Why, just yesterday in the Sierra Madre mountains above Encampment I personally observed a cross country skier (who will of course remain nameless) wantonly skiing right over a snow snake trail (snowsnake trails being easily recognizable by their two-track appearance, as these creatures always travel in parallel pairs) without any concern for disturbing the noble animals which had created what he doubtless thought was an easy track laid down just for him.
On this particular trip, I did not see any actual snakes, but their trails were everywhere. I could only conclude from this evidence that we had harried them into hiding, as they are known to be a most introverted snake, or that the animals who had made the trails I observed had been cruelly run over by a skier and killed.
It is also possible that they were there but I just didn't see them, for they are of a mottled white and grey pattern on their scales to allow them to blend in with the wintry landscape in which they thrive, escaping predation from lynxes and sphinxes alike (and no, I've never seen a sphinx up there, either, but that doesn't mean they're not there, surely?).
Friends, how long are we going to allow this to continue? Sightings of these lovely creatures are becoming more and more seldom as the years progress. It may already be too late!
Time is running out on the comment period for this management plan! Write our local forest ranger, his district master, whomever you can, and tell them to help save the snow snake.
You know you won't be able to live with yourself until you do.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
PRETZEL LOGIC
Now this is just mean.
I was just taking a peek at my own blog to see who's sponsoring me lately - to my amusement recently, it was for quite some time a resort in Jackson Hole, the town that is ultimately to blame for my entire blogging career and much else besides (it is my birthplace), but I see today that it has changed.
Some really dumb antiwar protesters (and bear in mind, I do not think those two terms together are inherently redundant, at least not all of the time; I have just chosen to write mostly about the protesters who are dumb because they are more amusing, and I blog to amuse much more than to enlighten or irritate) are supporting me. But what they're advocating is even meaner than puking on the steps for someone to clean up or beating the hell out of some gal's SUV.
Pretzels for Peace.
Send pretzels to the White House.
I get it, I get it. I remember when GWB choked on a pretzel a while back, and yes, I guess I see where it's funny. But I still file this under unconstructive and dumb, as well as mean, on the order (though of course not the magnitude) of sending a fifth of Jack Daniels to someone who was diagnosised with cirhossis or something.
Wonder if the Secret Service knows?
Well, well... they certainly didn't hear it from me! Honest!
Now this is just mean.
I was just taking a peek at my own blog to see who's sponsoring me lately - to my amusement recently, it was for quite some time a resort in Jackson Hole, the town that is ultimately to blame for my entire blogging career and much else besides (it is my birthplace), but I see today that it has changed.
Some really dumb antiwar protesters (and bear in mind, I do not think those two terms together are inherently redundant, at least not all of the time; I have just chosen to write mostly about the protesters who are dumb because they are more amusing, and I blog to amuse much more than to enlighten or irritate) are supporting me. But what they're advocating is even meaner than puking on the steps for someone to clean up or beating the hell out of some gal's SUV.
Pretzels for Peace.
Send pretzels to the White House.
I get it, I get it. I remember when GWB choked on a pretzel a while back, and yes, I guess I see where it's funny. But I still file this under unconstructive and dumb, as well as mean, on the order (though of course not the magnitude) of sending a fifth of Jack Daniels to someone who was diagnosised with cirhossis or something.
Wonder if the Secret Service knows?
Well, well... they certainly didn't hear it from me! Honest!
THANK GOD ALMIGHTY... OR SOMETHING!
Oh my dear readers, I've been trying these last few days to come up with the right way to break the news to you, and finally, subscribing as I do to the notion that it's better to rip the band-aid off in one swift ouch of a motion rather than peel it back slowly and agonizingly so that one feels the rip of each individual hair from its follicle, I'm just gonna tell ya!
No, I'm not going to discontinue this page. Heavens no! But the content is going to change some. Probably for the juicier and the better overall.
That's because as of last Thursday I am a HOBO!
That's right, HOBO.
Possibly because of this here web page and other daunting personal problems of my own, like my complete inability to keep a desk neat and purty without assistance, possibly for reasons I can't even imagine and really don't want to waste the brain space trying, they just don't want me to be a chamber chick anymore.
So, I must fall back on my own personal resources to keep Molly the Collie of Folly in dog food and a roof over my library.
No, I don't know for sure yet if staying in Saratoga is an option, though it is my dearest wish. I live here for a reason, and it sure isn't for the lucre, and I have commitments to keep. Like two years or so yet on my term as a town council member, like the community center we've yet to build, like being the Savant of the Sewer, like holding down the floorboards on the porch of the Hotel Wolf. And I'm going to try.
I'm harrassing every publication whom I even think might be interested in featuring some form (possibly a bit less, ah, trenchant) of Content By Kate (if you know of one, suggest me! Pick me!). I'm wandering around town looking at part-time work. I'm probably going to be a substitute teacher for a while.
And I'm enjoying the freedom, the paradisacal slackerdom I've never allowed myself to enjoy before. As is the Anthropologist Formerly Known As The Minister Of Fun (AFKATMOF) who was strongly encouraged to fall on his own dear personal sword within 24 hours of my own receipt of the invitation to do so. We sat at his house on Friday (a funky little shack that makes the Unabomber Cabin look like a... well, words fail me. Suffice it to say that his house is in much the same general condition of mine, but is slightly larger and somewhat cheaper. We're friends for a reason, dear readers) and toasted our unexpected good fortune as we gleefully listed off all of the monkeys that are no longer on our backs, all of the pressing issues and deadlines and other crap that is no longer our problem, singly or together.
It was pretty fun.
Only a little bit scary. At odd moments. But we're both young and brilliant and completely unencumbered (I consider the Collie of Folly a partner rather than a dependent; at least she's a good remedy for writer's block) and not afraid of living like Spartans. We love the Spartans. We actually know their lifestyles in intimate detail. We even know the names of the kings who reigned before Leonidas (Cleonymus, if anyone cares). But we probably won't be declaring war on Athens anytime soon. We'll be too busy fishing. And floating the river.
The options that lay before each of us are truly staggering, now that almost the last claims on our loyalties have been rendered farcical. The hard part is choosing.
I even sat for a while this morning and thought about moseying over to our local urn-and-boomerang manufacturing plant and seeing if they'd want my help from time to time. I got an A+ in wood shop once upon a time, am not afraid of sharp metal objects or of computers, and am terribly, terribly fond of the smell of sawdust. Plus the idea has appeal in other ways.
No one is likely to question my motivations while I am making a boomerang.
No one is going to be trying to sniff out my agenda in making boomerangs.
It is highly unlikely that one person will start raising holy hell because I am making someone else's boomerang first.
The possibilities that I shall be hilariously misquoted in the newspaper while making boomerangs is quite remote.
I shall probably not be required to constantly explain, while making boomerangs, that I have no control over when the state highway department decides to open Snowy Range Road for the season.
The political implications of my boomerang making would not be scandalously discussed, in hushed tones, over cheap cocktails and cheaper cigars by people who don't even know what a boomerang is.
I would not be required to tell anyone what I'm thinking about while I make boomerangs.
Nor would I be likely to be accused of imaginary personal slights to people I haven't seen in six months while making boomerangs.
Somebody stop me, I've got myself half talked into this!
No, not really. Don't be silly, dear readers. Just another temporary case of YHBPsychosis. Still giddy with freedom and possibility and the notion that my time is my own. Mostly.
Let's see... it's 1 p.m. and once I click "publish" everything on my to-do list will be completed for the day. I think I'll have a glass of wine with MODPM.
Hope your day is as happy and productive.
P.S. Please ignore the banner ads currently sponsoring this page. Stupid protesters. I have no control over whose banner ads get placed on this page - something I only gain if I start paying for hosting, which is doubly not an option now. But I am not opposed to our action in Iraq, and do not encourage anyone to give money to the loonies who are, no matter how stylish the clothing they're offering.
Oh my dear readers, I've been trying these last few days to come up with the right way to break the news to you, and finally, subscribing as I do to the notion that it's better to rip the band-aid off in one swift ouch of a motion rather than peel it back slowly and agonizingly so that one feels the rip of each individual hair from its follicle, I'm just gonna tell ya!
No, I'm not going to discontinue this page. Heavens no! But the content is going to change some. Probably for the juicier and the better overall.
That's because as of last Thursday I am a HOBO!
That's right, HOBO.
Possibly because of this here web page and other daunting personal problems of my own, like my complete inability to keep a desk neat and purty without assistance, possibly for reasons I can't even imagine and really don't want to waste the brain space trying, they just don't want me to be a chamber chick anymore.
So, I must fall back on my own personal resources to keep Molly the Collie of Folly in dog food and a roof over my library.
No, I don't know for sure yet if staying in Saratoga is an option, though it is my dearest wish. I live here for a reason, and it sure isn't for the lucre, and I have commitments to keep. Like two years or so yet on my term as a town council member, like the community center we've yet to build, like being the Savant of the Sewer, like holding down the floorboards on the porch of the Hotel Wolf. And I'm going to try.
I'm harrassing every publication whom I even think might be interested in featuring some form (possibly a bit less, ah, trenchant) of Content By Kate (if you know of one, suggest me! Pick me!). I'm wandering around town looking at part-time work. I'm probably going to be a substitute teacher for a while.
And I'm enjoying the freedom, the paradisacal slackerdom I've never allowed myself to enjoy before. As is the Anthropologist Formerly Known As The Minister Of Fun (AFKATMOF) who was strongly encouraged to fall on his own dear personal sword within 24 hours of my own receipt of the invitation to do so. We sat at his house on Friday (a funky little shack that makes the Unabomber Cabin look like a... well, words fail me. Suffice it to say that his house is in much the same general condition of mine, but is slightly larger and somewhat cheaper. We're friends for a reason, dear readers) and toasted our unexpected good fortune as we gleefully listed off all of the monkeys that are no longer on our backs, all of the pressing issues and deadlines and other crap that is no longer our problem, singly or together.
It was pretty fun.
Only a little bit scary. At odd moments. But we're both young and brilliant and completely unencumbered (I consider the Collie of Folly a partner rather than a dependent; at least she's a good remedy for writer's block) and not afraid of living like Spartans. We love the Spartans. We actually know their lifestyles in intimate detail. We even know the names of the kings who reigned before Leonidas (Cleonymus, if anyone cares). But we probably won't be declaring war on Athens anytime soon. We'll be too busy fishing. And floating the river.
The options that lay before each of us are truly staggering, now that almost the last claims on our loyalties have been rendered farcical. The hard part is choosing.
I even sat for a while this morning and thought about moseying over to our local urn-and-boomerang manufacturing plant and seeing if they'd want my help from time to time. I got an A+ in wood shop once upon a time, am not afraid of sharp metal objects or of computers, and am terribly, terribly fond of the smell of sawdust. Plus the idea has appeal in other ways.
No one is likely to question my motivations while I am making a boomerang.
No one is going to be trying to sniff out my agenda in making boomerangs.
It is highly unlikely that one person will start raising holy hell because I am making someone else's boomerang first.
The possibilities that I shall be hilariously misquoted in the newspaper while making boomerangs is quite remote.
I shall probably not be required to constantly explain, while making boomerangs, that I have no control over when the state highway department decides to open Snowy Range Road for the season.
The political implications of my boomerang making would not be scandalously discussed, in hushed tones, over cheap cocktails and cheaper cigars by people who don't even know what a boomerang is.
I would not be required to tell anyone what I'm thinking about while I make boomerangs.
Nor would I be likely to be accused of imaginary personal slights to people I haven't seen in six months while making boomerangs.
Somebody stop me, I've got myself half talked into this!
No, not really. Don't be silly, dear readers. Just another temporary case of YHBPsychosis. Still giddy with freedom and possibility and the notion that my time is my own. Mostly.
Let's see... it's 1 p.m. and once I click "publish" everything on my to-do list will be completed for the day. I think I'll have a glass of wine with MODPM.
Hope your day is as happy and productive.
P.S. Please ignore the banner ads currently sponsoring this page. Stupid protesters. I have no control over whose banner ads get placed on this page - something I only gain if I start paying for hosting, which is doubly not an option now. But I am not opposed to our action in Iraq, and do not encourage anyone to give money to the loonies who are, no matter how stylish the clothing they're offering.
Thursday, March 20, 2003
THIS AIN'T MY MOMMY'S WAR
As My Own Dear Personal Mother and I enjoyed a round of harumphing about how we were going to miss finding out who got voted out of the Amazon because some trigger-happy goon in Baghdad tawt he taw a missile coming (Mountain Standard Time meant that TV news went on full splash coverage alert halfway through Survivor), something became abundantly clear as we surfed through the channels.
This ain't my mommy's war. Or my granny's war. Or even my Gulf War.
"My god, these people would have been taken out and shot for blabbing like this during World War II," MODPM exclaimed as we watched the parade of armaments on screen, complete with information on how far our missiles can go, how they're guided, what their payloads were, even which company made them (cynically, we both agreed this vital information – presented on ABC in a subtly larger typeface than the rest of the data – must be part of President Bush's economic stimulus package. Hey, we're going to need some more Tomahawk Missiles pretty soon, so call your broker and buy all the General Dynamics you can afford!). This after watching a report earlier in the evening about how some military experts were worried that Hussein would blow up his own dams so the floodwaters would impede coalition forces' progress, prompting us both to cry out "Oh yes, let's give the bastard some more ideas!!"
After a couple of hours of last night's coverage, I almost feel like I could build a stealth bomber out of household materials, which really just makes me wonder how much our enemies have learned. Obviously our leadership is assuming that some folks in Iraq can see what's being broadcast, else why would Dubya bother addressing the Iraqi people directly?
So does this just mean we're so confident that we just plain don't care what the Iraqis know about what we can do? We're so badass that secrecy is not a concern at all?
Or is it part of the much-vaunted "shock and awe" campaign?
Or is it, as my more paranoid coffee buddies posited this morning, just that the media is so rife with America-hating "pinkos" that they're happy to give Saddam whatever information he needs to "teach us a lesson?"
Whatever it is, it's just plain weird.
As My Own Dear Personal Mother and I enjoyed a round of harumphing about how we were going to miss finding out who got voted out of the Amazon because some trigger-happy goon in Baghdad tawt he taw a missile coming (Mountain Standard Time meant that TV news went on full splash coverage alert halfway through Survivor), something became abundantly clear as we surfed through the channels.
This ain't my mommy's war. Or my granny's war. Or even my Gulf War.
"My god, these people would have been taken out and shot for blabbing like this during World War II," MODPM exclaimed as we watched the parade of armaments on screen, complete with information on how far our missiles can go, how they're guided, what their payloads were, even which company made them (cynically, we both agreed this vital information – presented on ABC in a subtly larger typeface than the rest of the data – must be part of President Bush's economic stimulus package. Hey, we're going to need some more Tomahawk Missiles pretty soon, so call your broker and buy all the General Dynamics you can afford!). This after watching a report earlier in the evening about how some military experts were worried that Hussein would blow up his own dams so the floodwaters would impede coalition forces' progress, prompting us both to cry out "Oh yes, let's give the bastard some more ideas!!"
After a couple of hours of last night's coverage, I almost feel like I could build a stealth bomber out of household materials, which really just makes me wonder how much our enemies have learned. Obviously our leadership is assuming that some folks in Iraq can see what's being broadcast, else why would Dubya bother addressing the Iraqi people directly?
So does this just mean we're so confident that we just plain don't care what the Iraqis know about what we can do? We're so badass that secrecy is not a concern at all?
Or is it part of the much-vaunted "shock and awe" campaign?
Or is it, as my more paranoid coffee buddies posited this morning, just that the media is so rife with America-hating "pinkos" that they're happy to give Saddam whatever information he needs to "teach us a lesson?"
Whatever it is, it's just plain weird.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
GOT MILK?
We don’t.
It’s something like day three of our one and only serious winter storm of the season, and all of the roads to anywhere are closed, meaning no merchandise deliveries of any kind have been made, meaning there is no milk for sale at any price anywhere in our little valley, unless you count the powdered kind, and since this is day three, I betcha that’s all gone, too.
No, nobody’s panicking. There will be no Great Milk Riot of 2003 in Saratoga or anything like that. It’s just a cause for jokes and for the odd weird phenomenon: I have talked to no fewer than six people today who all sincerely believe themselves to be the one who got the very last jug of milk off the shelf at Tad the Grocer’s store. Make of that what you will.
So, we’re basically snowed in, though typically it’s not snowfall but rather ground blizzards that have us isolated. I often joke that we along the Snow Chi Minh Trail (otherwise known as Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins, mapped out originally according to landowner interests rather than any engineering opinions as to the safest or most reliable route) are so ruthlessly efficient that we even manage to get four or five storms out of every snowfall, each progressively more impressive than the last. The snow that falls is light and dry, and the wind that follows can whip it up into a complete white-out in no time, so while the visibility above a stranded driver’s head may go for miles into the clear, blue stratosphere, he can’t see two feet ahead of him.
100 years ago were we in this situation it would be much more unsettling. As our country is poised to invade Iraq, we get constant updates on the situation from CNN and the internet (so even here, in snowed-in Saratoga, we talked at coffee this morning about the Debka-inspired rumor that Tariq Aziz had been shot) and so we feel as connected to the outside world as we ever did.
It’s only when we go to the grocery store that we realize we’ve been cut off for three days. There’s still no milk, and the supply of orange juice is dwindling, too.
I ordered the pizza for my evening of mommy-sitting and giggling at Survivor right after coffee this morning, because I realized the Cantina is running low on mozzerella and I wanted to make sure I got mine, by god!
Of course, it’s easy to be sanguine at the moment: there’s still plenty of beer to be had about town because the Budweiser truck made it ahead of the storm. Were that not the case, there would be concern indeed.
We don’t.
It’s something like day three of our one and only serious winter storm of the season, and all of the roads to anywhere are closed, meaning no merchandise deliveries of any kind have been made, meaning there is no milk for sale at any price anywhere in our little valley, unless you count the powdered kind, and since this is day three, I betcha that’s all gone, too.
No, nobody’s panicking. There will be no Great Milk Riot of 2003 in Saratoga or anything like that. It’s just a cause for jokes and for the odd weird phenomenon: I have talked to no fewer than six people today who all sincerely believe themselves to be the one who got the very last jug of milk off the shelf at Tad the Grocer’s store. Make of that what you will.
So, we’re basically snowed in, though typically it’s not snowfall but rather ground blizzards that have us isolated. I often joke that we along the Snow Chi Minh Trail (otherwise known as Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins, mapped out originally according to landowner interests rather than any engineering opinions as to the safest or most reliable route) are so ruthlessly efficient that we even manage to get four or five storms out of every snowfall, each progressively more impressive than the last. The snow that falls is light and dry, and the wind that follows can whip it up into a complete white-out in no time, so while the visibility above a stranded driver’s head may go for miles into the clear, blue stratosphere, he can’t see two feet ahead of him.
100 years ago were we in this situation it would be much more unsettling. As our country is poised to invade Iraq, we get constant updates on the situation from CNN and the internet (so even here, in snowed-in Saratoga, we talked at coffee this morning about the Debka-inspired rumor that Tariq Aziz had been shot) and so we feel as connected to the outside world as we ever did.
It’s only when we go to the grocery store that we realize we’ve been cut off for three days. There’s still no milk, and the supply of orange juice is dwindling, too.
I ordered the pizza for my evening of mommy-sitting and giggling at Survivor right after coffee this morning, because I realized the Cantina is running low on mozzerella and I wanted to make sure I got mine, by god!
Of course, it’s easy to be sanguine at the moment: there’s still plenty of beer to be had about town because the Budweiser truck made it ahead of the storm. Were that not the case, there would be concern indeed.
Monday, March 17, 2003
SPEAKING OF AIR QUALITY
We might yet need gas masks, since we're not going to be cutting down trees anymore (if the Forest Service gets its way):
As detailed HERE and in a recent issue of the science journal Nature, "Coniferous forests around the world may be emitting more smog-causing nitrogen oxides than traffic and industry combined".
Of course, no one is yet brave enough to seriously entertain the possibility that the environmental issues that have certain sets of panties more or less permanently in a twist might not be entirely our fault, but still, isn't this interesting?
We might yet need gas masks, since we're not going to be cutting down trees anymore (if the Forest Service gets its way):
As detailed HERE and in a recent issue of the science journal Nature, "Coniferous forests around the world may be emitting more smog-causing nitrogen oxides than traffic and industry combined".
Of course, no one is yet brave enough to seriously entertain the possibility that the environmental issues that have certain sets of panties more or less permanently in a twist might not be entirely our fault, but still, isn't this interesting?
Friday, March 14, 2003
SO, UM, WOW...
Because this week hasn't been weird enough yet, of course I had to get a phone call completely out of left field.
I was just asked if I would accept a nomination to serve on the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Complance Advisory Committee (let's see... that would be the WDEQAQCAC?).
I've never even heard of this board, the members of which are appointed by the governor, and I have no idea by what line of reasoning the powers that be decided that I would be a good candidate, but I went ahead and said OK. Once I firmly established that yes, this board only meets three or four times a year.
So all of you who have been sniggering at my remark that I have a pie for every finger and one or two toes as well are probably now sniggering indeed that I now would appear to have one for my nose as well.
Well, how else does one evaluate air quality?
Because this week hasn't been weird enough yet, of course I had to get a phone call completely out of left field.
I was just asked if I would accept a nomination to serve on the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Complance Advisory Committee (let's see... that would be the WDEQAQCAC?).
I've never even heard of this board, the members of which are appointed by the governor, and I have no idea by what line of reasoning the powers that be decided that I would be a good candidate, but I went ahead and said OK. Once I firmly established that yes, this board only meets three or four times a year.
So all of you who have been sniggering at my remark that I have a pie for every finger and one or two toes as well are probably now sniggering indeed that I now would appear to have one for my nose as well.
Well, how else does one evaluate air quality?
Thursday, March 13, 2003
UGLY MUSH
Some days I just get a reminder that it’s wise to trust my instincts.
I have certain bedrock prejudices that occasionally get me labeled closed-minded, a snob, an elitist, a coward – which means that every once in a while I feel compelled to try to violate them, to test them against reality, to see if they’re still justified.
Some are more justifiable than others.
For instance, I have this aversion that almost amounts to a phobia against being observed in possession of a book with the words “Now a major motion picture” on the cover. This is one of my less defensible prejudices; not even I, the great lit savant of Saratoga, learn of every novel or book-length work of journalism that is worth reading before it makes the big or the small screen, and I’ve almost missed out on some very good stuff by my slavish adherence to my no-movie-books dogma. I saw the PBS TV show of Cadillac Desert a year or so before I bought the book (and yes, my delay in buying the book was also due to my prejudice; if I absolutely have to buy a companion book or the novel on which a movie was based or whatever, at least I can delay this gratification long enough to where I cannot be accused of jumping any bandwagons. I fully stipulate that this is stupid, bordering on the insane, and totally a product of a monstrous ego, but naming my demon has brought me nowhere near conquering it), for example, and it was only after seeing Ray Lawrence’s wonderful film adaptation of Peter Carey’s Bliss that I discovered that fantastic novelist’s work.
Another deep aversion I have is toward films that have won Best Picture Oscars, at least those which have won them in my lifetime (I’ll not quibble a bit over stuff like Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, but it’s a sign of early decline in the critical faculties of the Academy that in 1941 How Green Was My Valley beat out Citizen Kane. No. Freaking. Way.). I still can’t bring myself to even look at the box for The English Patient, I occasionally subject myself to American Beauty only to give myself a painful reminder of how not to tell a story and of just how very, very annoying two hours of cliches really are, and I can’t even think about Platoon without channelling the tortured, screaming spirit of Sam Kinnison. And then I remember that Platoon beat out The Mission and pretty much just black out for the rest of the day. And don’t even get me started on Schindler’s List, Titanic, or Forrest Fucking Gump.
Now, I’m not saying that the Academy is an infallible guide for picking out the one motion picture each year that is most likely to make me physically ill. The Last Emperor was pretty good, and I have an unshakeable fondness for The Silence of the Lambs (though that’s mostly because of its High Insect Content, putting it on a plateau it shares with Creepshow and all of the Indiana Jones movies), but its track record in my lifetime is still, well, daunting. Daunting enough, at any rate, to regard the bestowing of Best Picture or Best Director honors on a film my gut has advised me to avoid anyway as a sure-fire sign that my best bet is to do my best to forget it was ever made.
Into this category I must thrust last year’s winner, A Beautiful Mind, which I slid into my VCR last night in a fit of I-don’t-know-what (I’m going to go ahead and blame the nuclear antibiotics and the cold medicine, okay?).
The warning signs had been there almost immediately. Ron Howard directed it, and we all know he’s a complete schlockmeister. Putting the story of a seriously troubled mathematical genius, famous for having believed aliens were communicating with him via the New York Times, for getting into messy bisexual affairs, and for being kind of an unpleasant person to know as well as for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in the challenging and wildly uncinematic realm of game theory was just a bad, bad, bad idea. And early reviews bore this out: Howard had butchered the story in impressively uninventive ways (what kind of yobbo finds it necessary to invent imaginary characters, for god’s sake? A yobbo who doesn’t think the audience can handle the messy unpleasantness of the real delusions the protagonist experienced) (oh, and he added a car chase with guns, a feat right on a par with James Cameron’s famous contortionist addition of two teenagers losing their virginity in the back of a car to the story of the sinking of the Titanic!), Russell Crowe totally didn’t understand the character he was playing, yah yah yah.
I was prepared for these outrages, but what I wasn’t prepared for was that even the small stuff would be so poorly handled. I mean, it’s one thing to plunk down a viewer or reader into an unfamiliar milieu and let him sort things out as the story unfolds, but quite another when the story never unfolds, is laden with McGuffins, packed with empty signifiers the way this film is.
For instance, in the first act, when Movie Nash is at Princeton, he sees an older man, obviously distinguished and revered, being presented with pen after pen. It’s obviously some kind of ritual, and, because this is a Big Hollywood Movie it’s obviously foreshadowing (and indeed, Movie Nash winds up getting pens in the penultimate act, awkwardly manouevered into that room by a stranger), but what’s supposed to be the significance of the pens? Why pens? Who are these people handing out pens? The implication is that those “in the know” about the Ivy League will understand exactly what’s going on, and the rest of us poor slobs should just take it for granted that it is a hallowed tradition among those Superior Smart People and shut up about it, except to thank Ron Howard et al for giving us this special, privileged peek at them.
Bullshit. Ain’t no such thang. I have friends who went to Princeton, and their reaction to that scene was, approximately, “Huh?” Similarly, Princeton mathematics Professor Hale Trotter said, in an article in the campus newspaper: "As far as I know that's a complete invention of the script writer. Nobody that I've come across has ever heard of it anywhere."
Why, why, why, why, why? Why? Dammit, why? What, then, is the point of these two scenes? Emotional manipulation, is all. Like conveniently leaving out Real Nash’s divorce from Real Alicia in the 1960s, like inserting an adorable moppet of an imaginary niece to look hurt and tearful when Movie Nash ignores her, like having Movie Nash give a speech at the Nobel ceremony, it’s all to make the story of an interesting, messed-up but important man fit nicely into an inspirational pre-cut Hollywood narrative about the power of the human will and the love of a good woman to overcome any and all odds.
So of course the Academy fell for it.
Never, ever again. I’ll plop down and watch the also-rans, like L.A. Confidential (see, Russell Crowe doesn’t suck, just the script and film he got stuck in last year), Pulp Fiction, Almost Famous, and oh, yeah, The Lord of the Rings, but if I haven't seen the film that has won Best Picture for a particular year, I'm going to avoid it like the plague, unless someone who's judgment I absolutely trust (maybe three of these people exist, all of them personal friends of mine who are not and never would be professional critics of any kind) says it's maybe not so bad and just possibly worth seeing some night when it's on HBO and you have insomnia.
Oh holy shit. I was just looking at the Academy’s home page and got another slap in the face. Guess which film won Best Screenplay (Adaptation) last year?
I think I need to lay down now.
Some days I just get a reminder that it’s wise to trust my instincts.
I have certain bedrock prejudices that occasionally get me labeled closed-minded, a snob, an elitist, a coward – which means that every once in a while I feel compelled to try to violate them, to test them against reality, to see if they’re still justified.
Some are more justifiable than others.
For instance, I have this aversion that almost amounts to a phobia against being observed in possession of a book with the words “Now a major motion picture” on the cover. This is one of my less defensible prejudices; not even I, the great lit savant of Saratoga, learn of every novel or book-length work of journalism that is worth reading before it makes the big or the small screen, and I’ve almost missed out on some very good stuff by my slavish adherence to my no-movie-books dogma. I saw the PBS TV show of Cadillac Desert a year or so before I bought the book (and yes, my delay in buying the book was also due to my prejudice; if I absolutely have to buy a companion book or the novel on which a movie was based or whatever, at least I can delay this gratification long enough to where I cannot be accused of jumping any bandwagons. I fully stipulate that this is stupid, bordering on the insane, and totally a product of a monstrous ego, but naming my demon has brought me nowhere near conquering it), for example, and it was only after seeing Ray Lawrence’s wonderful film adaptation of Peter Carey’s Bliss that I discovered that fantastic novelist’s work.
Another deep aversion I have is toward films that have won Best Picture Oscars, at least those which have won them in my lifetime (I’ll not quibble a bit over stuff like Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, but it’s a sign of early decline in the critical faculties of the Academy that in 1941 How Green Was My Valley beat out Citizen Kane. No. Freaking. Way.). I still can’t bring myself to even look at the box for The English Patient, I occasionally subject myself to American Beauty only to give myself a painful reminder of how not to tell a story and of just how very, very annoying two hours of cliches really are, and I can’t even think about Platoon without channelling the tortured, screaming spirit of Sam Kinnison. And then I remember that Platoon beat out The Mission and pretty much just black out for the rest of the day. And don’t even get me started on Schindler’s List, Titanic, or Forrest Fucking Gump.
Now, I’m not saying that the Academy is an infallible guide for picking out the one motion picture each year that is most likely to make me physically ill. The Last Emperor was pretty good, and I have an unshakeable fondness for The Silence of the Lambs (though that’s mostly because of its High Insect Content, putting it on a plateau it shares with Creepshow and all of the Indiana Jones movies), but its track record in my lifetime is still, well, daunting. Daunting enough, at any rate, to regard the bestowing of Best Picture or Best Director honors on a film my gut has advised me to avoid anyway as a sure-fire sign that my best bet is to do my best to forget it was ever made.
Into this category I must thrust last year’s winner, A Beautiful Mind, which I slid into my VCR last night in a fit of I-don’t-know-what (I’m going to go ahead and blame the nuclear antibiotics and the cold medicine, okay?).
The warning signs had been there almost immediately. Ron Howard directed it, and we all know he’s a complete schlockmeister. Putting the story of a seriously troubled mathematical genius, famous for having believed aliens were communicating with him via the New York Times, for getting into messy bisexual affairs, and for being kind of an unpleasant person to know as well as for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in the challenging and wildly uncinematic realm of game theory was just a bad, bad, bad idea. And early reviews bore this out: Howard had butchered the story in impressively uninventive ways (what kind of yobbo finds it necessary to invent imaginary characters, for god’s sake? A yobbo who doesn’t think the audience can handle the messy unpleasantness of the real delusions the protagonist experienced) (oh, and he added a car chase with guns, a feat right on a par with James Cameron’s famous contortionist addition of two teenagers losing their virginity in the back of a car to the story of the sinking of the Titanic!), Russell Crowe totally didn’t understand the character he was playing, yah yah yah.
I was prepared for these outrages, but what I wasn’t prepared for was that even the small stuff would be so poorly handled. I mean, it’s one thing to plunk down a viewer or reader into an unfamiliar milieu and let him sort things out as the story unfolds, but quite another when the story never unfolds, is laden with McGuffins, packed with empty signifiers the way this film is.
For instance, in the first act, when Movie Nash is at Princeton, he sees an older man, obviously distinguished and revered, being presented with pen after pen. It’s obviously some kind of ritual, and, because this is a Big Hollywood Movie it’s obviously foreshadowing (and indeed, Movie Nash winds up getting pens in the penultimate act, awkwardly manouevered into that room by a stranger), but what’s supposed to be the significance of the pens? Why pens? Who are these people handing out pens? The implication is that those “in the know” about the Ivy League will understand exactly what’s going on, and the rest of us poor slobs should just take it for granted that it is a hallowed tradition among those Superior Smart People and shut up about it, except to thank Ron Howard et al for giving us this special, privileged peek at them.
Bullshit. Ain’t no such thang. I have friends who went to Princeton, and their reaction to that scene was, approximately, “Huh?” Similarly, Princeton mathematics Professor Hale Trotter said, in an article in the campus newspaper: "As far as I know that's a complete invention of the script writer. Nobody that I've come across has ever heard of it anywhere."
Why, why, why, why, why? Why? Dammit, why? What, then, is the point of these two scenes? Emotional manipulation, is all. Like conveniently leaving out Real Nash’s divorce from Real Alicia in the 1960s, like inserting an adorable moppet of an imaginary niece to look hurt and tearful when Movie Nash ignores her, like having Movie Nash give a speech at the Nobel ceremony, it’s all to make the story of an interesting, messed-up but important man fit nicely into an inspirational pre-cut Hollywood narrative about the power of the human will and the love of a good woman to overcome any and all odds.
So of course the Academy fell for it.
Never, ever again. I’ll plop down and watch the also-rans, like L.A. Confidential (see, Russell Crowe doesn’t suck, just the script and film he got stuck in last year), Pulp Fiction, Almost Famous, and oh, yeah, The Lord of the Rings, but if I haven't seen the film that has won Best Picture for a particular year, I'm going to avoid it like the plague, unless someone who's judgment I absolutely trust (maybe three of these people exist, all of them personal friends of mine who are not and never would be professional critics of any kind) says it's maybe not so bad and just possibly worth seeing some night when it's on HBO and you have insomnia.
Oh holy shit. I was just looking at the Academy’s home page and got another slap in the face. Guess which film won Best Screenplay (Adaptation) last year?
I think I need to lay down now.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
AAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!
FHWA-WY-FONSI 03-01
Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01
Wyoming Highway 130 Saratoga-Centennial
Brush Creek Section - Phase I
Carbon County
Wyoming
Project 0103(33)
(Cheyenne, WY: US. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, and Wyoming Department of Transportation, 2003)
The Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01, (hereinafter referred to as “FONSI”), could really have used a good going-over by a competent editor, a marketing/publishing consultant, and a spell-checker... but all of those quibbles are made with an erroneous assumption in mind, that being that the authors actually wanted the public to read this thing. In that regard, its similarities to its larger and more imposing cousin, the Draft Proposed Land and Resource Management Plan for the Medicine Bow National Forest (hereinafter referred to as “25 Lbs. of Crap” in keeping with previous citations in this journal) are evident and amusing.
Since both documents have for these reasons gone largely unnoticed – no reviews of them appear on any of the major lit crit websites, and they don’t even have product entries on Amazon.com or other popular booksellers’ web pages – Your Humble Blogger and Book Reviewer has taken on the task or providing an appropriate critical response to, let’s face it, the publishing events of Winter, 2003!
Of the two, the FONSI stands out as a clearly superior publication despite its editorial and aesthetic inconsistencies, for while 25 Lbs. of Crap does use a single narrative voice and uniform typographical conventions, the FONSI’s multiple authors (some 45 by this reviewer’s count) all demonstrate a passing familiarity with the actual territory under discussion, a willingness to consider other possible points of view, and a basic grasp on reality that this reviewer finds sufficiently refreshing as to cause her to forgive its lesser production values and its occasional illegibility (which can, after all, be attributed to the well-known principle of replicative fading as the FONSI presents readers with direct facsimiles of the individual authors’ contributions in their original format).
In general, the FONSI outpaces 25 Lbs. of Crap in three important respects: drama, prose style, and overall content and guiding philosophy. The rest of this review will take up each of these topics in turn.
DRAMA
25 Lbs. of Crap is, to put it quite simply, utterly lacking in this important textual and contextual consideration. This is largely attributable to its singular narrative voice, though this voice’s singular authoritarian tone may create a pleasing conflict within the reader’s experience of the text as the reader’s own objections are crushed under the literary jackboot of the author’s disregard for basic scientific and ethical principles. This minor sop to the need to keep the reader turning pages is revealed as a poor effort indeed, however, by the cracklingly dramatic format of the FONSI’s prologue, in which some 30 different commentator’s objections, requests for clarification, and general comments are each directly taken up, “point/counterpoint” style, by the document’s compilers.
A sterling example of this occurs in the entertaining play of ideas and perspectives illustrated in the compilers’ response to the comments of one Gary Glass, the Wyoming State Geologist, who expressed concern that none of the listed preparers in the preliminary documents was a geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming, that some of the data in use in preliminary reports was out of date, and that the potential for discovery and recovery of camel, horse, rhinoceros, mastodon, merycodont and other carnivore fossils was not adequately addressed.
I quote from the FONSI directly to share the tone and tenor of the preparers’ response to Mr. Glass:
1. The geology section of the EA was excerpted from the Geotechnical Engineering Report prepared for the project by Terracon Consultants Western under contract to AVI, p.c., the design consultants. This report was referenced in the geology section of the EA and a citation provided on Page 50 of the EA. The Terracon report was prepared by a professional geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming.
2. Although some of this material is apparently outdated, it was prepared in 1997, prior to the availability of the Mears (1998) publication. The material presented was intended only to provide a general overview of geological processes in the area, as it is i generally beyond the scope of an EA to provide a thorough discussion of geologic processes and formations.
3. Paleontological surveys are normally not required for highway improvement projects. The Class III cultural resource survey conducted provided thorough coverage of the area of potential ground disturbance, and exposed vertebrate fossils of any significance located during cultural surveys are normally recorded, but not evaluated (Dave Eckles. Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, pers. commun.). Areas with the ROW of the state and BLM lands were previously disturbed during highway construction, and it is unlikely any vertebrate fossils would occur in this area. If vertebrate fossils are discovered during construction, the Wyoming State Geological Survey and the BLM will be notified so the appropriate steps may be taken to ensure the fossils are evaluated and protected.
The drama is further heightened later in the prologue when the issue of potentially re-routing Wyoming Highway 130 (aka the Snowy Range Road) out of the popular and beautiful Brush Creek Canyon is taken up by members of the public and adjacent landowners, whose overwhelming objections to said plan are duly noted and, stunningly, taken into account by decision makers, but I won’t spoil the outcome there, lest all incentive to read the document itself be removed by the inclusion of spoilers.
PROSE STYLE
While both documents take great pains to use proper and legally accurate language, again the FONSI stands as the superior document for its inclusion of multiple and sometimes very colorful narrative voices, ranging from the angry to the indifferent, popping with folk wisdom and plain speech, providing a refreshing contrast to the document’s other sections of admittedly turgid governmentspeak. Thus passages like the following, written in a comment letter by a resident of the region who objected to the closing of Brush Creek Canyon to motorized traffic, “It won’t be so very many years, a blink really in the life of a road, that you or I might not be able to walk that footpath so well” coexists prettily in the same document as “This Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is based on the Environmental Assessment, Supplemental Environmental Assessment, and additional Alternatives Analysis document which have been independently evaluated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and determined to adequately and accurately discuss the environmental issues and impacts of the proposed project and appropriate mitigation measures.”
(Further note: Your Humble Blogger had to scour the FONSI thoroughly to find the above hideous example of governmentspeak, while 25 Lbs. of Crap has even scarier examples of such on every single page!)
25 Lbs. of Crap, in contrast, consistently recycles phrases, sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs in its continued effort to meet its page, paper use, and weight quotas, though in its defense it must be said that at least this document has spared us the additional tonnage of weepy stump humper rhetoric its authors doubtless received in the process of preparing it.
OVERALL CONTENT AND GUIDING PHILOSOPHY
The FONSI represents a reasoned and open-minded approach to planning and execution on the part of its authors, who placed all of their metaphorical cards on the metaphorical table and not only sought but listened to input from federal agencies, state agencies, landowners and land users throughout its decision making process, and presents the unassailable proof of this within the document itself. The document clearly proves that the overwhelming opposition to the re-alignment of that segment of WYO 130 that passes through Brush Creek Canyon was not only taken into account but ultimately produced the desired result; the road will stay where it is, with just a retaining wall built to mitigate potential damage to the attractive and bountiful wetlands area that draws so many members of the public to the road and thus to the communities that road feeds. It contains none of the junk science (such as references to concerns about harm to species that do not, in fact, even exist in the affected area), nebulous references to ways it will “improve” the economies of the affected towns (such as 25 Lbs. of Crap’s interesting arguments that it will produce a net increase in timber jobs despite its inherent net decrease in the amount of timber that will be made available for holders of those jobs to work on), or caving to the uninformed opinions of people who have never even seen the affected area but still hold paralogical beliefs about it (like the bozos who try to convince passersby that the top of Kennaday Peak – a spot well above the tree line – is actually a clear cut).
The FONSI, therefore, gets a full and hearty recommendation from LIANT for its readability, reasonable tone, and pleasing outcome. If you read only one thick, steaming government document this year, this one should definitely be your choice.
FHWA-WY-FONSI 03-01
Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01
Wyoming Highway 130 Saratoga-Centennial
Brush Creek Section - Phase I
Carbon County
Wyoming
Project 0103(33)
(Cheyenne, WY: US. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, and Wyoming Department of Transportation, 2003)
The Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01, (hereinafter referred to as “FONSI”), could really have used a good going-over by a competent editor, a marketing/publishing consultant, and a spell-checker... but all of those quibbles are made with an erroneous assumption in mind, that being that the authors actually wanted the public to read this thing. In that regard, its similarities to its larger and more imposing cousin, the Draft Proposed Land and Resource Management Plan for the Medicine Bow National Forest (hereinafter referred to as “25 Lbs. of Crap” in keeping with previous citations in this journal) are evident and amusing.
Since both documents have for these reasons gone largely unnoticed – no reviews of them appear on any of the major lit crit websites, and they don’t even have product entries on Amazon.com or other popular booksellers’ web pages – Your Humble Blogger and Book Reviewer has taken on the task or providing an appropriate critical response to, let’s face it, the publishing events of Winter, 2003!
Of the two, the FONSI stands out as a clearly superior publication despite its editorial and aesthetic inconsistencies, for while 25 Lbs. of Crap does use a single narrative voice and uniform typographical conventions, the FONSI’s multiple authors (some 45 by this reviewer’s count) all demonstrate a passing familiarity with the actual territory under discussion, a willingness to consider other possible points of view, and a basic grasp on reality that this reviewer finds sufficiently refreshing as to cause her to forgive its lesser production values and its occasional illegibility (which can, after all, be attributed to the well-known principle of replicative fading as the FONSI presents readers with direct facsimiles of the individual authors’ contributions in their original format).
In general, the FONSI outpaces 25 Lbs. of Crap in three important respects: drama, prose style, and overall content and guiding philosophy. The rest of this review will take up each of these topics in turn.
DRAMA
25 Lbs. of Crap is, to put it quite simply, utterly lacking in this important textual and contextual consideration. This is largely attributable to its singular narrative voice, though this voice’s singular authoritarian tone may create a pleasing conflict within the reader’s experience of the text as the reader’s own objections are crushed under the literary jackboot of the author’s disregard for basic scientific and ethical principles. This minor sop to the need to keep the reader turning pages is revealed as a poor effort indeed, however, by the cracklingly dramatic format of the FONSI’s prologue, in which some 30 different commentator’s objections, requests for clarification, and general comments are each directly taken up, “point/counterpoint” style, by the document’s compilers.
A sterling example of this occurs in the entertaining play of ideas and perspectives illustrated in the compilers’ response to the comments of one Gary Glass, the Wyoming State Geologist, who expressed concern that none of the listed preparers in the preliminary documents was a geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming, that some of the data in use in preliminary reports was out of date, and that the potential for discovery and recovery of camel, horse, rhinoceros, mastodon, merycodont and other carnivore fossils was not adequately addressed.
I quote from the FONSI directly to share the tone and tenor of the preparers’ response to Mr. Glass:
1. The geology section of the EA was excerpted from the Geotechnical Engineering Report prepared for the project by Terracon Consultants Western under contract to AVI, p.c., the design consultants. This report was referenced in the geology section of the EA and a citation provided on Page 50 of the EA. The Terracon report was prepared by a professional geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming.
2. Although some of this material is apparently outdated, it was prepared in 1997, prior to the availability of the Mears (1998) publication. The material presented was intended only to provide a general overview of geological processes in the area, as it is i generally beyond the scope of an EA to provide a thorough discussion of geologic processes and formations.
3. Paleontological surveys are normally not required for highway improvement projects. The Class III cultural resource survey conducted provided thorough coverage of the area of potential ground disturbance, and exposed vertebrate fossils of any significance located during cultural surveys are normally recorded, but not evaluated (Dave Eckles. Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, pers. commun.). Areas with the ROW of the state and BLM lands were previously disturbed during highway construction, and it is unlikely any vertebrate fossils would occur in this area. If vertebrate fossils are discovered during construction, the Wyoming State Geological Survey and the BLM will be notified so the appropriate steps may be taken to ensure the fossils are evaluated and protected.
The drama is further heightened later in the prologue when the issue of potentially re-routing Wyoming Highway 130 (aka the Snowy Range Road) out of the popular and beautiful Brush Creek Canyon is taken up by members of the public and adjacent landowners, whose overwhelming objections to said plan are duly noted and, stunningly, taken into account by decision makers, but I won’t spoil the outcome there, lest all incentive to read the document itself be removed by the inclusion of spoilers.
PROSE STYLE
While both documents take great pains to use proper and legally accurate language, again the FONSI stands as the superior document for its inclusion of multiple and sometimes very colorful narrative voices, ranging from the angry to the indifferent, popping with folk wisdom and plain speech, providing a refreshing contrast to the document’s other sections of admittedly turgid governmentspeak. Thus passages like the following, written in a comment letter by a resident of the region who objected to the closing of Brush Creek Canyon to motorized traffic, “It won’t be so very many years, a blink really in the life of a road, that you or I might not be able to walk that footpath so well” coexists prettily in the same document as “This Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is based on the Environmental Assessment, Supplemental Environmental Assessment, and additional Alternatives Analysis document which have been independently evaluated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and determined to adequately and accurately discuss the environmental issues and impacts of the proposed project and appropriate mitigation measures.”
(Further note: Your Humble Blogger had to scour the FONSI thoroughly to find the above hideous example of governmentspeak, while 25 Lbs. of Crap has even scarier examples of such on every single page!)
25 Lbs. of Crap, in contrast, consistently recycles phrases, sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs in its continued effort to meet its page, paper use, and weight quotas, though in its defense it must be said that at least this document has spared us the additional tonnage of weepy stump humper rhetoric its authors doubtless received in the process of preparing it.
OVERALL CONTENT AND GUIDING PHILOSOPHY
The FONSI represents a reasoned and open-minded approach to planning and execution on the part of its authors, who placed all of their metaphorical cards on the metaphorical table and not only sought but listened to input from federal agencies, state agencies, landowners and land users throughout its decision making process, and presents the unassailable proof of this within the document itself. The document clearly proves that the overwhelming opposition to the re-alignment of that segment of WYO 130 that passes through Brush Creek Canyon was not only taken into account but ultimately produced the desired result; the road will stay where it is, with just a retaining wall built to mitigate potential damage to the attractive and bountiful wetlands area that draws so many members of the public to the road and thus to the communities that road feeds. It contains none of the junk science (such as references to concerns about harm to species that do not, in fact, even exist in the affected area), nebulous references to ways it will “improve” the economies of the affected towns (such as 25 Lbs. of Crap’s interesting arguments that it will produce a net increase in timber jobs despite its inherent net decrease in the amount of timber that will be made available for holders of those jobs to work on), or caving to the uninformed opinions of people who have never even seen the affected area but still hold paralogical beliefs about it (like the bozos who try to convince passersby that the top of Kennaday Peak – a spot well above the tree line – is actually a clear cut).
The FONSI, therefore, gets a full and hearty recommendation from LIANT for its readability, reasonable tone, and pleasing outcome. If you read only one thick, steaming government document this year, this one should definitely be your choice.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
WE MAKE THE NEWS...
For the stupidest reasons!
Attend an e-mail I just got from Sen. Goodenough, who had the wacky idea that maybe making rodeo Wyoming’s official state sport wasn’t the most important or necessary item on this year’s legislative agenda, and is trying, along with good folks like Sam Western, to open our lovely state up to new ideas, new archetypes.
Goodenough proposed an amendment to the bill that established rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport. He wanted to replace “rodeo” with “dancing.” For the record, I think this a fine, fine idea. I know it’s shocking for some to contemplate, but not everyone in Wyoming is a Buckle Bunny (and not everyone who isn’t is a Democrat. I, for one, have never, ever liked rodeo in the slightest – as I’ve shared with you, my dear readers, on these pages before, the autistic fixation in my home state on all things Cowboy is one of the big reasons why I left with such alacrity back when I was 18).
But almost everyone, in some form or another, likes dancing. Dancing covers a lot more cultural ground than rodeo, for one thing. There are many forms of dancing, all of which are fun. Country swing is a blast (and this coming from somone who doesn’t really like country music all that much). Polka, don’t get me started (my third favorite way to wind up breathing hard)! Belly dancing has long been a favorite for me (sometimes I even do it to country music). Flamenco is nice and exuberant and noisy and includes a whole different range of nationalities in the mix. Tap... clogging... ballet...
Ballet, interestingly enough, is what at least two pundits who heard about this tiny controversy fixed on. Ballet and the French, though Goodenough insists he mentioned neither in his arguments against enshrining rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport.
Below is a snippet of the transcript of a recent episode of CNN’s “Crossfire.” Note: “CROSSTALK” is what transcribers insert when several people are talking at once or some other circumstances prevent transcription.
*****
CARLSON: Wyoming is a proudly Western state. People in
Wyoming drive American cars. They don't drink a lot of
Chardonnay. They like rodeo. All this embarrasses Democrats
who believe in general Americans should be less like the
people of Wyoming and a lot more like the French. Wyoming
State Senator Keith Goodenough came out and said this the
other day.
When fellow legislators tried to make rodeo the official
sport of Wyoming, Goodenough objected. His suggestion for
the official sport, dance. That's right, dance. "Rodeo is
dangerous and uncivilized," he explained. "Plus," and this
of course was the real point, "no one in France rides
bulls. In France they pirouette and twirl around" which is
why the French are so, and I'm quoting now, "lean."
In the end the Democrats lost the argument. Drivers in
Wyoming will not have ballerinas on their driver's license
plates for now. But keep in mind, they tried.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: Why don't you leave the people in Wyoming alone?
They like rodeo.
(CROSSTALK)
CARVILLE: I go to the rodeo in Wyoming.
(CROSSTALK)
Must have been a slow news day.
For the stupidest reasons!
Attend an e-mail I just got from Sen. Goodenough, who had the wacky idea that maybe making rodeo Wyoming’s official state sport wasn’t the most important or necessary item on this year’s legislative agenda, and is trying, along with good folks like Sam Western, to open our lovely state up to new ideas, new archetypes.
Goodenough proposed an amendment to the bill that established rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport. He wanted to replace “rodeo” with “dancing.” For the record, I think this a fine, fine idea. I know it’s shocking for some to contemplate, but not everyone in Wyoming is a Buckle Bunny (and not everyone who isn’t is a Democrat. I, for one, have never, ever liked rodeo in the slightest – as I’ve shared with you, my dear readers, on these pages before, the autistic fixation in my home state on all things Cowboy is one of the big reasons why I left with such alacrity back when I was 18).
But almost everyone, in some form or another, likes dancing. Dancing covers a lot more cultural ground than rodeo, for one thing. There are many forms of dancing, all of which are fun. Country swing is a blast (and this coming from somone who doesn’t really like country music all that much). Polka, don’t get me started (my third favorite way to wind up breathing hard)! Belly dancing has long been a favorite for me (sometimes I even do it to country music). Flamenco is nice and exuberant and noisy and includes a whole different range of nationalities in the mix. Tap... clogging... ballet...
Ballet, interestingly enough, is what at least two pundits who heard about this tiny controversy fixed on. Ballet and the French, though Goodenough insists he mentioned neither in his arguments against enshrining rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport.
Below is a snippet of the transcript of a recent episode of CNN’s “Crossfire.” Note: “CROSSTALK” is what transcribers insert when several people are talking at once or some other circumstances prevent transcription.
*****
CARLSON: Wyoming is a proudly Western state. People in
Wyoming drive American cars. They don't drink a lot of
Chardonnay. They like rodeo. All this embarrasses Democrats
who believe in general Americans should be less like the
people of Wyoming and a lot more like the French. Wyoming
State Senator Keith Goodenough came out and said this the
other day.
When fellow legislators tried to make rodeo the official
sport of Wyoming, Goodenough objected. His suggestion for
the official sport, dance. That's right, dance. "Rodeo is
dangerous and uncivilized," he explained. "Plus," and this
of course was the real point, "no one in France rides
bulls. In France they pirouette and twirl around" which is
why the French are so, and I'm quoting now, "lean."
In the end the Democrats lost the argument. Drivers in
Wyoming will not have ballerinas on their driver's license
plates for now. But keep in mind, they tried.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: Why don't you leave the people in Wyoming alone?
They like rodeo.
(CROSSTALK)
CARVILLE: I go to the rodeo in Wyoming.
(CROSSTALK)
Must have been a slow news day.
Monday, March 10, 2003
DISCONNECTION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
I’ve read a lot of funky stuff over the last few weeks, all purporting to explain why it’s a good or a bad thing to attack Iraq, but nothing has stuck with me as much as the following:
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP, by Thomas P.M. Barnett
I’m too high (got the crud again, and the attendant dependence on dextramothorphan hydrobromide-laden remedies in order to breathe) to comment properly on this right now, but I would urge all of you who came here today looking for something interesting to read to have a look at this instead.
It’s good stuff.
But try as I do to comment upon it, explain why I think it’s so good or interesting or germaine to what I usually write about on this here web page, I get nowhere near what I mean, except when I come out with the fact that I’m pondering what Wyoming’s place is within this larger framework and my thinking gets pretty far out at times.
And I’m not sure it’s all the cold medicine.
I’ve read a lot of funky stuff over the last few weeks, all purporting to explain why it’s a good or a bad thing to attack Iraq, but nothing has stuck with me as much as the following:
THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP, by Thomas P.M. Barnett
I’m too high (got the crud again, and the attendant dependence on dextramothorphan hydrobromide-laden remedies in order to breathe) to comment properly on this right now, but I would urge all of you who came here today looking for something interesting to read to have a look at this instead.
It’s good stuff.
But try as I do to comment upon it, explain why I think it’s so good or interesting or germaine to what I usually write about on this here web page, I get nowhere near what I mean, except when I come out with the fact that I’m pondering what Wyoming’s place is within this larger framework and my thinking gets pretty far out at times.
And I’m not sure it’s all the cold medicine.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
OOH! ANOTHER GOOD GUY
Somehow I knew that when I finally published my little report on who does and does not answer his or her e-mail over in the Capitol in Cheyenne that a late entry or two would report in.
In all fairness, though, today is the first time I contacted Rep. Chris Boswell (D-Green River) though I've long held a certain fondness for him ever since he put up a banner that read, in part "FIGHT LEGISLATIVE DE-EARMARKING" in the window of his magnificent Embassy Tavern in Green River (notable also for being an establishment that does, indeed, have Guiness on tap - another mark of quality in the bar and its owner, I say).
See, the House voted yesterday not to concur with what the Senate did to HB 264, and so had to appoint a few of its members to a Conference Committee, whose job it is to meet with several Senators to be named later (I'm hoping that happens today) to hash out the now glaring differences between what the House and the Senate did to this bill.
Mr. Boswell is one of the three appointed to this committee from the House, the others being Randall Luthi and Frank Philp.
So I wrote to him this morning, concerned because he had been one of the "yes" votes when the House was asked to concur with the Senate's tinkering and because I wanted to make sure he knew that dragging the State Land and Investment Board into the approval process for grants and loans is a mighty bad idea.
He wrote me back within about an hour and a half to tell me he agrees with me, and had only voted to concur because he wants to make sure the entire measure doesn't just die. He has a point there, actually!
So anyway, add him to the list of delightfully responsive legislators.
(Of course, anyone who serves Guiness on tap probably deserves to be in our good books even if he doesn't answer his e-mail, no?)
Somehow I knew that when I finally published my little report on who does and does not answer his or her e-mail over in the Capitol in Cheyenne that a late entry or two would report in.
In all fairness, though, today is the first time I contacted Rep. Chris Boswell (D-Green River) though I've long held a certain fondness for him ever since he put up a banner that read, in part "FIGHT LEGISLATIVE DE-EARMARKING" in the window of his magnificent Embassy Tavern in Green River (notable also for being an establishment that does, indeed, have Guiness on tap - another mark of quality in the bar and its owner, I say).
See, the House voted yesterday not to concur with what the Senate did to HB 264, and so had to appoint a few of its members to a Conference Committee, whose job it is to meet with several Senators to be named later (I'm hoping that happens today) to hash out the now glaring differences between what the House and the Senate did to this bill.
Mr. Boswell is one of the three appointed to this committee from the House, the others being Randall Luthi and Frank Philp.
So I wrote to him this morning, concerned because he had been one of the "yes" votes when the House was asked to concur with the Senate's tinkering and because I wanted to make sure he knew that dragging the State Land and Investment Board into the approval process for grants and loans is a mighty bad idea.
He wrote me back within about an hour and a half to tell me he agrees with me, and had only voted to concur because he wants to make sure the entire measure doesn't just die. He has a point there, actually!
So anyway, add him to the list of delightfully responsive legislators.
(Of course, anyone who serves Guiness on tap probably deserves to be in our good books even if he doesn't answer his e-mail, no?)
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
ANOTHER REASON TO PRETTY MUCH LOVE WYOMING
A friend who recently ventured out into the rest of America and was amused at how impressed his companions were by his political connections has observed, to them and to me, that in Wyoming, if one has any kind of life at all, everyone is politically connected.
In what other state do front-running gubernatorial candidates make the morning coffee circuit in a town with less than 1700 people in it?
No other.
In what other state might one's Representative bother to track one down at lunch and callthe restaurant to alert one about an important vote coming up that needs some "instant lobbying" magic?
No other. Unless the "one" under consideration is, e.g. Bill Gates or John Malone or somebody like that.
I can think of no other state where routine, matter-of-fact, friendly contact with even the House Majority Whip of one's state legislature is such a commonplace, either.
Still, as this legislative season winds down, I feel the need to stir the pot a bit by pointing out some members of our state legislature that have been wonderfully communicative and who has been woefully, perhaps arrogantly, silent. The former I must praise even if they voted wrong; at least they bothered to explain themselves to an impertinet chamber chick who wrote them out of the blue. The latter, well, I'll just say who they were and leave it at that.
First of all, my sampling. Looking over my e-mail records, I have written at least once to the following legislators this term:
HOUSE:
Pete Illoway
Frank Latta
Kurt Bucholz
SENATE
Bob Peck
RaeLyn Job
Jayne Mockler
Bill Hawks
Hank Coe
John Barrasso
Bill Vasey
Keith Goodenough
Not a huge sample, and we're only talking about 50 messages in total, working on Senate File 16 (where to put the prison and how much to spend on it), HB 264 and HB 91, but still, I found the results interesting.
First of all, Pete Illoway. The House Majority Whip, he not only replied to every single e-mail, no matter how trivial or chatty, but at one point he gave me his cell phone number (no, I'm not giving it out) in case I needed to pass on something urgent. Also, he kept me so posted that I knew committee decisions and bill status in general even before the press or the webmaster for the Legisweb!
Even when we disagreed about things, he was cordial, timely, responsive and thorough in explaining his reasons. I will of course stipulate that prior personal contact may skew my results some in this; as I have previously disclosed on this site, he and I had a fine old time a few years ago beating up on our Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) over a certain directory assistance issue.
Frank Latta was also an immediate turn-around kind of guy, though again we have a prior acquaintance from when he was the mayor of Gillette and I was a WAM (Wyoming Association of Municipalities) newbie. We disagreed on HB 91 (repealing sales tax on ag implements), but he was still genuinely cool about it, and he even returned phone calls before he remembered who the hell I was. Big thumbs up! We can expect a lot from this guy in the future.
(Oh, and I just remembered: he wants to borrow my YHB-and-Sewer King-and-Oracle-and-MinisterofFun-annotated copy of Pushed off the Mountain, Sold Down the River!)
Kurt Bucholz is our hometown man, and is the one who managed to track me down at lunch, fortuitously a lunch I was having with Mr. and Mrs. Mayor of Saratoga, so he got three brains for the price of one as we discussed strategy and tactics on HB 264 and school funding. I bet he's governor someday, our Kurt.
As for the Senators, all hail John Barrasso! Not only was he responsive (and he doesn't know me from Eve), he was INSTANTLY responsive, like Illoway, giving me the scoop before even the newspaper reporters at the Capitol knew HB 264 had passed. He was also great about warning me of likely alterations the Senate would most likely be making (and some of them stink overwhelmingly, like dragging the SLIB into the approval process for grants and loans administered under this program). Not just a nice medical commentator (he does a Health Minute on KTWO-TV in Casper), that one!
Keith Goodenough, of course, is the king of keeping citizens in the loop, maintaining his own personal spam-list updating hundreds of folks on the progress of his bills, his opinions on Senate procedural matters, his analysis of the supplemental budget, and other things that cross his mind. A lot of people don't like him, but I've gotta say he sets the standard for trying his best to involve the ordinary citizens who pay for this government in its decision making processes.
As for the rest on my list.... Coe, Mockler, Job, Hawks, Peck... and Vasey!... all have yet to acknowledge my e-mails or calls. Now, they might just be technophobes who don't dig on e-mail, but then... why do they have e-mail accounts, then? Hmm?
I'll leave the conclusion-reaching to y'all, for a change.
A friend who recently ventured out into the rest of America and was amused at how impressed his companions were by his political connections has observed, to them and to me, that in Wyoming, if one has any kind of life at all, everyone is politically connected.
In what other state do front-running gubernatorial candidates make the morning coffee circuit in a town with less than 1700 people in it?
No other.
In what other state might one's Representative bother to track one down at lunch and callthe restaurant to alert one about an important vote coming up that needs some "instant lobbying" magic?
No other. Unless the "one" under consideration is, e.g. Bill Gates or John Malone or somebody like that.
I can think of no other state where routine, matter-of-fact, friendly contact with even the House Majority Whip of one's state legislature is such a commonplace, either.
Still, as this legislative season winds down, I feel the need to stir the pot a bit by pointing out some members of our state legislature that have been wonderfully communicative and who has been woefully, perhaps arrogantly, silent. The former I must praise even if they voted wrong; at least they bothered to explain themselves to an impertinet chamber chick who wrote them out of the blue. The latter, well, I'll just say who they were and leave it at that.
First of all, my sampling. Looking over my e-mail records, I have written at least once to the following legislators this term:
HOUSE:
Pete Illoway
Frank Latta
Kurt Bucholz
SENATE
Bob Peck
RaeLyn Job
Jayne Mockler
Bill Hawks
Hank Coe
John Barrasso
Bill Vasey
Keith Goodenough
Not a huge sample, and we're only talking about 50 messages in total, working on Senate File 16 (where to put the prison and how much to spend on it), HB 264 and HB 91, but still, I found the results interesting.
First of all, Pete Illoway. The House Majority Whip, he not only replied to every single e-mail, no matter how trivial or chatty, but at one point he gave me his cell phone number (no, I'm not giving it out) in case I needed to pass on something urgent. Also, he kept me so posted that I knew committee decisions and bill status in general even before the press or the webmaster for the Legisweb!
Even when we disagreed about things, he was cordial, timely, responsive and thorough in explaining his reasons. I will of course stipulate that prior personal contact may skew my results some in this; as I have previously disclosed on this site, he and I had a fine old time a few years ago beating up on our Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) over a certain directory assistance issue.
Frank Latta was also an immediate turn-around kind of guy, though again we have a prior acquaintance from when he was the mayor of Gillette and I was a WAM (Wyoming Association of Municipalities) newbie. We disagreed on HB 91 (repealing sales tax on ag implements), but he was still genuinely cool about it, and he even returned phone calls before he remembered who the hell I was. Big thumbs up! We can expect a lot from this guy in the future.
(Oh, and I just remembered: he wants to borrow my YHB-and-Sewer King-and-Oracle-and-MinisterofFun-annotated copy of Pushed off the Mountain, Sold Down the River!)
Kurt Bucholz is our hometown man, and is the one who managed to track me down at lunch, fortuitously a lunch I was having with Mr. and Mrs. Mayor of Saratoga, so he got three brains for the price of one as we discussed strategy and tactics on HB 264 and school funding. I bet he's governor someday, our Kurt.
As for the Senators, all hail John Barrasso! Not only was he responsive (and he doesn't know me from Eve), he was INSTANTLY responsive, like Illoway, giving me the scoop before even the newspaper reporters at the Capitol knew HB 264 had passed. He was also great about warning me of likely alterations the Senate would most likely be making (and some of them stink overwhelmingly, like dragging the SLIB into the approval process for grants and loans administered under this program). Not just a nice medical commentator (he does a Health Minute on KTWO-TV in Casper), that one!
Keith Goodenough, of course, is the king of keeping citizens in the loop, maintaining his own personal spam-list updating hundreds of folks on the progress of his bills, his opinions on Senate procedural matters, his analysis of the supplemental budget, and other things that cross his mind. A lot of people don't like him, but I've gotta say he sets the standard for trying his best to involve the ordinary citizens who pay for this government in its decision making processes.
As for the rest on my list.... Coe, Mockler, Job, Hawks, Peck... and Vasey!... all have yet to acknowledge my e-mails or calls. Now, they might just be technophobes who don't dig on e-mail, but then... why do they have e-mail accounts, then? Hmm?
I'll leave the conclusion-reaching to y'all, for a change.
Monday, March 03, 2003
FRIDAY FIVE
OK, I've been bugging you guys enough about politics and chamber events lately, so, as Monty Python's crew would say "And now for something completely different..."
The Friday Five is a blog-related phenomenon in which five questions are posed each Friday, I suspect to help the millions of us out there who occasionally run into writer's block keep these here web pages going.
I learned about it from fellow blogger Lance Riley over in Laramie, and while yes I am well aware it is not Friday, these questions, posed Friday last, were just too entirely up my alley to pass up. So here goes.
1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
My gut response is science fiction, but I have to qualify that; I generally hate what my My Own Dear Personal Mom has referred to as "dragons and dum-dums" stories although I love J.R.R. Tolkein (I guess it's all those lesser beings who try to rip off Tolkein that really annoy me). I like the more serious stuff, that makes the reader question his assumptions or understandings, makes the reader a little uncomfortable with himself and the world, or makes the reader wonder if he's crazy. Sort of like my taste in movies.
Runner up: Ancient Greek and Roman literature, largely because they are "pre-specialization," i.e. Aristotle did not ever say to himself (or allow others to say to him) "I am not a sociologist, so I can't comment on X" or "I have never actually written a play, so I cannot comment on drama" or whatever. Everything we need to know about why we are who we are can be found in the average Sophoclean tragedy, Socratic dialogue, or Ciceronian essay.
2. What is your favorite novel?
Wow. Very, very, very hard to say. Generally when I'm asked this question I say Umberto Eco's FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, though there are a few other contenders worthy of mention: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, Philip K. Dick's RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, and Robertson Davies' CORNISH TRILOGY (Consisting of THE REBEL ANGELS, WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE, and THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS).
I like novels that teach me something I didn't know before. I first read FP when I was about 14 and it triggered a lifelong interest in Christian heresies (remember, I am the only Manichaean you know), the Templars, crackpots in general, and Charles Fort. NEUROMANCER was the first book I've ever read that induced fetishes; Gibson, as I will touch on in a later blog entry (book review alert!) is the most spectacular poet of surfaces, of materials, of the sensual quality of objects, since Keats, and he's got a great sense of story, too. Philip K. Dick re-triggered my interest in stuff that didn't make it into the Bible and all of his VALIS books, but especially RFA, have haunted me deeply for other reasons, too, especially their suspicious, paranoid qualities (why I like Pynchon and Borges, too).
Pretty much everything Robertson Davies has written has shot up my list, too, but the CORNISH trilogy, being the first I read, will always be my favorite for sentimental reasons.
This list will probably be entirely different tomorrow.
3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
Again, can't choose just one; I have a habit of obsessing over insect poems, so it could be Paul Valery's L'ABEILLE (The Bee) "let my body be made warm/by this tiny gold alarm/without which love suffers and dies" or Yeats' LONG LEGGED FLY "like a long legged fly on the stream/his mind moves upon silence" (note: pulling these from memory; I'm at work, my library is at home, get it?).
My single favorite bit of poetry ever is part of a longer poem "Songs Between the Soul and the Bridegroom" by St. John-of-the-Cross, Roy Campbell's translation. Once I even embroidered it, in colored thread, on a pair of jeans:
Diffusing showers of grace,
In haste among these groves his path he took.
And only with his face,
Glancing around the place,
Has clothed them in beauty with a look.
(This stanza quotes a "reply from the creatures" made to a bride [the soul] who is chasing after a missing bridegroom [god]. You don't even have to dig the allegory to enjoy the idea of "clothing them in beauty with a look". Think about what it's like to see a place where a loved one, long missed, has been and what that knowledge does to your own perception of that place. Good stuff)
4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
You know, this is pretty sad for a complete Greek/Roman nut, but I've never read Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Funny: the book fairy left a Britannica edition of same on my doorstep a few months ago, so maybe I'll get to it soon.
In general, I do not deprive myself of any reading, though. If I want to read something, I read it – even if I have to overturn the heavens and the earth to get my hands on it.
5. What are you currently reading?
Several things (of course). GEEKS AND GEEZERS (a Harvard Business School book that is driving me crazy because I am SO not the target audience for same; I feel most of the time, when I read such things, like what I've actually got in my hands is just a big fat marketing brochure for the book I thought I had bought), William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION (best since NEUROMANCER!), SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (March is National Novel Editing Month!), Caleb Carr's ANGEL OF DARKNESS, PM, PC Engineer's scintillating Phase I Study of Water Treatment and Delivery Options for the Town of Saratoga, and, for the seventh or eighth big week, the Draft Forest Plan for Medicine Bow National Forest (or what parts of which my dog hasn't wisely torn up yet).
So there. Probably the wordiest Friday Five ever!
OK, I've been bugging you guys enough about politics and chamber events lately, so, as Monty Python's crew would say "And now for something completely different..."
The Friday Five is a blog-related phenomenon in which five questions are posed each Friday, I suspect to help the millions of us out there who occasionally run into writer's block keep these here web pages going.
I learned about it from fellow blogger Lance Riley over in Laramie, and while yes I am well aware it is not Friday, these questions, posed Friday last, were just too entirely up my alley to pass up. So here goes.
1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?
My gut response is science fiction, but I have to qualify that; I generally hate what my My Own Dear Personal Mom has referred to as "dragons and dum-dums" stories although I love J.R.R. Tolkein (I guess it's all those lesser beings who try to rip off Tolkein that really annoy me). I like the more serious stuff, that makes the reader question his assumptions or understandings, makes the reader a little uncomfortable with himself and the world, or makes the reader wonder if he's crazy. Sort of like my taste in movies.
Runner up: Ancient Greek and Roman literature, largely because they are "pre-specialization," i.e. Aristotle did not ever say to himself (or allow others to say to him) "I am not a sociologist, so I can't comment on X" or "I have never actually written a play, so I cannot comment on drama" or whatever. Everything we need to know about why we are who we are can be found in the average Sophoclean tragedy, Socratic dialogue, or Ciceronian essay.
2. What is your favorite novel?
Wow. Very, very, very hard to say. Generally when I'm asked this question I say Umberto Eco's FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, though there are a few other contenders worthy of mention: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, Philip K. Dick's RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, and Robertson Davies' CORNISH TRILOGY (Consisting of THE REBEL ANGELS, WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE, and THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS).
I like novels that teach me something I didn't know before. I first read FP when I was about 14 and it triggered a lifelong interest in Christian heresies (remember, I am the only Manichaean you know), the Templars, crackpots in general, and Charles Fort. NEUROMANCER was the first book I've ever read that induced fetishes; Gibson, as I will touch on in a later blog entry (book review alert!) is the most spectacular poet of surfaces, of materials, of the sensual quality of objects, since Keats, and he's got a great sense of story, too. Philip K. Dick re-triggered my interest in stuff that didn't make it into the Bible and all of his VALIS books, but especially RFA, have haunted me deeply for other reasons, too, especially their suspicious, paranoid qualities (why I like Pynchon and Borges, too).
Pretty much everything Robertson Davies has written has shot up my list, too, but the CORNISH trilogy, being the first I read, will always be my favorite for sentimental reasons.
This list will probably be entirely different tomorrow.
3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
Again, can't choose just one; I have a habit of obsessing over insect poems, so it could be Paul Valery's L'ABEILLE (The Bee) "let my body be made warm/by this tiny gold alarm/without which love suffers and dies" or Yeats' LONG LEGGED FLY "like a long legged fly on the stream/his mind moves upon silence" (note: pulling these from memory; I'm at work, my library is at home, get it?).
My single favorite bit of poetry ever is part of a longer poem "Songs Between the Soul and the Bridegroom" by St. John-of-the-Cross, Roy Campbell's translation. Once I even embroidered it, in colored thread, on a pair of jeans:
Diffusing showers of grace,
In haste among these groves his path he took.
And only with his face,
Glancing around the place,
Has clothed them in beauty with a look.
(This stanza quotes a "reply from the creatures" made to a bride [the soul] who is chasing after a missing bridegroom [god]. You don't even have to dig the allegory to enjoy the idea of "clothing them in beauty with a look". Think about what it's like to see a place where a loved one, long missed, has been and what that knowledge does to your own perception of that place. Good stuff)
4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
You know, this is pretty sad for a complete Greek/Roman nut, but I've never read Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Funny: the book fairy left a Britannica edition of same on my doorstep a few months ago, so maybe I'll get to it soon.
In general, I do not deprive myself of any reading, though. If I want to read something, I read it – even if I have to overturn the heavens and the earth to get my hands on it.
5. What are you currently reading?
Several things (of course). GEEKS AND GEEZERS (a Harvard Business School book that is driving me crazy because I am SO not the target audience for same; I feel most of the time, when I read such things, like what I've actually got in my hands is just a big fat marketing brochure for the book I thought I had bought), William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION (best since NEUROMANCER!), SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (March is National Novel Editing Month!), Caleb Carr's ANGEL OF DARKNESS, PM, PC Engineer's scintillating Phase I Study of Water Treatment and Delivery Options for the Town of Saratoga, and, for the seventh or eighth big week, the Draft Forest Plan for Medicine Bow National Forest (or what parts of which my dog hasn't wisely torn up yet).
So there. Probably the wordiest Friday Five ever!
Friday, February 28, 2003
THE MEDICINE BOWIFICATION OF WYOMING COMMENCES...
Caveat lector (as always): What follows, whatever follows, is written directly from the spleen. I'm posting relatively late in the day because I thought I'd need a "cool down" period after reading the news that set me off this morning, but now I realize that no amount of time is going to cool me down. Only reconsideration, retraction or other positive action by our beloved State Senate can accomplish that. Maybe. Possibly. But probably not. Reader beware...
The slight misnomer notwithstanding, the headline on page A7 of yesterday's Casper Star-Tribune says it all: "Cities' economic development bill gutted." (I say misnomer only because in calling it a "cities' economic development bill" the headline writer conveys the impression that this bill originated with the cities instead of with the governor's office. Minor quibble, maybe, but details count, especially in headlines. Sigh).
House Bill 264 got re-referred this week, to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and that committee took out a lot of the funding provided for in the original version of the bill before handing it back to the main body of the Senate for debate. The original House version of the bill, you may recall, would have spent $135 million over the next ten years to help Wyoming towns and cities shore up infrastructure for economic development purposes.
Now there's $8.4 million ($5 million from the General Fund and $3.4 million from a "mineral royalty grant program that has not previously been used (!!!)") in a one-time appropriation to create a "business ready community account."
At issue, apparently, is concern on the part of the likes of Sen. John Schiffer over diversion of coal bonus money (funds coal companies bid to secure leases on federal land) to make that initial investment in that account grow. Says the article, "a portion of that money is used to build new schools."
By all means, let us take the town of Medicine Bow as our model for the rest of the state, Senators!
Nothing against Medicine Bow, mind you. It's a perfectly nice town, but, let's face it, there's nothing going on there economically or culturally, despite the fact that back when I was a teenybopper the good people of that berg and Hanna blackmailed our school district into building in each of those towns brand spanking new unnecessary high schools exactly identical to the then-very-much-needed one for Saratoga. The financial burden thus incurred haunts us even today, as does the irony of the current situation in Medicine Bow: no economic activity to speak of (there's a historic hotel tourist trap and bar, a gas station, a motel... am I missing anything?), a school population of, what, 11 kids? And what percentage of those kids are the children of teachers in the Medicine Bow schools again? Close to 50? Oh and what's that? Yes, I know, there could be double the number of kids in that school if that one Mormon family hadn't elected to home school...
Yes indeed, a perfect model for the rest of our state, no?
I admit, I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole, channelling Chicken Little for a moment or two, but honestly, to what other conclusion can I come when our state leadership declines to help our towns and cities pull themselves out of the economic shitter but is still concerned about taking money away from the fund to build new schools?
Who (besides teachers' kids) is going to be attending school when every family not blessed with a fat trust fund has left the state to find a job that will allow the children to eat something besides government cheese and wear something on their feet besides those rubber tire sandals Abbie Hoffman taught us to make?
Is our entire state just to become a giant jobs program for teachers? And the odd (probably out-of-state) building contractor?
Man, those teachers better plan on having Mormon-sized families to fill those school buildings, cuz none of the rest of us are going to.
I'm not done ranting yet, either, because there's also Sen. Irene Devin, who "expressed concern that the Business Council would be mirroring efforts of the State Loan and Investment Board, which also gives grants to communities."
OK, fine, Irene - then just double the appropriation made to the SLIB, but then take away most of that organization's bullshit requirements – which, among other things, dictate that a municipality can only fund one project at a time with SLIB money. Want a firetruck? Then you'd better wait until next year to fix your water tower. Plugging a leak in a water supply ditch? Then your ambulance better not break down until next year. You want to what? Fix up some dilapidated buildings so that maybe you can attract or develop some private sector business? Not this year: we just gave you your allowance that you frivolously blew on complying with brand new DEQ regulations governing your sewage treatment plant. Or, here's something radical, repeal that stupid de-earmarking crock you threw at us two years ago and give local governments a way to take care of themselves again.
Anything but "mirroring."
Mirroring? Maybe in a strictly funhouse sense of the word.
Oh well, at least it's still possible that HB 264 is going to squeak through in some fashion or other (there will definitely have to be a big time conference committee to reconcile what the House and Senate have each done to this bill), and a little money set aside for economic development is better than none at all.
Even if it is administered by the Wyoming Business Council. But that's a topic for another day.
Caveat lector (as always): What follows, whatever follows, is written directly from the spleen. I'm posting relatively late in the day because I thought I'd need a "cool down" period after reading the news that set me off this morning, but now I realize that no amount of time is going to cool me down. Only reconsideration, retraction or other positive action by our beloved State Senate can accomplish that. Maybe. Possibly. But probably not. Reader beware...
The slight misnomer notwithstanding, the headline on page A7 of yesterday's Casper Star-Tribune says it all: "Cities' economic development bill gutted." (I say misnomer only because in calling it a "cities' economic development bill" the headline writer conveys the impression that this bill originated with the cities instead of with the governor's office. Minor quibble, maybe, but details count, especially in headlines. Sigh).
House Bill 264 got re-referred this week, to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and that committee took out a lot of the funding provided for in the original version of the bill before handing it back to the main body of the Senate for debate. The original House version of the bill, you may recall, would have spent $135 million over the next ten years to help Wyoming towns and cities shore up infrastructure for economic development purposes.
Now there's $8.4 million ($5 million from the General Fund and $3.4 million from a "mineral royalty grant program that has not previously been used (!!!)") in a one-time appropriation to create a "business ready community account."
At issue, apparently, is concern on the part of the likes of Sen. John Schiffer over diversion of coal bonus money (funds coal companies bid to secure leases on federal land) to make that initial investment in that account grow. Says the article, "a portion of that money is used to build new schools."
By all means, let us take the town of Medicine Bow as our model for the rest of the state, Senators!
Nothing against Medicine Bow, mind you. It's a perfectly nice town, but, let's face it, there's nothing going on there economically or culturally, despite the fact that back when I was a teenybopper the good people of that berg and Hanna blackmailed our school district into building in each of those towns brand spanking new unnecessary high schools exactly identical to the then-very-much-needed one for Saratoga. The financial burden thus incurred haunts us even today, as does the irony of the current situation in Medicine Bow: no economic activity to speak of (there's a historic hotel tourist trap and bar, a gas station, a motel... am I missing anything?), a school population of, what, 11 kids? And what percentage of those kids are the children of teachers in the Medicine Bow schools again? Close to 50? Oh and what's that? Yes, I know, there could be double the number of kids in that school if that one Mormon family hadn't elected to home school...
Yes indeed, a perfect model for the rest of our state, no?
I admit, I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole, channelling Chicken Little for a moment or two, but honestly, to what other conclusion can I come when our state leadership declines to help our towns and cities pull themselves out of the economic shitter but is still concerned about taking money away from the fund to build new schools?
Who (besides teachers' kids) is going to be attending school when every family not blessed with a fat trust fund has left the state to find a job that will allow the children to eat something besides government cheese and wear something on their feet besides those rubber tire sandals Abbie Hoffman taught us to make?
Is our entire state just to become a giant jobs program for teachers? And the odd (probably out-of-state) building contractor?
Man, those teachers better plan on having Mormon-sized families to fill those school buildings, cuz none of the rest of us are going to.
I'm not done ranting yet, either, because there's also Sen. Irene Devin, who "expressed concern that the Business Council would be mirroring efforts of the State Loan and Investment Board, which also gives grants to communities."
OK, fine, Irene - then just double the appropriation made to the SLIB, but then take away most of that organization's bullshit requirements – which, among other things, dictate that a municipality can only fund one project at a time with SLIB money. Want a firetruck? Then you'd better wait until next year to fix your water tower. Plugging a leak in a water supply ditch? Then your ambulance better not break down until next year. You want to what? Fix up some dilapidated buildings so that maybe you can attract or develop some private sector business? Not this year: we just gave you your allowance that you frivolously blew on complying with brand new DEQ regulations governing your sewage treatment plant. Or, here's something radical, repeal that stupid de-earmarking crock you threw at us two years ago and give local governments a way to take care of themselves again.
Anything but "mirroring."
Mirroring? Maybe in a strictly funhouse sense of the word.
Oh well, at least it's still possible that HB 264 is going to squeak through in some fashion or other (there will definitely have to be a big time conference committee to reconcile what the House and Senate have each done to this bill), and a little money set aside for economic development is better than none at all.
Even if it is administered by the Wyoming Business Council. But that's a topic for another day.
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