THE GIFTS OF GOOGLE...

Many years ago when I was young and idealistic and felt, like pretty much every other young, idealistic teenager in the world, that I had been unjustly singled out by the cruel and capricious gods to live in the Most Boring, Banal Town In The World, fate stepped in and sent me off for a few weeks to the University of Wyoming for something called the Summer High School Institute, which most of those who attended it quickly dubbed "nerd camp. We called it this despite the fact that UW had already been hosting a nerd camp – debate camp – for years; we were the second wave of a newer, sexier, nerdier nerd camp, a nerd camp infested not just with briefcase trundling C-X debaters who we were all pretty sure wore three-piece suits to eat pizza in their bedrooms, but with some nerds so maladjusted, so unfit for socializing and emergence from the AV locker at their respective schools that they feared trying to make friends even with the speech team!

While I had been to the highly structured and intensely supervised Hugh O'Brien Youth Leadership Seminar (HOBY) only a few months before, this was my first real experience of being amongst kindred fools in a dynamic that still plays it out at conferences like the WAM (Wyoming Association of Municipalities) convention from which I just returned. All hail such marvelous events of any stamp, but especially for the young and the geeky, as that first experience of knowing ahead of time that you have more in common than you can even imagine with the person to whom you are trying to work up the nerve to speak – including the fact that he is also trying to work up the nerve, but is also aware that the pair of you were pretty much made by destiny to be friends for life and beyond... that first experience is invaluable.

And once that barrier is at last overcome, it's gone forever, shattered by the pair of you cracking jokes about that wildass mathematics professor (the unendingly energetic and absurdly active Ira Rosenholtz, who taught a unit on "Contemplating the Infinite" - what I would surely have referred to as "crack for space nerds" had I known in 1986 what crack is), who, in demonstrating how Xeno's paradox doesn't really work in the real, physical world we live in, began walking toward the classroom wall, demarcating each point where he had crossed half the distance to that wall, until he crashed audibly into said wall and cracked his glasses.

He was One of Us, an us we were just realizing existed. And so in no time, by twos and threes, we united in praise of Ira, of Piers Anthony, of the Dead Kennedys and the Repo Man soundtrack that was then brand new, of the music store across the street from the dorms (a true novelty to most of us for whom the music store was also the gas station and mostly featured dusty cassettes of the Oak Ridge Boys), of Vedauwoo (yes, it's okay for nerds to climb rocks!). And once the "what you like" questions became "what you are like answers, the twos and threes swelled into twelves and 20s, to include even the two or three "scholar athletes" who somehow got trapped in with the nerds and meant that in the future the solitary nerd at home in Saratoga or Pine Bluffs or Worland or Thermopolis might have a dear and bosom friend to hug on the visiting team at home basketball games.

We danced together to music that nobody else at home liked! We argued about Kurt Vonnegut with people our own age! We ran midnight raids through the halls on each other's floors (segregated by sex, alas, as a sop to parental concerns... except for my floor, half girls and half boys just like a real UW dorm [scant preparation for my own future living in dorms co-ed not by floor, not by corridor, but by room at the Ultimate Nerd Camp of Beaudacious Bard College] and separated only by an imaginary Line of Death at the elevator) so we could hang out and gossip and, in some cases, kiss (HSI fast becoming second only to speech as a source for out-of-town prom dates; many of us fell in love for real for the first time there).

And we traipsed around town on absurd adventures. Engraved forever on my own memory (and apparently on that of all the other participants) is one wild outing that started out as a mere stroll for ice cream. Baskin Robbins was closed; Taco Bell was not. We bought cokes and began to meander back.

Halfway back, one miscreant, whose name must be withheld because he is now a trial lawyer of some repute in an Eastern state, stopped us. A budding pyromaniac with advanced anarchist cookbook knowledge, he had snagged a bulging pocketload of non-dairy creamer. And some matches.

The thing to do was open a packet of powdery creamer, light a match, then sprinkle the stuff over the match, producing a tiny but intense explosion of cascading fire! We had long known about the pyrotechnic possibilities of hairspray, of WD-40, some of us even knew about gasoline and soap flakes as a homemade napalm recipe, but this was a revelation, and a feat often repeated at dances, at dinner, in the bathrooms, for the rest of the Institute.

(Interestingly enough, many of us have attempted to repeat this experiment over the years. Either the chemical composition of powdered "NDC" has changed or we were delusional, but this trick no longer works. Of course, the last time *I* tried it was in western Massachusetts several years ago, trying to entertain my fellow entomology lab assistants there, and the last time the originator of the fun tried it he, too, was on the east coast... it occurs to me now that it might be a matter of humidity. Hmm. Not terribly humid here this summer, is it?)

None of these experiences ever really left me, but they came into sharper focus this week when, out of the blue, a long lost institute buddy Googled me and found this web page. She was part of the original HSI exodus – half of us did go gladly to UW's Honors Program as was the intent of HSI, an early student retention program, while the other half rode flaming rockets of scholarship money to tony, froo-froo places like Harvard, Yale, and Duke, unheard-of and specialized places like Carleton and Mankato State, and just plain weird places like Reed and Bard. The letters flew thick and fast through our freshman years of college and came sporadically thereafter (this was still when only hardcore computer geek students who were unafraid of UNIX had internet accounts, and while that description did fit most of us, communicating with old high school friends was not considered a worthy use of this important new technology – so we still poured out our hearts to one another on dead trees). I tracked many through college, a few into graduate school or marriage (attending the wedding of one HSI-er to another along the way – they are now a happy skiing yuppie couple in Las Vegas with a ridiculously cute child) and then as the rushes and roars of our individual lives all over this country engulfed us, lost them.

It's delightful to have found a few again – no one will ever be truly unreachable or out of touch again, for as long as the internet lasts, I suspect – and amusing to see what has become of them, and what they think of what I'm doing ("Kate, what in the hell are you doing back in Saratoga?" they ask, until they get further along in reading this blog). The Googler has a bewildering multitude of jobs and responsibilities in Minnesota, the long-lost NDC burner, too, has been found, and others are sure to follow. There's the crazed U2 fan and true anarchist who still somehow disappeared into the navy after college; how hard can he be to track down? One instituter took my old job at the Saratoga Sun right here in town. Another is coaching the Rock Springs speech team. And the old bonds are all still there; the spark flies across the old connection instantly. I am anxious somehow to see them in person once again, my far flung friends. I have invited them to the Steinley Cup, one might rendezvous with me in Naperville when I go to my best friend's wedding next month, but I am greedy now to see them all again, though my actual need for them is long outgrown. I'm a sentimental slob, what can I say?

Thank the gods for Google...

CLARITY AMIDST THE FOG

At least part of my punishing course of June action is now behind me – the convention is over and I'm home at my desk in my little office/library, surrounded by my oversized bookcases, my overstuffed file cabinet, and all of the books that don't fit on or in either (this room for a normal tenant would doubtless be a bedroom, but my priorities differ; with only four in my little Unabomber cabin, why would I devote a whole room to something I never do anyway?) – but the World Cup rages on and so do I, though my eyes feel prosthetic and I'm not sure what day it is or what I've got to do tomorrow (go to the office? Sunday dinner? A council meeting?)... because sometimes the fugue state is just what is needed!

Were I enjoying total wakefulness and clarity this morning at 8 a.m. when the convention's headline speaker (whose name I'm too bushed to dig through my convention schwag to check on, but she knew Erma Bombeck personally among others; even has a nodding acquaintance with my old Greek tragedy watching seatmate John Kenneth Galbraith, so, yeah, pretty heavy duty old gal, that one) started in on her "nine elements of leadership" analysis, I doubt I'd be sitting here the way I am at 12:26 a.m. of a Sunday after my marathon, typing away when I should finally be sleeping... but no.

Through the fog of a too-intense caffeine buzz and too little sleep, came a reminder of something very, very important.

I am where I am because I chose to be. I chose to let that wacky town clerk of ours "put my name in the hat" to go on the general election ballot in 2000 (a procedure for drafting those who got write-in votes in the primary) even though I half-suspected – quite correctly! – that mine would turn out to be the only name in said hat. I chose to let my parents buy me a campaign ad. I chose to turn on all my rhetoric and speech team mojo at the League of Women Voters forum attended by... my mother's Tai Chi class and a few stray husbands.

I chose to swear the oath of office. I also chose to take the chamber job. And help coach the speech team. And take a big fat steaming commission to write a bunch of "real world financing" articles for a state teen retention magazine. I chose it all.

And yeah, a lot of people look at me and say "sucker," as happened to the groovy housewife from Guernsey who just got appointed to a council vacancy there and whose "mentor" I was for the convention (but I think I learned more from her, actually). I get lectured that I need to learn to say "no," etc.

But this week has helped me remember that I didn't just passively accept the burdens. As did so many other truly amazing people around the state, like my mentee, who is still, a grueling six months since taking her own oath of office, in wide-eyed awe at the honor she feels her council and her constituents did her in asking her to serve.

I saw that awe and the love that accompanies it – that absolutely has to accompany it – in hundreds of faces, heard it in hundreds of voices, all week long. Even as we also gathered to commiserate and bitch, to swap tales of crackpots and cranks who drive us almost as crazy as they are, to coo over each other's difficulties with the media (you'd better believe my blogging lessons were met with enthusiasm – I predict a mushrooming growth in municipal blogs in Wyoming pretty soon), that awe and love are still there and they are communicable, easily passed and renewed because essentially infinite.

And yeah, I envied Sheridan its fabulous downtown, its full storefronts, its obvious prosperity. And yeah, I envied the mayor of Gillette (my total hero in lots of ways) his full and competent staff of people who help him handle all the stuff that I have to do myself here), but also, I saw Saratoga in a clearer, more beautiful light than I have in months, my hopes for her, my plans, why I'm doing all of this, as they envied me my community support for popcorn contests, my stunningly gorgeous natural surroundings, my backyard fishing hole, my capacity for Guiness (heh). My own envy was put in perspective; all envy is, at bottom, after all, is a niggling little by-product of the unavoidable lifelong process of making choices, which commit one to one path or another while closing off others.

I could be serving in a larger or richer city – but to do so would require me to live in a much less beautiful place (apologies to Mayor Frank - but hey, that Camelplex aquatic center has to be a nice consolation for having to live in the middle of a coalbed methane nightmare), which doesn't interest me right now.

But here's the kicker – I can make a different choice later on! We all can. If suddenly my envy or whatever other ugly little "poor me" demons start getting the better of me, I can chuck it all and move to Chicago or Athens if I want. We all can. Sure, there are sacrifices involved in doing something so drastic. I doubt I could take my dog to Greece, for instance, and I'd have to drastically reduce the size of my library (at least until I got to Greece and started accumulating Greek books; I know myself). But the options are still there, the choices. And no one is ever really holding a gun to our heads. Mortgages, cars, habits – these look like guns sometimes, but they're not. They're not!

And that, perhaps, is the most valuable thing I've taken away from this crazy weekend. The pointers on how to improve water account tracking, the chance to keep our association from wasting its time encouraging stupid legislation that isn't going to go anywhere anyway, the networking, that's all good stuff and worth the time right there, but what really matters right now, is that I chose all this. And I can un-choose it if I want.

But, right now, I'm pretty happy with the choices I've made.

I hope you are happy with yours, too.

I'm showing blogger to a bunch of local elected officials so they, too, can follow Lydia Lunch's advice - DON'T HATE THE MEDIA, BECOME THE MEDIA!

OOPS!

We blessed the WRONG CAR this morning! Fortunately, Uncle Mac has been closely monitoring the situation and clued in on a later patrol. Squeaky has nothing whatsoever to do with cowboy hats, and one is prominently placed in the back seat of the car we originally thought hers (try to identify small green cars with city plates at a city council convention. Just try. For that matter, there are TWO giant green Tahoes with city plates parked at our hotel. I have yet to try to unlock the correct one on the first try - but at least I haven't triggered any alarm systems yet).

She was LATE this morning, see (and we were early - World Cup early rising on my part, habitual dawn worship on Uncle Mac's) so we could not have blessed her in any case.

But the situation is being remedied forthwith.

I'm glad I managed not to giggle at her when I saw her a few minutes ago (resplendent in a lilac-colored suit and matching shoes! I think we're overpaying her).

Now, back to finish learning about how to do a water audit. Such is the life...

SHARING THE LOVE

So last night had us conventioneers dining and drinking at the fabulous, historic Sheridan Inn, a full service restaurant/events complex complete with a ferocious parking problem. Enter the Saratoga contingent, trundling around downtown Sheridan, Wyo in an enormous Chevy Tahoe. We park where we can, we park where we can.

And that is how we earned a little love letter from Sheridan's finest! Yes! Not a parking ticket, but a sternly worded warning, addressed to our one and only hypersonic town clerk, Squeaky (not her real name), whose name of course appears on the Tahoe's registration...at least I have to assume this is how it came to be; the notion that anyone could mistake my fellow harrumphing councilman Uncle Mac (not his real name), a seven foot tall ex sergeant-major with a booming, gravelly voice that sounds like god's own master-at-arms, for Squeaky (also tall but of a more delicate frame, titian hair and a taste in clothing and couture that makes her look like she's perpetually preparing for an Easter parade) is just too absurd to contemplate.

What could we do in such a situation? We saved our parking ticket and delivered it to its intended recipient. There's a 3x6" time bomb planted on the windshield of Squeaky's car. She is, of course, parked perfectly legally in the middle of the Sheridan High School lot, so I'm sure that her outrage will overcome her basic sense of shame and I'll hear about it over lunch.

Either that or I'll hear the refrain with which she frequently greets both my father and myself: "Damn you, Sherrod!"

Stay tuned...

DIARY OF A MAFIOSA

Woo hoo! Now I know how the Crips and the Bloods feel! There's nothing like walking into a room at the head of a posse to make a girl feel tough and scary. I may start wearing a doo-rag!

Yup, I'm back with the Carbon County Mafia, the combined tequila-drinking, jail-building, antelope-shooting, river-floating might of the local elected officials of Carbon County's ten municipalities. No other Wyoming county has near so many towns, so no other Wyoming county has near so many delegates here at the annual convention of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities. We're a faction, a bloc, a gang! It's plumb intoxicating!

Speaking of intoxication, well, that's what the mafia does best. We take over bars, mostly - last night's victim was the Mint Bar, here in Sheridan, a wonder of warm cedar driftwood, panels of real brands from real Wyoming ranches (I found two from Saratoga just in the nook where we sat - one for the Mowrys and another I couldn't read) and an ample supply of Jackson-brewed Zonker Stout (for some reason, the Mint has concluded that Guiness is a "winter" brew and has a policy of replacing it in the summertime with an Alaska Amber, drinkable but certainly no substitute), followed by some cheesy kid bar that, in its defense, did have dance music (nobody dances like party-starved municipal clerks: it's quite a sight), but in its debit column was infested with...

KARAOKE

Prompting Radical Ron (not his real name), Rawlins' economic development officer, and I to engage in a favorite pastime: haiku wars. Below is the finest flowering of this unusual art form, a joint effort of ours that evolved over the course of about 500 agonizing hours sucking down Amber Bock (best they had, alas) and trying not to listen. But enough on that subject.

Karaoke hell.
Tone-deaf singers keep it up.
Take away the book.

Ah, conventioneering.

And what was the big topic of contention at this morning's public safety policy committee meeting? Why, liquor licenses, of course!

Justice, like government officials in Carbon County, can be quite poetic.

More later (aren't you glad there's full-bore internet access available at convention headquarters?)...

GRATUITOUS SPEED POST AHEAD!

Purely to soothe the terror and stave off the ire of those of you who have been checking this site and wondering when the hell I'm going to write something new, I'm writing something new, though I am soon to board the Town Tahoe for a six-hour drive with a fellow harrumphing council member to go attend the annual convention of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities. Never say I don't do what I can to keep you happy. It's all for you. Feel the love.

I have missed a Spanish goal in the last round of their pool play. They are ahead of South Africa 3-1. Kind of meaningless, though, since Spain has already advanced to the elimination round (so for once I slept - are you proud?). But still, I sacrificed seeing this goal, which excited Ty Keogh very much, because I care about YOU. Yes, you, dear reader. I'm thinking of you right now. I'm putting you ahead of my quadriannual (no, I don't know if that's the actual word and I'm on the tightest deadline of my life here, so no time to look it up, so pretend it is one, okay?) soccer orgy. I hope you appreciate how special that is.

While I'm babbling, lately I've been wondering what kind of readership I still have. I know the persistent readers, commenters, hecklers (most common heckling text: "I'm serious! You need to get a life!" -- advice I take with a grain of salt since it comes from a man who earned the designation of Sewer King. But I digress. It's what I do when I'm not busy having a life). But what about the rest of you. Who are you? Where do you live? Grey Poupon or French's? Less Filling or Tastes Great? Legs or breasts?

Seriously. I'm curious. I know there's people reading me in Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, Illinois and Tokyo... anywhere else? People I'm not personally acquainted with?

Wow, now that I've posed the questions, I'm bound to lose sleep over it until I have some idea of the answers. And there's still two weeks of World Cup Wackiness to go. That's a lot of sleep I'm not going to have. Which will affect the quality of the blog. So do your part for making LIANT the wonder of the Wyoming Wide Web and drop me a line. There's a little thingie on the left hand side of this page where you can e-mail me (I'd put in a mailto link, but I'm just discombubulated enough not to be sure of the syntax, and I don't have my HTML guide handy).

So do it already.

OK, off to Sheridan. I'll bring you back something nice. Kisses and hugs!

Don't drink all the beer while I'm gone.

- The author

BECOMING NOCTURNAL

I have a whole different set of priorities this month.

I offer this little tidbit not as an excuse for not having posted to this page in five months (dog time), as I have no exuse for THAT other than laziness, ennui and a bird festival to run (about which more anon, of course), but as an excuse for not going to coffee much this month - and as long time readers know, coffee is where I get most of my best column material.

So what is my priority that is keeping me out of the public eye, local gossip and the continuing saga of popcorn wars?

The FIFA WORLD CUP, baby!

It goes like this: think of how much you love the NzBA, hockey, professional (American) football, the Eukanuba dog show circuit, NASCAR, the PGA, whatever silly sporting event pins you in your recliner with a cold one by your side shouting things like “pass, you dumbass” and “my grandmother drives faster than that!” at the top of your lungs at a very expensive piece of furniture. Now think of what a drag it would be if you only got to see it once every four years.

Hence, my devotion to catching as much of the World Cup as I can, a devotion so intense that I actively encouraged my parents to go on a long road trip so I can borrow their cable-TV equipped house (well, it WOULD be silly for me and annoying for the cable guy for me to hook up to cable for just this one month, wouldn’t it?), and I have sat up VERY late almost every night watching a bunch of foreigners in shorts (I missed the USA vs. Portugal game because I couldn’t drag my sorry butt out of bed at 3 a.m. - thus learning my lesson that it’s easier for me to STAY up than GET up. I won’t commit that error again) kick a ball around an enormous field while commentators with nearly impenetrable accents slowly catch me up to speed on what these players, most of whom I haven’t seen in action since 1998, have been up to lately.

I’ve only seen a few teams in action so far, but I’m already wishing I could reassess my picks for the Secular Johnson Pick’em league (I obviously way underrated Senegal, who last night executed as beautiful a play as I’ve ever seen, a precisely timed series of exquisitely perfect passes all the way from their goal to Denmark’s and ending in a very neat equalizer goal that left even Seamus Mallin kind of tongue-tied).

And so far I’m still functional in the daytime. I’ve been missing coffee but not missing work, and there’s all this Diet Coke leftover from several chamber events at which people cleaned out the pop coolers, denuding them of everything but Diet Coke, so there’s plenty, it’s all here in my office and it’s all now crammed into the fridge that shares space with Molly the Collie under my desk...

I shall probably drive my Wyoming Association of Municipalities colleagues batty next week, scheduling our social time around games, though I suspect that at least one of my treasured drinking buddies, the municipal judge at Opal, might be just as crazy as I am (we both own Newcastle United replica jerseys, to give you an idea). I’ll either drag them from bar to bar in Sheridan, Wyo (of course we’re starting at the Mint, where they know how to pour a proper pint of Guiness, according to my advance scouts) in search of one that will let me tune in, or I’ll be cutting us off at midnight so I can settle into my motel room for ESPN’s World Cup 2Night and the first game of the evening.

Yup, a whole different set of priorities in June...

ANY EXCUSE...

Lo venire, lo brindare, lo riuscare
- My Saratoga Wine School 2002 diploma

(Rough translation: I came, I drank, I graduated - and never you mind the infinitives)

Just because living in Saratoga isn't enough fun yet, the wife of our esteemed mayor, who along with said mayor is something of a wine connoisseur (French for snob) (not really in strictly lexigraphical linguistic terms, but true in spirit, no?), came up with a capital new idea.

Although we live in what is arguably the dining capital of Wyoming, although we already have something of a world class liquor store (really! If they don't have it, they'll order it for you, just like our book store! Which is also a quilt store! But I digress! As usual!), although we are already people who are devoted to squeezing the last possible fragment of fun that life has to offer, Mrs. Mayor decided what we really needed was a Wine School.

Wine School in Saratoga terms meaning three successive wine "tastings" on concurrent Monday nights at the already ridiculously sybaritic Hotel Wolf, those tastings accompanied by huge hunks of "Italian Candy" (gorgonzola cheese as it's known by the family who owns and operates the wolf) aka "gagonzola" (as it is known to the oldest daughter thereof, who notwithstanding can make a mean flank steak gyro without even thinking about it) and other treats.

For a small fee, residents of our fair and silly burg got to hear lectures from area representatives of national wineries like Gallo (who through their Redwood Creek label have actually made a merlot that didn't make me gag - of course it's cut very liberally with that true prince of grapes, the SHIRAZ!!!!) as well as local ones like the Terry Ranch (who starting late this summer will feature a red and a white created with Canadian hybrid grape strains grown on the south sides of hills all over Wyoming - yes, Wyoming - that show great promise judging from the wines the crew there has made from grapes already tainted by that Colorado soil...). It was meant to introduce "course" takers to things like the aroma wheel, the difference between varieties of grape, the importance of terroir, etc.

But, this being Saratoga, anyone who cares about that sort of thing already knows, and everybody else just likes whatever fermented grape juice does the job of loosening the tongue, releasing the inhibitions, etc. So what it really was, was an elegant and VERY enjoyable excuse for getting together with people who were already our friends and guzzling a lot of wine and eating a lot of Italian Candy and other appetizers. A typical exchange therein went something like this:

PAID WINE EXPERT: You might note hints of cherry and vanilla in this remarkable blend of Shiraz and other grapes from Australia.

ME: I don't taste any of that stuff, but I'll sure as hell drink it!

LOCAL CONTRACTOR FRIEND OF MINE: Me neither, Kate! Cheers!

Brief silence as my contractor friend and I drain our glasses, ignoring completely the wine-tasting protocol of "chewing" the wine and then delicately spitting it out into the buckets provided. Hey, at least we stuck our considerable schnozzes into the glasses before guzzling; we have learned a thing or two about "nose" over the years.

RECENT RELOCATOR TO THE VALLEY: I don't know about cherry or vanilla, but this smells a lot like banana!

MAYOR AND ME: Oh so Thomas Pynchon o yes!

Etc.

Yes, this wine school can be called a success, even though more than half of us plotted to fail the course deliberately so we could be sentenced to summer school and considerably more of us than that gleefully accepted after-school "detention" and still more of us talked about general remedial courses...

Then tonight, the coup de grace. Just to make you all jealous, dear readers, here is the menu, prepared, I might add, as expertly as it might have been done in Tuscany or anywhere:

ANTIPASTO - Asiago cheese stuffed olive, garlic infused olive oil and french bread (all you need for buna cauda except for no anchovies!), with Sonoma Cut'rer Chardonnay (very nice, not as dry as most chardonnays but not so sweet you go into a diabetic coma either).

ENSALADA: (Did I mention the management of the Hotel Wolf has a bit of an Italian bias? Funny for people who specialize in prime rib, no?): Romaine with pears and gorgonzola salad dressing (heavy on the wondrous raw garlic), with Silverado Sauvingnon Blanc.

MAIN COURSE: Baked tenderloin (that's beef for you city folk) with Madeira wine sauce, garlic mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli, with Wild Horse Pinot Noir (!) and Clos Du Val Cabernet Saugvignon (good, but I'm still a working girl, so I'll stick to Liberty School when I want a cab, and Black Opal Shiraz, which I learned I can save a lot of money by buying by the case, when I just want a good, affordable red).

DESSERT: Grapes and assorted cheese (those cheeses being a nice aged gruyere, my favorite since I was a tot and bogarted the gruyere from our Swiss Colony order each Christmas) and Blockheadia Ringnosii Zinfandel and Tosti Asti.

Yes, it's a difficult, deprived and horrid existence here in Saratoga, Wyo, but we do endure, we do endure.

And none of us can wait for our Wine School 2002 class reunion!

(Meanwhile, Obie and me and a few others are planning on our own learning disabled make-up sessions of Wine School to make sure we deserve our diplomas!)

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS...

So, there I was sitting peacefully at coffee yesterday morning, discussing the affairs of the day with my friends, when suddenly we all heard the noon whistle a little early (for my out-of-town readers: this is an old mill town, and the big loud fire alarm still goes off every day at noon to tell us all we may go to lunch. Usually it goes off when we're already at lunch, but that's another story).

Amidst speculations about what would happen if there was a fire at noon, would anyone show up, etc., one of my snarkier friends leaned over and said "Ah, don't worry; it's just Kate's house burning down!"

Ha. Ha. Ha-ha, I believe I said to him.

Cut to about an hour later, I return to my office, and there sitting patiently on the sofa, are my own dear personal mom and dad, mom looking chagrined, my dad bearing a shit-eating grin.

"So, Kate, are you ready to move again?" my father asks.

"This isn't very funny, honey," my mom whispers, slightly swatting him.

"...?" says I.

"Did you hear the fire sirens this morning?"

Swat.

"Well, yes! What was it?"

"That was for your house."

Cut to me sitting heavily on the floor, all color drained from my cheeks, all breath escaped from my body. Everything begins happening in slow motion, blurred, soundless. I'm thinking of my 100+ year old poetry books, all of my journals, drafts for novels...library books already overdue...

Dimly, from 1000 feet underwater, I hear my mother saying something to the effect of "Ha, ha ha, how does it feel?"

My father lets me off the hook: "I ran over your gas meter is all. It's all fixed and your pilot lights are lit and everything."

Apparently they had been to my little house on the river to set up the fenceposts for a dog pen, as this time tomorrow I shall have a four-legged duck herder for a roommate. Since said duck herder is a grown border collie, my father decided I need an extra tall fence, and so the posts are correspondingly lofty - he had to stand up in the back of his pickup to pound them in.

And in moving the truck to put up the last fencepost, he nudged the gas meter a bit.

Apparently every single member of the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department, of which my dad is a former president among other things, showed up for the call. I imagine it's going to be a while before he lives this down, poor man.

But of course, my family is going to be ragging on me for years for falling for the old "for whom the bell tolls" gag, too.

As I say so often in these and other pages, no day is a dull day.

SOMETIMES, THIS STUFF BUGS ME...

"And now, a question of etiquitte: As I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?"
- Tyler Durden

I just jumped onto AOL's Instant Messenger a moment ago to see if my sister might be on because, well, she and I are both "a bubble off" and are more likely to be home and quiet on a Friday night than pretty much anyone (my nights to howl being Tuesdays and Thursdays and hers being... much more random, actually).

And she wasn't there but a bunch of my brothers in secularity were. I wasn't in the mood to further discuss the recent rash of pipe bombs in the midwest or the Will Code For Food guy or PUTTING IN BEN WALLACE, so I jumped off very quickly.

But I saw that they were online, so conversely, through the magic of buddy lists, they would have seen that I was on, too.

Should I have hailed them, acknowledged seeing them even though I didn't want to get into a conversation? Was it rude of me to zip in and zip out?

Were this "real" life and I saw them on the street, surely I would at least wave (indeed, in my real life, everyone waves, even to strangers, and woe betide she who does not wave back, because sure 'nuff, the next time she is sitting vulnerable on a bar stool of a tired Tuesday night because the mayor is on a bathroom break and the minister of fun is hitting on a tourist, that's when the person to whom she didn't wave will corner her, accusing her of self-involvement, snobbery, or worse!).

But what's the AIM equivalent of waving?

Does anyone else think about these sorts of things?

OH WAS IT WORTH IT!

While most of you, my gentle readers, were watching TV or pounding away at theses or sitting through meetings or working late or doing whatever it is you poor creatures do when you're not treating yourselves to my golden prose last night, guess what I was doing (after my requisite three or so hours finishing things up at the old apartment, I mean)?

*I* went fishing in my own backyard!

No, I didn't catch anything (as my own dear personal dad likes to say, more often than not, "The fishing was good but the catching was lousy"); the river where it runs past my house does not present an ideal fishing hole as such, but that's not the point.

The point was that it was possible. I had access. I was a mere 15-20 feet from my very own front door, barefoot, in my kick-around-the-house clothes, a mandarin and soda at my side (and I didn't have to hump out a cooler to have ice and refill material) and I had a line in the water! And got to watch a pair of ospreys farting around overhead (many thanks to Obie the Artist [not his real name], without whose company and guidance I would still not know an osprey by sight. To say nothing of his assistance in humping my furniture over to the new place, for which his reward is K8E's own Sicilian pizza this weekend!). And saw a great sunset. And when the sun went down, stars (my old neighborhood had too many trees to permit a view of more than a slice of sky).

Now, I'm not gloating (much), but damn, I'm pretty satisfied.

Except for one little thing.

By rights, I should also have been able to write this little blog entry from said riverfront lawn, and post it. But I could not.

My Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) has not yet hooked up my land line, you see. So I had to compose this article from memory more or less (and actually, you should probably be glad, gentle readers, because I'm pretty sure the original was a lot more smug) from the confines of my office and upload it from my work desk tonight after two very exhausting meetings. Boo!

On the other hand, however, my phone didn't ring once while I was fishing. From my back yard. Ha.

WHERE ELSE BUT HERE...?

So, I stopped by the offices of my Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) recently to ask them to change over my land line service to my new place, which they will cheerfully do for a totally unjustifiable fee that's not cripplingly high but is still ridiculous and annoying enough to make me want to spend that amount on some really good vodka until I'm nice and liquored up and then call the president of my Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) at his home and tell him to shove that land line up his...

But that's not what I meant to write about in this little note, because this actually relates to something kind of cute, kind of nice, kind of charming – a real "only in Saratoga" thing.

Because the gal who broke the news of the fee to me has known me my entire life, and as she broke the news to me, she stopped me from storming out of her office with a gentle "Oh by the way, Kate, I've been meaning to give you something I found a while ago. It's out in my glove box."

Lo and behold, the phone lady had a photo she'd taken of me when I was a baby. It's sitting now on my desk in my office until such time as I can bring it to my new home without worrying about its loss. In it, I sit with just the first traces of hair on my head, plopped down on a baby blanket with my teething ring and a shot glass (there are apparently no extant photos of me before age three in which I do not have some accoutrement of alcohol close at hand, as my parents' famous pic of me with a bottle of Cracklin' Rosie attests). What a happy looking little baby that is! No clue about the whirlwind of meetings, popcorn pop-offs, rude telemarketers, deadlines, car troubles, mysterious boxes of kitchen items, or really obnoxious service charges to change over her phone service in her future.

Bliss indeed, courtesy of my favorite employee at my LPPC(tm).

A MOVING EXPERIENCE

“I hear you’re not going to be a troll any longer!”

Oh, it’s a true friend indeed who can get away with opening a conversation this way, but in this case this smart aleck remark is remarkably accurate: I am emerging like we wish Osama would from the cave I have made my home lo these many years, and I can already feel the attendant improvements in my disposition.

It’s something of a drawn-out process, moving from a tiny basement apartment to (amusingly enough) a somewhat tinier house across the river, and it’s not one I’m enjoying one bit as I sort through years and years of stuff and debris trying to pare down the volume to one that will comfortably fit into my new home and still leave room for me and my habit of pacing furiously when writer’s block threatens to overcome me.

Alas, it’s not just my stuff, either, that I’m sorting through. I long ago became some kind of weird focal point for the foisting off of other people’s possessions. It started off with my grandmother’s kitchenwares when she closed up her house and moved to a retirement home and went on from there. Someone would offer me a box full of goodies and at first glance it would all look so devastatingly useful that I would say “Of course I’ll take that!” Only later would I find there were only three or four actually useful items cunningly distributed on the box’s top layer.

Of course, a normal person would have kept the useful items and discreetly pitched the rest, but though I am now unmistakenly oozing into my fourth decade I still haven’t really gotten the hang of this “throwing stuff away” business. I can throw away papers, pens that run out of ink, magazines I’m done reading (unless they contain an article or two I’ve found really good – I’m still too disorganized to maintain a clipping file), stuff like that, but what about a pretty good saucepan that’s just not in as good a condition as the three others I have? There is (thank god) a used clothing store here in town whereat I can get rid of the fourteen pairs of sweatpants that have somehow materialized in my utility room over the three years I’ve lived in my cave (and I don’t even wear sweatpants! Ever! Give me shorts or give me death! Remember, I even wear shorts in December!), but what about a store for used computer components (I have a Dell chassis, a 486 microproccessor, a great PC motherboard and a perfectly good monitor... gathering dust in my linen closet ever since I bought my tangerine iBook. Any takers? Anyone?).

But alongside the anguish there is also awe and awareness. Like so many others of my generation, I have moved more times than I can count on two hands (so you think I’d have gotten rid of some stuff along the way, but no, no. Always before there has been haste and hurry, and usually a moving van with more space than was strictly necessary; much easier to toss it all in and sort it all out when I’m at the new place. The sorting just never came!) and so I am quite familiar with the phenomenon of objects lost many moves past turning up again during the packing or unpacking process.

Interestingly enough, the find thus far consists chiefly of photos and related relics from my very first non-dormitory abode, a seriously funky farmhouse in Orono, Maine I shared with several other entomology students – and in many ways just a bigger, stranger version of the house into which I am moving now. Most arresting and, in a way, poignant are some of the photos of my friends and roommates at the time, international students I will probably never see again (or at least not all in one room, crammed into one car, gazing sentimentally at each other over plates of cheap lobster in restaurants, dancing and drinking powerful Brazilian cocktails at three-day parties) but were the first ones who got me watching soccer seriously, friends whose wives I took on whirlwind shopping tours as we made the local IGA our English language lab... I have to strain now to remember everyone’s name in the photos but I still can. I have no idea where in the world they all are now, not even the crazy German-Spaniard I was in love with at the time, and it’s sad to realize that, but it’s fun to remember them.

Mentally I make plans to make some kind of big photo collage now that soon I will dwell in a place where it’s okay to put things on the walls and there is enough light to see them. Not only enough light to see photographs, but enough light to keep plants alive. I’ll save on electricity because I’ll be able to read by daylight again. I’ll have a view out my windows.

And speaking of views: This little cottage, this crazy cabin (no Unabomber jokes, thank you), this funky little love shack, has a mighty fine one because IT’S RIGHT ON THE RIVER! Yes! I have lovely vistas out two windows where I can watch the ducks, both in the river and IN MY BACKYARD. I might even be able to fish from my backyard, though I don’t know how the catching will be. I’ll have my own lawn (of sorts) on which to sit as I enjoy it all.

Yes, there’s lots to look forward to once I get the old place cleaned out.

Until that happens, though, if you see me walking frazzled down the street, don’t panic. There is neither a town nor a chamber crisis a-brewing. I’m just wondering what to do with that extra coffeemaker.

SOMEBODY PINCH ME!

All signs point to my actually getting a chance to use my degree this week! Saratoga High School's junior class voted in overwhelming numbers earlier this school year to use a Chinese theme for its prom decorations, and one of their sponsors remembered that I spent four sweaty years of my life learning the Beijing dialect and traditional character system of that very language!

So in between making final plans for Goofy Golf (about which more in another blog entry; it's late tonight and I've been through a meeting marathon today) and finishing the Chamber's tax return and helping the Minister of Fun prepare his requests for allocations from Saratoga's municipal budget (first budget workshop is 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 30 at Town Hall! I know you'll all want to be there!), I get to go paint Chinese graffitti on a whole bunch of stuff at the high school gym!

And here I thought I'd chosen a pointless course of study at Beaudacious Bard College. I'm sure Lao Guan would be proud.

SPIN CONTROL IN SMALLVILLE

To my out of town readers who might not find all of this Green Mountain stuff all that fascinating, my apologies.

HOWEVER...

A rumor began circulating around Saratoga and Encampment that is so far from being true as to be hilarious, except for in what it represents.

The rumor is that Sand Creek, the Ranch Preservation Company and the Grand Encampment Mountain Resort withdrew their loan application from consideration by the Wyoming Business Council.

I’ll quote Sand Creek’s marketing manager, with whom I spoke this morning (Friday), directly:

“The rumor is categorically FALSE,” he told me.

“We are continuing to work with the WBC staff and Board to supply them with whatever additional information they request as they continue to evaluate the project and the $15 million loan that’s been proposed and previously recommended by the WBC staff.

“I can honestly tell you I have ZERO idea where such a rumor would come from.”

Burger also said that he had checked with Sand Creek CEO John Jenkins, and that he “100% confirmed the above and is equally in the dark as to the rumor’s origin.”

In addition, the Wyoming Business Council has confirmed Burger and Jenkins’ statements.

The application is still active, and will be discussed at the Council’s August Board meeting, WBC Executive Assistant Linda Hollings said.

Both the Tuesday (4/16) meeting in Saratoga and the Thursday (4/18) meeting in Encampment will proceed as scheduled. Both meetings begin at 7 p.m. and will take place in each town’s respective town hall.

HE PICKED HIS OWN NICKNAME, HONEST!

I have a number of friends to whom I regularly refer on this website by amusing nicknames – Obie the Artist, the Fat Cat Republican Bastard, Tad the Grocer, the Maitre d'Marquee, the Chicken Lady, etc.

There is also the man I refer to as The Sewer King. He gave himself this nickname several months ago at coffee.

Well, I had a bit of downtime this afternoon while waiting for the operating system to re-load on one of my office's computers (trashed to an astonishing degree by a self-proclaimed masters degree in computer science who still didn't know how to find a command line interface on a Mac), and for some reason I did a Google search on some of my friends' nicknames.

The best result by far can be found by clicking HERE.

I just want to remind everybody once again that he did pick his own nickname.

Explains a bit about his minions at the store, too, doesn't it?

JUST A BRIEF INFORMATIONAL NOTE

I'll return to ordinary blog posts soon, but since my favorite local newspaper did not deign to announce this anywhere but in a teeny blurb in the bloated community calendar (though they did make this meeting look more important than the town council meeting which precedes it by placing it above the council meeting notice), I want to make sure that my readers in Saratoga, Encampment and the surrounding areas are aware of an important opportunity.

At 7 p.m. this coming Tuesday, April 16, representatives from Sand Creek, the Ranch Preservation company and the Grand Encampment Mountain Resort project (also known as the Green Mountain ski area, and other names) will be on hand at the Saratoga town hall to do a short progress report and answer your questions and address your concerns about the project and its loan application to the Wyoming Business Council. The project leaders will then be present at the Encampment Town Council's regular meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 18 at the Encampment Town Hall.

It's time everybody in the valley made the effort to get the facts about this project, which really shouldn't be as divisive an issue as it has become. For instance, no Wyoming taxpayer money is at risk: the loan the group is applying for would come out of the state's Permanent Mineral Tax trust fund, which represents revenues generated by mineral companies digging stuff out of the ground in Carbon and other counties, not by property or sales or lodging taxpayers. Some of this fund has been set aside for economic development projects, of which this is the first in Carbon County to seek this funding (and the first project in I don't know how many years to get beyond the bullshitting stage and into action). All of it is invested in overnight deposits back east in big financial companies that fund projects all over the world. In other words, our mineral tax monies are being used to prop up poorly privatized companies in Russia, new construction in Malaysia, wiring the Phillipines for better internet service... but all we, the citizens of Wyoming and Carbon County are getting out of it is some interest, the proceeds of which we then squabble over through our elected legislators.

Why not take some of it and use it to back people who are trying to get at least something started here where we live?

That's my take on the matter at hand – and make no mistake; the loan application is the matter at hand. The land swap is accomplished; the section of land the Grand Encampment Mountain Resort company plans to turn into a ski area and real estate development is private property and as long as they obey the law, satisfy the Carbon County Planning and Development Office's and the County Commission's zoning requirements, and find capital, the project is a go. The land is theirs to do with as they see fit as long as they operate within the law, which they are doing.

The only question on the table now is if they will be able to proceed with help from the Wyoming Business Council and the economic development funds it administers. A no from the WBC will not necessarily put an end to the project; it will just force the company and its supporters to try some other way to get it off the ground financially, which, by the way, could result in changes to the project that there is no guarantee any of us will like.

I know there are lingering concerns about the project, especially regarding housing for staff and the development's impact on local water resources, to name two.

People, THE TIME TO AIR THESE CONCERNS AND DISCUSS THEM WITH THE PROJECT LEADERS IS NEXT WEEK. The people putting this deal together are reasonable folks just like you and me, who love this land and the people who live here just as we do, and want to see us all be able to maintain, and maybe even improve, the quality of life we have enjoyed and which our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents came here to enjoy. And they want, as much as they can, to incorporate our input into their ultimate plans for that beautiful spot so that it's attractive to US as well as to the people whom they ultimately convince to buy property up there.

I do urge everyone who wants to see this happen to make the effort to share your support for the GEMR's loan application with the WBC by notifying WBC CEO Tucker Fagan by e-mail (click on the highlighted text to send a message) or, better still, by postal "snail" mail at: 214 West 15th Street, Cheyenne, WY 82002.

And even though nobody likes a lot of meetings, if there's something about this project that you really want to know about or a concern that you really think needs addressed or a rumor that you really want confirmed or denied (and there are some doozies, like the truly hilarious one that this loan money is going to be used to pave the road to Steamboat!), make the effort to be at one of these meetings. It's a much better use of your time than is gossiping about the project on a barstool or fretting about it with people who "live" here for only two weeks out of the year and don't care about those of us who have made the commitment to really be here (until they need ambulance service or get asked to pay their fair share for maintaining the water lines).

PEDALING MY ASS

No, no comma is missing from the title of tonight's essay; I mean nothing derisive about pedaling or peddling or even piddling.

I took my bicycle out for my first serious ride of the year this evening, to enjoy the weather (sunny, strongly breezy, clear blue sky, the very air aglow with anticipation for the upcoming advent of daylight savings time, which means that Hotel Wolf porch sitting season is almost upon us), get some exercise and, in my family's favorite phrase, "blow the stink off," which stink feels considerable after a winter even more than usually cooped up in doors, lain flat out by a really stupid illness.

I kept within the city limits to avoid "overdoing it" and so did not escape commentary from the likes, for example, of my neighbor cum fellow town council member, who hollered out "Careful that people catch you at that, Kate; there's an ordinance against peddlers, you know."

Ever since I got this bike, a police department special (meaning it was largely cribbed together from two or three bikes that had been repining behind the police station for lo these many years since they were turned in as lost and found back when I was in high school [from the look of them]), I've used my car less and less until it's reached the point whereat one of my closest friends revealed today that he had no idea I even had a car, dredging up in my begrudging brain the endlessly recurring question of why I actually do have a car.

What do I do with a car in Saratoga, WY, population 1726, roughly 200 miles away from the nearest shopping mall, 150 miles away from Wal Mart or the hippie food store, 40 miles away from the nearest movie theater?

My enumeration of my distance from institutions that most Americans take for granted and make part of their daily lives is of course misleading, since I frequent none of these. I don't have the time, wouldn't even if they were just a five instead of a 125 minute drive from me.

No, my car is pretty much for getting me to the odd out of town meeting (usually in Rawlins, where the movie theater is but otherwise a place I have never found particularly appealing and to which I avoid traveling when I can) and for hauling groceries from the store, which is less than a two minute drive from my house but is situated most inconveniently atop a long, steep hill that even serious cyclists like our police chief and his wife (who are the type of people who read bike gear catalogs the way I read the New York Review of Books, i.e. recreationally in their own right as well as a source for serious information on the next big purchase. As I pore over a review of John Polkinghome's latest screed so do they minutely examine new handlebar configurations or bike chains, a fact that I find subtly terrifying even when they are not eagerly passing on the latest catalong to yours truly, who recently made the mistake of mentioning that I might need a new front tire soon) do not often dare, and never more than once a season.

Just before I got sick, though, I found on a fine day that I'd somehow managed to get my cycling ass and haunches in sufficient shape and to build my endurance and tolerance for lactic acid build-up to such a degree that a back way to the grocery store was now within my pedaling reach. I could ride over to the hot pool, cross the footbridge over the Hugus-Mullison Ditch there, and make my way up the hill on that street. It's still uphill, and it's a long hill, but though long and of a decidely upward slope it's still nowhere near as punishing a ride as that via the highway.

The only thing thwarting me from using this route and method for my grocery shopping, then, was my lack of a basket or any kind of saddlebags on my bike! With alacrity, I resolved to begin shopping for one, even to cracking open those creepy catalogs (really, though, I shouldn't mock them; I'm sure if the chief and his wife saw my new favorite website, that belonging to Games Plus, they would be equally disturbed. Perhaps even more so).

But that was then and this is now. I'm just recovered (more or less) from mono, at least to a sufficent degree as to allow me to tramp all over downtown Chicago with two of my friends last week without fainting or anything, though the considerable aid of 1) alcohol and 2) cafe de olla cannot be discounted there.

In other words, it's going to be a long uphill climb before I'm able to do my grocery shopping on my bike, and not just because there's a big nasty literal hill involved. Sigh.

But in a few months, I will. And then I'll really wonder why I'm making car payments. And insurance payments. And paying attention to recall notices. And wondering when the hell my new driver's license that I was supposed to get before my vacation but still don't have and my temp license is about to expire... is going to show up in my mailbox so I'm all legal again in case I get carded at the bar like I did in Chicago.

Until then, I'll be pedaling my ass all over town and beyond, striving, ever striving, to make my car even less useful than it is, except in that my car, quite unlike my bicycle, makes a pretty good storage shed...

HE WHO LAUGHS LAST...

...Sells paintings!

Yes, I just learned this morning at coffee that the grafitti lovingly placed on Obie's windows by the grateful souls whose tires he decorated yesterday (who at first thought their own tires had been stolen and replaced by old, shot tires from off of fence posts about the county) has actually worked to bring him business!

A visitor strolling idly about town yesterday afternoon couldn't help but take note of the big, bold yellow letters on Obie's shop windows that read "WILL PAINT FOR FOOD" and came in and bought a painting!

I guess that's one joker who will fear no retribution in the future.

Please don't paint the windows on my briar patch...

FOOLIN’ IN TOGIE

I’m not done writing about my weird, wonderful vacation in the Anti-Saratoga, but for today I’m going to share with those who missed the fun yesterday a sample of how even the most minor of holidays is commemorated with great enthusiasm and imagination here.

Yesterday was, of course April Fool’s Day, a holiday with origins in the Gregorian reform of the calendar (instituted to bring the calendar year back in line with the solar year). Prior to Pope Gregory’s adjustment in 1562, April 1 was celebrated as New Year’s Day; after the reform, January 1 became the big day. HOWEVER, the internet and other reliable and instantaneous forms of communication not having been invented back then, not everyone knew about the change in anything like a timely fashion, and some when informed of the change did not believe it. People who persisted in celebrating New Year’s Day on April 1 came to be known as April Fools and it became the height of sixteenth century hilarity to send these on “fool’s errands” or to try to get them to believe an amusing fib.

No one tried to convince anyone that, e.g., the Orange Bowl was going to be on TV last night, but there was plenty of foolishness in the Saratoga business community.

As longtime readers of this blog might expect, most of it got started at morning coffee.

My good friend Obie the Artist (not his real name) had the idea and came to coffee looking for takers: wouldn’t it be funny to paint “No Hunting” and “Keep Out” and similar variations on the good old “No Trespassing” theme onto people’s car tires for April Fool’s Day (point of clarification: big old tires are for reasons I’ve never really been able to fathom the item of choice for hanging from ranch fences to communicate these messages, as can be seen on any drive along any county or forest road in the Rocky Mountain states).

Everyone quickly agreed that the best target for this prank would be the Fat Cat Republican Banker (not his real name) who won the Great Corn Pop-Off through his devastating combination of bribery (everyone who voted with a $5 bill or greater got entered in a drawing to win a $50 bill or bottles of, in his words, “panty dropping” wine), half-truths (he plastered posters advising Pop-Off “judges” that his booth featured girls in swimsuits, but pulled a bait-and-switch and just had the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, though none of the guys at the event – not even the FCRB’s closest competitor – seemed too upset with this substitution) and the collection of “absentee” ballots.

Obie and his accomplice/enabler, Tad the Grocer (not his real name) set out immediately after coffee, found the FCRB’s pickup and annointed it appropriately. Then, for good measure, cars belonging to Tad’s Woman Friday (wife of the mayor!) and to the Napa Man (not his real name) got the same treatment.

Tad and Obie retreated, giggling, to their respective places of business and awaited the results.

Obie quickly lost his nerve and, knowing their targets’ taste for retribution, decided it was time he took his pickup for a nice long drive. And it was a good thing, too, as Tad quickly learned when he discovered his own truck had been tightly shrinkwrapped.

Since the wounded parties did not have access to Obie’s vehicle during the afternoon, they revenged themselves on his studio windows, leaving a lasting monument to Obie’s own proclivities. Painted now in huge yellow letters on both windows at WYOLD Aspen Studios is the legend WILL PAINT FOR FOOD.

I watched all of this from a distance, of course. I hate being the butt of practical jokes, the inconvenience of washing my car or replacing its battery, the constant reminders of the whopping load of bull for which I fell, etc. So I do not, therefore, play pranks or encourage them – beyond, at any rate, occasionally favoring particularly favored friends with a seriously outrageous whopper that I’m sure no one would ever actually believe but is just fun to say. I’m always way more baffled than they are when I realize I’ve been believed...

Anyway, so passes another April Fool’s Day in Saratoga. No lasting property damage as such, but there are still lingering signs commemorating the day.

For our part on Sec-J, we prayed that a posting we found on wilwheaton.net, the internet home of the second-rate actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation, which suggested that Mr. Wheaton was in negotiations to take on a recurring role of some sort on the latest Star Trek series, was itself an April Fool’s prank. We’re still praying.

And one of us also noted a funky anomaly in the way the most important holiday in the Christian calendar (well, in the non-Orthodox calendar, anyway) fell this year: Sunday, March 31, Jesus is risen from the dead. Monday, April 1, APRIL FOOLS!

Oh, and to all of you stubbornly clinging to the Julian calendar, Happy New Year!

OVERSTIMULATED IN NAPERTHRILL

I have not yet dropped off the face of the earth, though activity on this blog of late might indicate same. Instead, I am on vacation.

I still have internet access where I am, but my days are full and my nights are merry and every night so far I've been too tired to post here. I'm too tired tonight as well, but my conscience simply would not let me allow another day to pass without adding a little something new to this page as a gesture of my love and appreciation to you, my readers.

I could do the standard "Nyeah, it's ____ degrees here and I'm wearing my _____ and sipping a _____ and watching ____ go by" kind of vacation gloating postcard like many of my fellow Saratogans have done or have admitted being tempted to do whilst frolicing in time zones, at latitudes, over bodies of water far from here, but I won't. For one thing, my personal entries for those blanks would not be very interesting at all: 35, boots, Guiness, cars. Pretty much the same entries I'd have were I still in Saratoga.

But, I defy any of my golf-playing, cruise-ship riding, RV-driving, slot machine-stuffing pals to come up with such a worthy collection of quotable quotes to remember their vacations by as these:

"I detect wood."

"Gizmo has dominated the dwarf."

"Quincy tries to steal the mistletoe!" (This announcement made with appropriate TV theme music)

"Best. Commentary. Ever."

"I can't believe I only spent $40 bucks in there. I must be getting old."

And so much more.

I'll have much more to say about all of this and what it has made me realize later on. But for now, having a great time, don't wish you were all here, see you soon, watch out for wandering damage.

I MAKE WEIRD THINGS HAPPEN

The countdown is on to maybe the weirdest single excuse for a party I have ever concocted, the Great Corn Pop-Off, set for 6 p.m. tomorrow night (Friday) at the Fireman's Hall (I was going to have it at St. Ann's, but I realized I might be giving an unnecessary sectarian advantage to two of the competitors, who are Cabbage Cookin', Pancake Flippin' Big Catholic Laymen). We're going to settle once and for all (unless this becomes a yearly thing) whether the hardware store, the bank, the historic downtown hotel or the upstart watering hole offers the best free popcorn in Saratoga.

This all started back in February when two of my coffee buddies got to arguing about whose popcorn is better (longtime readers of LIANT may remember my posting on this when I was ill), and a third buddy and I scooted over into a corner and started giggling over how funny it would be to pit them against each other head-on and let them duke it out "Chicago style," i.e. with no rules of conduct, standards of fair play or limits on how shady or weird they could get in vying for the title. The event's name, of course, came from the wildly weird brain of my own dear personal mom (the corn doesn't pop far from the plant, does it?).

It has mushroomed from there, with two more entrants, a donated keg of beer (plus a lot of leftover Chamber beer from February's chariot races) (my newly-able assistant and I need to get that stuff chilled pronto, even though it's really just emergency back-up supplies in case the keg runs dry) (which is likely as our unofficial motto in Saratoga is "Who has more fun than we do? Nobody) (OK, no, actually, it's "Our town can out-drink your town") and a lot of backroom planning, and very little of that has had anything to do with popcorn recipes.

For our part, my artist friend, my newly-able assistant and I are working on a humdinger of a trophy. We've got a mint condition 1960s era Jolly Time corn popper that we are shortly going to decorate as a possible traveling trophy (if people enjoy it this year, you bet we're going to make this an annual event!). And earlier this week I planted a funky little story in the local newspaper touting this as a grudge match between two titans with two dark horses along for the ride.

This is going to be fun.

Oh, and by the way – all of my votes are still for sale, boys!

MAYBE IT REALLY IS INFINITE...

My vanity, that is. Why else would I so feel like crowing because National Review Online liked my snarky definition for a neologism and posted it on its groupblog The Corner today.

Earlier in the day, Rod Dreher said "I've heard and used the term "Oprah-fied" myself, the capital "O" and the hyphen indicative of a certain unease with the neologism. Imagine my surprise and delight to see it deployed as "oprahfied" by Jim Nuechterlein in his First Things column this month. Truly it has entered the popular lexicon. Would any of you Corner lexicographers care to hazard a definition of "oprahfication"? What does it mean to oprahfy something?"

And asked readers to submit short and sweet definitions for this important new word.

What the hell; I had a few minutes between finishing up a day's work distributing little "2002" year tags to my chamber membership and hopping in the town Tahoe for a quick trip to a Carbon County Council of Governments meeting in Sinclair, so I devoted a stray brain cell to the task for a minute or two, and lo and behold, came up with something Mr. Dreher ranked it as one of his top five, or something. Anyway, he mentioned me by name and quoted my definition as follows:

"And Kate Sherrod observes that "to oprahfy is to render the tragic ludicrous or the ludicrous tragic through various devices of sensationalizing; in either direction, it is to render sensible, tasteful, educated people completely incapable of caring about the matter (or material) to which one has tried to draw attention."

Oh, and I got a nice, encouraging, extraordinarily pleasant e-mail from science fiction writer David Gerrold today, too!

So in terms of getting my name out there and feeding my monstrous ego, today has been a banner day! And to think when I woke up this morning I thought it was going to be dull!

WELL, THAT'S GOOD TO KNOW...

Still here in the BNL (bitchingly nice library) and still waiting. Out of sheer wayward desperation, I logged onto some career planning software and went through a 600 question interest inventory.

The program suggested that I become a writer. Who'd have thought it?

ANOTHER DISPATCH...

As my old debate nemesis turned Rock Springs coach observed about five minutes ago, "This is an endurance contest." And not just for we judging coaches. As I type this now it is 10:55 p.m. and three of my kids are still in rounds. Gotta love round robin tournaments.

At least I can rejoice that they're still in competition, for I would hate to be here so late and have to come in at 8 a.m. tomorrow just to judge other schools' kids on their way to nationals. Judging, for those of you who haven't done it, is harder than it sounds.

I actually missed the first two rounds, the first because the tourney directors forgot I was here and the second because said directors managed to schedule me to judge the very duet interpretation round that contained Saratoga's one competing team, whom I have trained from the initial read-through of a piece of which I was already heartily sick when they were still watching Sesame Street (that being Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite").

I've made up for it since, though, and like everyone else collapsing all around me in this bitchingly nice library, I'm more than a little punch drunk from (in my personal case) three rounds of Cross Examination (four-speaker policy) debate, one round of humor (that wasn't very funny) and one round of drama (that made me want to chew off not just a hand but perhaps an entire quadrant of my body to escape, that round consisting of one each of the standard a)mother with dying/dead child piece, b)newly orphaned teen with regrets piece, c)nurse or soldier memoir graphically complaining about the horrors of war piece, d)touching evocation of some kind of birth defect or degenerative disease piece and e)wronged, misunderstood golden girl who turns into a whore because no one loves her piece. I love it when my expectations are exactly met.

The debates were the best. One debate was actually very good, the kids articulate and attentive to the details of each other's cases, while the other two were unintentionally hilarious – a feat indeed with a topic like "RESOLVED: the United States shall establish a foreign policy limiting the use of weapons of mass destruction" with which to work. However, when the affirmative case is that we ban the whole National Missile Defense program and the negative case defends the NMD by saying it could maybe, possibly, sort of, imaginably be our only defense against an asteroid hitting the earth and this after a whole day of speeches about nuclear warheads and depleted uranium and allowing India to join the U.N.'s Security Council... well, I bet you'd giggle a bit, too.

Meanwhile there are still dozens of kids just outside this library waiting for the results from the last elimination rounds for the night (finally!), waiting to see if they're still in and have to dress up tomorrow and compete, or if they get to wear blue jeans and go to the mall... that's always the easy visual cue if a particular kid is a force to be reckoned with: if he or she is still wearing a suit at 4 p.m. on Saturday.

Me, I'll be wearing my wacky insect pants again because of an amusing error I made while packing for this trip. I have different tops to wear (all black – once a speech geek, always a speech geek), but it's the pants that command attention, and the pants for which I'll be remembered for at least a day or two after this tournament is history. Kids all over the state, as they reminisce over lunch on Monday will ask each other "did that weird red-haired lady with the bug pants judge you?"

I defy any wrestler, trackster, cager or gridster to come up with a comparable vignette.

Meanwhile, it is now 11:15 p.m. and we're still here. My kids are, I think, free, and our bus driver is here napping in one of the bitchingly nice library's bitchingly comfy chairs, but our head coach, alas, is still tabulating, tabulating, tabulating.

And we want to host one of these in Saratoga next year? Phooey!

Thank god there's in-room coffee in my motel room. I'm going to need it tomorrow morning like never, ever before.

DISPATCH FROM THE YEAR'S LAST...

It's 8 a.m. of a really chilly, foggy Friday morning as I begin this dispatch, my first "remote" entry ever on LIANT. I'm in Casper, in the bitchingly nice library of Natrona County High School, typing away on an iMac that except for the color is a dead ringer for the one that sits on my desk at the Chamber office.

I'm here to judge and coach the last speech meet of the season, the Wind River District tournament, at which my kids and everyone else's kids from schools east of I-25 are vying for a chance to compete at the national tournament later this year.

We almost didn't make it – at this time yesterday morning, I-80 was closed from the Nebraska state line to Rawlins. For some two hours afterwards it looked like pretty much a wash, so much so that I dumped my luggage in my office and went to my usual A.M. coffee klatsch to hear the latest on the murder case, the weather, etc.

(Not that there was much to be learned there, apart from that the manager of the restaurant where we sat had gotten a stern warning from the police for riding his snowmobile around the streets late at night [past 11 p.m.] without a big flapping flag affixed to it)

Finally we got word that we would be allowed to drive the 20 mile stretch between Walcott Junction and Rawlins so we could hop onto 287 and head up to Casper. The show would go on after all!

Turns out everyone eventually made it except for the Laramie team, still trapped there last I heard, though several judges from there have made it.

Schools statewide had trouble getting here, though, so competition was held off until 3 p.m. and went on until almost 11 – fine with me, because that virtually guaranteed that my little herd of nerds would be pretty tuckered out by the time the head coach and I got them fed, watered and in their stalls for the night. Certainly the head coach and I were.

Yesterday was all about student congress, which is pretty much just what you'd think from the name. One hundred kids or so are divided into "houses" (and one senate) and debate bills and resolutions submitted by the various schools. Humor and duet rounds aside, it's pretty much the single most entertaining event a speech tournament has to offer, as the bills can be about pretty much anything, ranging from the patently absurd (there is one bill at this meet advocating that we blow up the moon) to the borderline fascist (overturning the Supreme Court decision that led to the requirement that police officers tell their arrestees they have "the right to remain silent," etc. [aka the Miranda Warning]).

For the first time I really appeciate the Constitutional requirements that declare a member of the U.S. House of Representatives must be at least 25, a Senator must be at least 30, and the President of the U.S. must be at least 35: as a confirmed civil libertarian frequently regarded as a borderline anarchist, I find these kids terrifying! More laws! More taxes! No animal experimentation (remember that human beings are, taxonomically, animals, too...)!

That's all done now, though, and while my kids did very well indeed (including three who had never competed in student congress before), none of them quite made the cut. But never fear! There are still two days to go in this last tournament of the year!

Soon I'll turn into a human pinball, running from debate round to humor round to poetry round to debate round, judging, judging, always judging... a sycophantic question about my "philosophy of debate" (which I tend to summarize with some version of "quit stalling and get your butt up there") here, a broken pencil tip from trying to write fast enough to keep up with a first affirmative constructive speech there, a mighty effort to convince myself that I've never before heard anyone do a rendition of "The Sunshine Boys" next...

And somewhere in this building, my kids are congregating: sweating the competition, blasting questionable music, flirting with people from other schools (anytime you go to a high school prom in Wyoming and see a bunch of kids you don't know, dollars to doughnuts they are speechies from other schools), huffing and puffing from hauling their evidence boxes around (some Cross Examination debaters have actualy resorted to dollies for this task), admiring the many and subtle variations on this year's fashion theme (a long, closely fitting black skirt with slits on either side that end at about the mid thigh – the sort of thing that once we saw only on the stage in, e.g. Vegas, but now comically paired with suit jackets), making fun of my pants (hey, if you can't show off your homemade "insect" pants at a speech meet, where can you?)...

Man, I'm going to miss this!

THINKING AND WONDERING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now she's not?

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

And so will everyone else here.

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

MARCH MADNESS?

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

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

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

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

Because March Madness isn't just about college basketball.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Etc.

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

WOW, WHEN DID WE GET SO DUMB?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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