AAAAAAAAAAAYYYY!

FHWA-WY-FONSI 03-01
Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01
Wyoming Highway 130 Saratoga-Centennial
Brush Creek Section - Phase I
Carbon County
Wyoming
Project 0103(33)
(Cheyenne, WY: US. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, and Wyoming Department of Transportation, 2003)

The Finding of No Significant Impact on the Environmental Assessment for FHWA-WY-EA-99-01, (hereinafter referred to as “FONSI”), could really have used a good going-over by a competent editor, a marketing/publishing consultant, and a spell-checker... but all of those quibbles are made with an erroneous assumption in mind, that being that the authors actually wanted the public to read this thing. In that regard, its similarities to its larger and more imposing cousin, the Draft Proposed Land and Resource Management Plan for the Medicine Bow National Forest (hereinafter referred to as “25 Lbs. of Crap” in keeping with previous citations in this journal) are evident and amusing.

Since both documents have for these reasons gone largely unnoticed – no reviews of them appear on any of the major lit crit websites, and they don’t even have product entries on Amazon.com or other popular booksellers’ web pages – Your Humble Blogger and Book Reviewer has taken on the task or providing an appropriate critical response to, let’s face it, the publishing events of Winter, 2003!

Of the two, the FONSI stands out as a clearly superior publication despite its editorial and aesthetic inconsistencies, for while 25 Lbs. of Crap does use a single narrative voice and uniform typographical conventions, the FONSI’s multiple authors (some 45 by this reviewer’s count) all demonstrate a passing familiarity with the actual territory under discussion, a willingness to consider other possible points of view, and a basic grasp on reality that this reviewer finds sufficiently refreshing as to cause her to forgive its lesser production values and its occasional illegibility (which can, after all, be attributed to the well-known principle of replicative fading as the FONSI presents readers with direct facsimiles of the individual authors’ contributions in their original format).

In general, the FONSI outpaces 25 Lbs. of Crap in three important respects: drama, prose style, and overall content and guiding philosophy. The rest of this review will take up each of these topics in turn.

DRAMA

25 Lbs. of Crap is, to put it quite simply, utterly lacking in this important textual and contextual consideration. This is largely attributable to its singular narrative voice, though this voice’s singular authoritarian tone may create a pleasing conflict within the reader’s experience of the text as the reader’s own objections are crushed under the literary jackboot of the author’s disregard for basic scientific and ethical principles. This minor sop to the need to keep the reader turning pages is revealed as a poor effort indeed, however, by the cracklingly dramatic format of the FONSI’s prologue, in which some 30 different commentator’s objections, requests for clarification, and general comments are each directly taken up, “point/counterpoint” style, by the document’s compilers.

A sterling example of this occurs in the entertaining play of ideas and perspectives illustrated in the compilers’ response to the comments of one Gary Glass, the Wyoming State Geologist, who expressed concern that none of the listed preparers in the preliminary documents was a geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming, that some of the data in use in preliminary reports was out of date, and that the potential for discovery and recovery of camel, horse, rhinoceros, mastodon, merycodont and other carnivore fossils was not adequately addressed.

I quote from the FONSI directly to share the tone and tenor of the preparers’ response to Mr. Glass:

1. The geology section of the EA was excerpted from the Geotechnical Engineering Report prepared for the project by Terracon Consultants Western under contract to AVI, p.c., the design consultants. This report was referenced in the geology section of the EA and a citation provided on Page 50 of the EA. The Terracon report was prepared by a professional geologist licensed to practice in Wyoming.

2. Although some of this material is apparently outdated, it was prepared in 1997, prior to the availability of the Mears (1998) publication. The material presented was intended only to provide a general overview of geological processes in the area, as it is i generally beyond the scope of an EA to provide a thorough discussion of geologic processes and formations.

3. Paleontological surveys are normally not required for highway improvement projects. The Class III cultural resource survey conducted provided thorough coverage of the area of potential ground disturbance, and exposed vertebrate fossils of any significance located during cultural surveys are normally recorded, but not evaluated (Dave Eckles. Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, pers. commun.). Areas with the ROW of the state and BLM lands were previously disturbed during highway construction, and it is unlikely any vertebrate fossils would occur in this area. If vertebrate fossils are discovered during construction, the Wyoming State Geological Survey and the BLM will be notified so the appropriate steps may be taken to ensure the fossils are evaluated and protected.

The drama is further heightened later in the prologue when the issue of potentially re-routing Wyoming Highway 130 (aka the Snowy Range Road) out of the popular and beautiful Brush Creek Canyon is taken up by members of the public and adjacent landowners, whose overwhelming objections to said plan are duly noted and, stunningly, taken into account by decision makers, but I won’t spoil the outcome there, lest all incentive to read the document itself be removed by the inclusion of spoilers.

PROSE STYLE

While both documents take great pains to use proper and legally accurate language, again the FONSI stands as the superior document for its inclusion of multiple and sometimes very colorful narrative voices, ranging from the angry to the indifferent, popping with folk wisdom and plain speech, providing a refreshing contrast to the document’s other sections of admittedly turgid governmentspeak. Thus passages like the following, written in a comment letter by a resident of the region who objected to the closing of Brush Creek Canyon to motorized traffic, “It won’t be so very many years, a blink really in the life of a road, that you or I might not be able to walk that footpath so well” coexists prettily in the same document as “This Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) is based on the Environmental Assessment, Supplemental Environmental Assessment, and additional Alternatives Analysis document which have been independently evaluated by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and determined to adequately and accurately discuss the environmental issues and impacts of the proposed project and appropriate mitigation measures.”

(Further note: Your Humble Blogger had to scour the FONSI thoroughly to find the above hideous example of governmentspeak, while 25 Lbs. of Crap has even scarier examples of such on every single page!)

25 Lbs. of Crap, in contrast, consistently recycles phrases, sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs in its continued effort to meet its page, paper use, and weight quotas, though in its defense it must be said that at least this document has spared us the additional tonnage of weepy stump humper rhetoric its authors doubtless received in the process of preparing it.

OVERALL CONTENT AND GUIDING PHILOSOPHY

The FONSI represents a reasoned and open-minded approach to planning and execution on the part of its authors, who placed all of their metaphorical cards on the metaphorical table and not only sought but listened to input from federal agencies, state agencies, landowners and land users throughout its decision making process, and presents the unassailable proof of this within the document itself. The document clearly proves that the overwhelming opposition to the re-alignment of that segment of WYO 130 that passes through Brush Creek Canyon was not only taken into account but ultimately produced the desired result; the road will stay where it is, with just a retaining wall built to mitigate potential damage to the attractive and bountiful wetlands area that draws so many members of the public to the road and thus to the communities that road feeds. It contains none of the junk science (such as references to concerns about harm to species that do not, in fact, even exist in the affected area), nebulous references to ways it will “improve” the economies of the affected towns (such as 25 Lbs. of Crap’s interesting arguments that it will produce a net increase in timber jobs despite its inherent net decrease in the amount of timber that will be made available for holders of those jobs to work on), or caving to the uninformed opinions of people who have never even seen the affected area but still hold paralogical beliefs about it (like the bozos who try to convince passersby that the top of Kennaday Peak – a spot well above the tree line – is actually a clear cut).

The FONSI, therefore, gets a full and hearty recommendation from LIANT for its readability, reasonable tone, and pleasing outcome. If you read only one thick, steaming government document this year, this one should definitely be your choice.

WE MAKE THE NEWS...

For the stupidest reasons!

Attend an e-mail I just got from Sen. Goodenough, who had the wacky idea that maybe making rodeo Wyoming’s official state sport wasn’t the most important or necessary item on this year’s legislative agenda, and is trying, along with good folks like Sam Western, to open our lovely state up to new ideas, new archetypes.

Goodenough proposed an amendment to the bill that established rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport. He wanted to replace “rodeo” with “dancing.” For the record, I think this a fine, fine idea. I know it’s shocking for some to contemplate, but not everyone in Wyoming is a Buckle Bunny (and not everyone who isn’t is a Democrat. I, for one, have never, ever liked rodeo in the slightest – as I’ve shared with you, my dear readers, on these pages before, the autistic fixation in my home state on all things Cowboy is one of the big reasons why I left with such alacrity back when I was 18).

But almost everyone, in some form or another, likes dancing. Dancing covers a lot more cultural ground than rodeo, for one thing. There are many forms of dancing, all of which are fun. Country swing is a blast (and this coming from somone who doesn’t really like country music all that much). Polka, don’t get me started (my third favorite way to wind up breathing hard)! Belly dancing has long been a favorite for me (sometimes I even do it to country music). Flamenco is nice and exuberant and noisy and includes a whole different range of nationalities in the mix. Tap... clogging... ballet...

Ballet, interestingly enough, is what at least two pundits who heard about this tiny controversy fixed on. Ballet and the French, though Goodenough insists he mentioned neither in his arguments against enshrining rodeo as Wyoming’s state sport.

Below is a snippet of the transcript of a recent episode of CNN’s “Crossfire.” Note: “CROSSTALK” is what transcribers insert when several people are talking at once or some other circumstances prevent transcription.

*****
CARLSON: Wyoming is a proudly Western state. People in
Wyoming drive American cars. They don't drink a lot of
Chardonnay. They like rodeo. All this embarrasses Democrats
who believe in general Americans should be less like the
people of Wyoming and a lot more like the French. Wyoming
State Senator Keith Goodenough came out and said this the
other day.
When fellow legislators tried to make rodeo the official
sport of Wyoming, Goodenough objected. His suggestion for
the official sport, dance. That's right, dance. "Rodeo is
dangerous and uncivilized," he explained. "Plus," and this
of course was the real point, "no one in France rides
bulls. In France they pirouette and twirl around" which is
why the French are so, and I'm quoting now, "lean."
In the end the Democrats lost the argument. Drivers in
Wyoming will not have ballerinas on their driver's license
plates for now. But keep in mind, they tried.
(CROSSTALK)
CARLSON: Why don't you leave the people in Wyoming alone?
They like rodeo.
(CROSSTALK)
CARVILLE: I go to the rodeo in Wyoming.
(CROSSTALK)

Must have been a slow news day.

DISCONNECTION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

I’ve read a lot of funky stuff over the last few weeks, all purporting to explain why it’s a good or a bad thing to attack Iraq, but nothing has stuck with me as much as the following:

THE PENTAGON’S NEW MAP, by Thomas P.M. Barnett

I’m too high (got the crud again, and the attendant dependence on dextramothorphan hydrobromide-laden remedies in order to breathe) to comment properly on this right now, but I would urge all of you who came here today looking for something interesting to read to have a look at this instead.

It’s good stuff.

But try as I do to comment upon it, explain why I think it’s so good or interesting or germaine to what I usually write about on this here web page, I get nowhere near what I mean, except when I come out with the fact that I’m pondering what Wyoming’s place is within this larger framework and my thinking gets pretty far out at times.

And I’m not sure it’s all the cold medicine.

OOH! ANOTHER GOOD GUY

Somehow I knew that when I finally published my little report on who does and does not answer his or her e-mail over in the Capitol in Cheyenne that a late entry or two would report in.

In all fairness, though, today is the first time I contacted Rep. Chris Boswell (D-Green River) though I've long held a certain fondness for him ever since he put up a banner that read, in part "FIGHT LEGISLATIVE DE-EARMARKING" in the window of his magnificent Embassy Tavern in Green River (notable also for being an establishment that does, indeed, have Guiness on tap - another mark of quality in the bar and its owner, I say).

See, the House voted yesterday not to concur with what the Senate did to HB 264, and so had to appoint a few of its members to a Conference Committee, whose job it is to meet with several Senators to be named later (I'm hoping that happens today) to hash out the now glaring differences between what the House and the Senate did to this bill.

Mr. Boswell is one of the three appointed to this committee from the House, the others being Randall Luthi and Frank Philp.

So I wrote to him this morning, concerned because he had been one of the "yes" votes when the House was asked to concur with the Senate's tinkering and because I wanted to make sure he knew that dragging the State Land and Investment Board into the approval process for grants and loans is a mighty bad idea.

He wrote me back within about an hour and a half to tell me he agrees with me, and had only voted to concur because he wants to make sure the entire measure doesn't just die. He has a point there, actually!

So anyway, add him to the list of delightfully responsive legislators.

(Of course, anyone who serves Guiness on tap probably deserves to be in our good books even if he doesn't answer his e-mail, no?)

ANOTHER REASON TO PRETTY MUCH LOVE WYOMING

A friend who recently ventured out into the rest of America and was amused at how impressed his companions were by his political connections has observed, to them and to me, that in Wyoming, if one has any kind of life at all, everyone is politically connected.

In what other state do front-running gubernatorial candidates make the morning coffee circuit in a town with less than 1700 people in it?

No other.

In what other state might one's Representative bother to track one down at lunch and callthe restaurant to alert one about an important vote coming up that needs some "instant lobbying" magic?

No other. Unless the "one" under consideration is, e.g. Bill Gates or John Malone or somebody like that.

I can think of no other state where routine, matter-of-fact, friendly contact with even the House Majority Whip of one's state legislature is such a commonplace, either.

Still, as this legislative season winds down, I feel the need to stir the pot a bit by pointing out some members of our state legislature that have been wonderfully communicative and who has been woefully, perhaps arrogantly, silent. The former I must praise even if they voted wrong; at least they bothered to explain themselves to an impertinet chamber chick who wrote them out of the blue. The latter, well, I'll just say who they were and leave it at that.

First of all, my sampling. Looking over my e-mail records, I have written at least once to the following legislators this term:

HOUSE:
Pete Illoway
Frank Latta
Kurt Bucholz

SENATE
Bob Peck
RaeLyn Job
Jayne Mockler
Bill Hawks
Hank Coe
John Barrasso
Bill Vasey
Keith Goodenough

Not a huge sample, and we're only talking about 50 messages in total, working on Senate File 16 (where to put the prison and how much to spend on it), HB 264 and HB 91, but still, I found the results interesting.

First of all, Pete Illoway. The House Majority Whip, he not only replied to every single e-mail, no matter how trivial or chatty, but at one point he gave me his cell phone number (no, I'm not giving it out) in case I needed to pass on something urgent. Also, he kept me so posted that I knew committee decisions and bill status in general even before the press or the webmaster for the Legisweb!

Even when we disagreed about things, he was cordial, timely, responsive and thorough in explaining his reasons. I will of course stipulate that prior personal contact may skew my results some in this; as I have previously disclosed on this site, he and I had a fine old time a few years ago beating up on our Local Podunk Phone Company (tm) over a certain directory assistance issue.

Frank Latta was also an immediate turn-around kind of guy, though again we have a prior acquaintance from when he was the mayor of Gillette and I was a WAM (Wyoming Association of Municipalities) newbie. We disagreed on HB 91 (repealing sales tax on ag implements), but he was still genuinely cool about it, and he even returned phone calls before he remembered who the hell I was. Big thumbs up! We can expect a lot from this guy in the future.

(Oh, and I just remembered: he wants to borrow my YHB-and-Sewer King-and-Oracle-and-MinisterofFun-annotated copy of Pushed off the Mountain, Sold Down the River!)

Kurt Bucholz is our hometown man, and is the one who managed to track me down at lunch, fortuitously a lunch I was having with Mr. and Mrs. Mayor of Saratoga, so he got three brains for the price of one as we discussed strategy and tactics on HB 264 and school funding. I bet he's governor someday, our Kurt.

As for the Senators, all hail John Barrasso! Not only was he responsive (and he doesn't know me from Eve), he was INSTANTLY responsive, like Illoway, giving me the scoop before even the newspaper reporters at the Capitol knew HB 264 had passed. He was also great about warning me of likely alterations the Senate would most likely be making (and some of them stink overwhelmingly, like dragging the SLIB into the approval process for grants and loans administered under this program). Not just a nice medical commentator (he does a Health Minute on KTWO-TV in Casper), that one!

Keith Goodenough, of course, is the king of keeping citizens in the loop, maintaining his own personal spam-list updating hundreds of folks on the progress of his bills, his opinions on Senate procedural matters, his analysis of the supplemental budget, and other things that cross his mind. A lot of people don't like him, but I've gotta say he sets the standard for trying his best to involve the ordinary citizens who pay for this government in its decision making processes.

As for the rest on my list.... Coe, Mockler, Job, Hawks, Peck... and Vasey!... all have yet to acknowledge my e-mails or calls. Now, they might just be technophobes who don't dig on e-mail, but then... why do they have e-mail accounts, then? Hmm?

I'll leave the conclusion-reaching to y'all, for a change.

FRIDAY FIVE

OK, I've been bugging you guys enough about politics and chamber events lately, so, as Monty Python's crew would say "And now for something completely different..."

The Friday Five is a blog-related phenomenon in which five questions are posed each Friday, I suspect to help the millions of us out there who occasionally run into writer's block keep these here web pages going.

I learned about it from fellow blogger Lance Riley over in Laramie, and while yes I am well aware it is not Friday, these questions, posed Friday last, were just too entirely up my alley to pass up. So here goes.

1. What is your favorite type of literature to read (magazine, newspaper, novels, nonfiction, poetry, etc.)?

My gut response is science fiction, but I have to qualify that; I generally hate what my My Own Dear Personal Mom has referred to as "dragons and dum-dums" stories although I love J.R.R. Tolkein (I guess it's all those lesser beings who try to rip off Tolkein that really annoy me). I like the more serious stuff, that makes the reader question his assumptions or understandings, makes the reader a little uncomfortable with himself and the world, or makes the reader wonder if he's crazy. Sort of like my taste in movies.

Runner up: Ancient Greek and Roman literature, largely because they are "pre-specialization," i.e. Aristotle did not ever say to himself (or allow others to say to him) "I am not a sociologist, so I can't comment on X" or "I have never actually written a play, so I cannot comment on drama" or whatever. Everything we need to know about why we are who we are can be found in the average Sophoclean tragedy, Socratic dialogue, or Ciceronian essay.

2. What is your favorite novel?

Wow. Very, very, very hard to say. Generally when I'm asked this question I say Umberto Eco's FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, though there are a few other contenders worthy of mention: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER, Philip K. Dick's RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH, and Robertson Davies' CORNISH TRILOGY (Consisting of THE REBEL ANGELS, WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE, and THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS).

I like novels that teach me something I didn't know before. I first read FP when I was about 14 and it triggered a lifelong interest in Christian heresies (remember, I am the only Manichaean you know), the Templars, crackpots in general, and Charles Fort. NEUROMANCER was the first book I've ever read that induced fetishes; Gibson, as I will touch on in a later blog entry (book review alert!) is the most spectacular poet of surfaces, of materials, of the sensual quality of objects, since Keats, and he's got a great sense of story, too. Philip K. Dick re-triggered my interest in stuff that didn't make it into the Bible and all of his VALIS books, but especially RFA, have haunted me deeply for other reasons, too, especially their suspicious, paranoid qualities (why I like Pynchon and Borges, too).

Pretty much everything Robertson Davies has written has shot up my list, too, but the CORNISH trilogy, being the first I read, will always be my favorite for sentimental reasons.

This list will probably be entirely different tomorrow.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)

Again, can't choose just one; I have a habit of obsessing over insect poems, so it could be Paul Valery's L'ABEILLE (The Bee) "let my body be made warm/by this tiny gold alarm/without which love suffers and dies" or Yeats' LONG LEGGED FLY "like a long legged fly on the stream/his mind moves upon silence" (note: pulling these from memory; I'm at work, my library is at home, get it?).

My single favorite bit of poetry ever is part of a longer poem "Songs Between the Soul and the Bridegroom" by St. John-of-the-Cross, Roy Campbell's translation. Once I even embroidered it, in colored thread, on a pair of jeans:

Diffusing showers of grace,
In haste among these groves his path he took.
And only with his face,
Glancing around the place,
Has clothed them in beauty with a look.

(This stanza quotes a "reply from the creatures" made to a bride [the soul] who is chasing after a missing bridegroom [god]. You don't even have to dig the allegory to enjoy the idea of "clothing them in beauty with a look". Think about what it's like to see a place where a loved one, long missed, has been and what that knowledge does to your own perception of that place. Good stuff)

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?

You know, this is pretty sad for a complete Greek/Roman nut, but I've never read Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Funny: the book fairy left a Britannica edition of same on my doorstep a few months ago, so maybe I'll get to it soon.

In general, I do not deprive myself of any reading, though. If I want to read something, I read it – even if I have to overturn the heavens and the earth to get my hands on it.

5. What are you currently reading?

Several things (of course). GEEKS AND GEEZERS (a Harvard Business School book that is driving me crazy because I am SO not the target audience for same; I feel most of the time, when I read such things, like what I've actually got in my hands is just a big fat marketing brochure for the book I thought I had bought), William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION (best since NEUROMANCER!), SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS (March is National Novel Editing Month!), Caleb Carr's ANGEL OF DARKNESS, PM, PC Engineer's scintillating Phase I Study of Water Treatment and Delivery Options for the Town of Saratoga, and, for the seventh or eighth big week, the Draft Forest Plan for Medicine Bow National Forest (or what parts of which my dog hasn't wisely torn up yet).

So there. Probably the wordiest Friday Five ever!

THE MEDICINE BOWIFICATION OF WYOMING COMMENCES...

Caveat lector (as always): What follows, whatever follows, is written directly from the spleen. I'm posting relatively late in the day because I thought I'd need a "cool down" period after reading the news that set me off this morning, but now I realize that no amount of time is going to cool me down. Only reconsideration, retraction or other positive action by our beloved State Senate can accomplish that. Maybe. Possibly. But probably not. Reader beware...

The slight misnomer notwithstanding, the headline on page A7 of yesterday's Casper Star-Tribune says it all: "Cities' economic development bill gutted." (I say misnomer only because in calling it a "cities' economic development bill" the headline writer conveys the impression that this bill originated with the cities instead of with the governor's office. Minor quibble, maybe, but details count, especially in headlines. Sigh).

House Bill 264 got re-referred this week, to the Senate Appropriations Committee, and that committee took out a lot of the funding provided for in the original version of the bill before handing it back to the main body of the Senate for debate. The original House version of the bill, you may recall, would have spent $135 million over the next ten years to help Wyoming towns and cities shore up infrastructure for economic development purposes.

Now there's $8.4 million ($5 million from the General Fund and $3.4 million from a "mineral royalty grant program that has not previously been used (!!!)") in a one-time appropriation to create a "business ready community account."

At issue, apparently, is concern on the part of the likes of Sen. John Schiffer over diversion of coal bonus money (funds coal companies bid to secure leases on federal land) to make that initial investment in that account grow. Says the article, "a portion of that money is used to build new schools."

By all means, let us take the town of Medicine Bow as our model for the rest of the state, Senators!

Nothing against Medicine Bow, mind you. It's a perfectly nice town, but, let's face it, there's nothing going on there economically or culturally, despite the fact that back when I was a teenybopper the good people of that berg and Hanna blackmailed our school district into building in each of those towns brand spanking new unnecessary high schools exactly identical to the then-very-much-needed one for Saratoga. The financial burden thus incurred haunts us even today, as does the irony of the current situation in Medicine Bow: no economic activity to speak of (there's a historic hotel tourist trap and bar, a gas station, a motel... am I missing anything?), a school population of, what, 11 kids? And what percentage of those kids are the children of teachers in the Medicine Bow schools again? Close to 50? Oh and what's that? Yes, I know, there could be double the number of kids in that school if that one Mormon family hadn't elected to home school...

Yes indeed, a perfect model for the rest of our state, no?

I admit, I am engaging in a bit of hyperbole, channelling Chicken Little for a moment or two, but honestly, to what other conclusion can I come when our state leadership declines to help our towns and cities pull themselves out of the economic shitter but is still concerned about taking money away from the fund to build new schools?

Who (besides teachers' kids) is going to be attending school when every family not blessed with a fat trust fund has left the state to find a job that will allow the children to eat something besides government cheese and wear something on their feet besides those rubber tire sandals Abbie Hoffman taught us to make?

Is our entire state just to become a giant jobs program for teachers? And the odd (probably out-of-state) building contractor?

Man, those teachers better plan on having Mormon-sized families to fill those school buildings, cuz none of the rest of us are going to.

I'm not done ranting yet, either, because there's also Sen. Irene Devin, who "expressed concern that the Business Council would be mirroring efforts of the State Loan and Investment Board, which also gives grants to communities."

OK, fine, Irene - then just double the appropriation made to the SLIB, but then take away most of that organization's bullshit requirements – which, among other things, dictate that a municipality can only fund one project at a time with SLIB money. Want a firetruck? Then you'd better wait until next year to fix your water tower. Plugging a leak in a water supply ditch? Then your ambulance better not break down until next year. You want to what? Fix up some dilapidated buildings so that maybe you can attract or develop some private sector business? Not this year: we just gave you your allowance that you frivolously blew on complying with brand new DEQ regulations governing your sewage treatment plant. Or, here's something radical, repeal that stupid de-earmarking crock you threw at us two years ago and give local governments a way to take care of themselves again.

Anything but "mirroring."

Mirroring? Maybe in a strictly funhouse sense of the word.

Oh well, at least it's still possible that HB 264 is going to squeak through in some fashion or other (there will definitely have to be a big time conference committee to reconcile what the House and Senate have each done to this bill), and a little money set aside for economic development is better than none at all.

Even if it is administered by the Wyoming Business Council. But that's a topic for another day.

USEFUL HOME DECOR

I can't think of anything more useless, sinister and downright creepy as the rash of home redecorating gimmick shows that have infested our young century.

They creep me out, even as I occasionally find myself taking in high dosages of same on holidays and other "down time" with My Own Dear Personal Parents. It's not just the stupid ideas (turning a bedroom into a pullman car! Hanging real, living moss on the walls! Converting a crappy old car into a child's bed!) or the rampagingly passive-aggressive interactions between the decorators and the dupes they convert into serf-workers in exchange for the chance to be on national television. It's also the complete frivolousness of it all, the futility, the incredibly dumb objects that people can be seduced into paying good money for.

I still think these shows are a horror, but, well, the law of averages requires that even Satan himself occasionally performs a mitzvah.

In the midst of one of these risible redecorations, two words that I would never have put together in a million years, got put together as the decorator/host/bimbo babbled on.

Those words being "chalkboard" and "paint."

Seems the victim of the d/h/b's ministrations had a habit not unfamiliar to certain of my companions, that of posting Post-It notes to himself all over the place, creating a look most untidy and somewhat crankish. I, of course, found it pleasing and comforting the way it was, sort of Empire of Hardware meets my refridgerator...

But the d/h/b insisted he, the homeowner, would be better served by... chalkboard paint.

Any surface can be a chalkboard with... chalkboard paint.

No more Post-Its and assorted other clutter with... chalkboard paint.

Notes fall down, calendars get unwieldy, grocery lists get lost, but... chalkboard paint lingers on.

Visions of a substantially Unabomber Cabin at Kate's Landing danced before my eyes. Gone would be the upside-down wallpaper in my kitchen. I'd make it a chalkboard! My stupid old "Warm Mornings" furnace had just been crying out, all this time, to be made a chalkboard, and now, with chalkboard paint (ought I to be capitalizing those words, so significant have they become?), at last would be heard its cries de cour. And my closet door's plaintive wail, too, would be gently silenced.

And one of the greatest banes of my funky existence, the tendency for weird, pesky inspiration to strike at 3 a.m. when the house is freezing cold and dark and my bed and electric blanket cozy and impossible to leave, could similarly be dealt with. A chalkboard above my head and some glow-in-the-dark chalk and no idea need ever escape me because I continually and wrongly assume that an idea that great will still be with me when I wake up in the morning, again.

But where would I acquire me some of this miracle substance?

As its entry on my own chamber website proclaims, if the Empire of Hardware doesn't have it, you don't need it.

And so to the Sewer King, pestered that very morning at coffee.

"Huh?"

"Chalkboard. Paint." my hands indicated one word to our left, the other to our right, high in the air as though inscribed on a marquee.

I brought my hands closer together.

"Chalkboard paint!"

"Chalkboard paint?"

"Chalkboard paint."

"As in you want some?"

"Oh, yes please. Do you have some?"

"I don't know the answer to that." Pause for some scribbling on the hand. You know true friendship by the priority given to even one's weirdest requests by the pal: if you make the hand, you've made the grade, hit the big time, achieved the status of, glory be, something to be dealt with before the hand gets washed.

Days went by. Agonizing days. Days of skis and ice fishing, of meetings and projects, of rock shopping and bar hopping. And then... at coffee (of course)...

"Come with me, young lady. We even have it in stock."

Rapture! Joy! Bliss that cannot be tallied on one's chalkboard!

But oh, it's a spray paint.

Chalkboard spray paint. Hmm.

Ever resourceful, ever adaptable, I snagged a can anyway and went happily home.

The fumes were tolerable, I suppose. Unless perhaps they killed off entirely those parts of my brain and respiratory system that are bothered by such things, in which case, bah, what did I need those for anyway?

As I reported my silly new project to my friends at Secular Johnson, however, I was given a momentary jolt of dismay.

"Oh. My. God." one pal's immediate reaction began. "It really is the Unabomber Cabin!"

Seems Ted Ka-whatever, too, had festooned his walls with chalkboards in his day, though he lugged in actual chalkboards from, e.g., a bombed-out school or something and physically hung them from the sagging walls of his cabin, there to cover with equations and bomb plans and early versions of his manifesto in which he first condemned tunafish, but then performed the gentle edit that produced the famous anti-technology rant that still gets passed around like a modern day Protocols of the Elders of Zion or something.

Imagine if he had had access to chalkboard paint!

And so now, many decorating sins are hidden, buried under admittedly uneven layers (I'm no great hand with a spray can) of green paint festooned with all manner of lists and observations and cryptic reminders of ideas for stories, ideas for projects, conspiracy theories, recipes, ingredient lists, and the list of what books I've loaned out to whom (yes, dear readers, I am keeping track of that). And my calendar.

And while not every surface, even liberally coated with Chalkboard Paint, doth make a fine chalkboard (the upside-down wallpaper is the best, most eraseable, most legible), still, it's a pleasing shade of green, somewhere between Forest and Kelly.

And the Unabomber Cabin comes that much closer to feeling like home.

QUICKIE BILL NOTE

HB 264 (that's the "Business Ready Communities" bill setting aside money out of the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund to be turned over as grants or loans to Wyoming towns for economic development infrastructure spending) made it out of the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee on Friday, so now it's "on General File," meaning its next stop is a first reading by the Senate as a whole. IF it manages to get introduced, there will be three readings, and thus three chances for the Senate to tinker with it more, so it ain't over yet.

In case anyone is interested, here is the roll call vote from the committee. Do note who voted "NO". She might be worth contacting to find out what she doesn't like about the bill (Sen. Barrasso told me recently that a lot of members of the Senate are looking down their noses at ALL spending measures regardless of those measures' merits, so I will give a little benefit of the doubt until I know something more specific, but still... Hmm.):

2/21/2003 S09 Recommended Amend and Do Pass
 
ROLL CALL
 
Ayes:  Senator(s) Barrasso, Coe, Decaria and Hawks
 
Nayes:  Senator(s) Mockler
 
Ayes 4    Nays 1    Excused 0    Absent 0    Conflicts 0

More later about something else entirely... I promise! I know not all of my readers appreciate all of this politicking, but it's part of who I, your humble blogger, am!

INVISIBLE ENEMIES...

...Would appear to have invaded my bloodstream after all. I have sat, only a little smugly, pleased with myself for having managed to stay healthy through this ferocious flu epidemic that has swept our valley, figuring it was my turn to weather the storm unscathed, for once, after bouts with every other goddamned bug that has come to town since I did...

But it would seem that my schedule is catching up with me, and this last breakneck week finally weaked my resolve, in body and mind. I feel the first chills, the first headache, the first body aches of the crud (though I can't discount the terrifyingly bad breakfast I had this morning during our hideously early [especially after a late night class the night before] meeting... restaurants, I am still convinced, are not places to have breakfast. Cook it yourself or do without).

And I have another big fat hairy meeting that I can't get out of tonight.

So, I bid you adieu for now, with the following parting shot: HB 264 has yet to get out of committee, and HB 91 has yet to come up for debate. You know what to do.

MARCHING ORDERS

House Bill 264, a measure to help create "Business-Ready Communities", as previously reported here, in the Red-Star Trombone, and other publications, made it out of the House of Representatives and into the Senate last week, subtantially altered as per the wishes of LIANT and its many allies. Thanks to all of you who tweaked the tails of committee members and House members in general (and to those of you who couldn't be bothered, phooey on you and yours for seven generations).

But of course it ain't over. The bill now awaits the pleasure of the Senate Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee, who have had it since last Wednesday. There is no evidence that they've really even looked at it yet, but that doesn't mean it's too soon to give them their marching orders: let it out and recommend Do Pass, little chickadees.

The committee members in whose hands the fate of this bill currently rests are as follows (click on the names to link to instantly e-mail them if your browser is so enabled):

CHAIRMAN Bill Hawks - bhawks@trib.com

John Barrasso - barrasso@senate.wyoming.com

Ken DeCaria - kdecaria@senate.wyoming.com

Jayne Mockler - jmockler@senate.wyoming.com

But wait, there's more!

House Bill 91, creating a sales tax exemption for agricultural implements, has made it out of the Senate Revenue Committee on a unanimous vote, BUT at least two of the "yes" votes did not seem terribly enthusiastic to witnesses. Now, I've been asked not to name who the near-naysayers were, but I imagine many of my more astute/cynical experienced readers already know who they are (hint: same gender as YHB), and I believe that information is available elsewhere.

Regardless... It's time to start talking to the general Senate membership, urging them to make sure this bill gets its hearing on the Senate Floor as well as a passage! So, once again, click HERE to access a complete list of legislator e-mail addresses. There are other ways to contact them, yes, such as leaving them phone messages through the Senate's receptionist (307-777-7711) (it shouldn't suprise any of you to learn that the good folks at that number and the House's know my voice from the second I say hello. Sigh), but e-mail is quick. One click and you've got a direct pipeline to the legislator him or herself (gotta love Wyoming, folks!). And most of them, even the ones you think are kind of arrogant jerks, check e-mail pretty frequently, and many even respond!

I've had a fun and spirited E-discussion with Rep. Pete Illoway, for instance, and so even though we still disagree on some things, I think he's a helluva guy whom I'm proud to know.

Plus, well, put it this way: the sooner we get the fates of these two bills settled, the sooner I'll stop nagging you, dear readers, to do your part.

So come on, guys, do your part!

BELATED MORAL QUALMS

It was Sunday afternoon as I found myself, my Enabling Assistant, and several other assorted hangers-on hooting “Tent of Decadence” at everyone who came to visit us during the 23rd Annual Donald E. Erickson Memorial Chariot Races this weekend that I first really began to ponder some of the less morally salutory aspects of my job as your chamber chick (having long ago surrendered any pretence of moral or other authority as Your Humble Blogger).

Here I was, worn out from a week of hard partying that did not fail to include horrible things like shots of tequila, encouraging others to even greater feats of alcoholism than I had achieved, plying them also with massages, the EA’s sybaritic black bean chili, the Moon Massage Mama’s “cowboy caviar” and, oh yes, the prospect of betting and losing the family fortune on the outcome of a mule race. For a living.

Many years ago, a different chamber of commerce event landed me with the title of Governor of Vice at the tender age of 16. We had, for the purposes of celebrating Saratoga’s 100th anniversary, declared “The Good Times Valley” its own state, and we decided, quite properly, that a state needed a governor, and we decided to elect ours based solely on photographs of the various candidates’ knees. I wrapped my knees in paper bags in tribute to then-famous (this was 1986) “Unknown Comic” and ran as “The Unknown Candidate.” I did not make governor – one of the previously mentioned medical bombshells drew a cute smiley face on her shapely crossed knee and ran away with the election – but as the person who got the fewest votes, I became the Good Times Valley’s Governor of Vice.

At the time it was considered quite an irony because I was such a nerdy little goody-two-shoes, speech team, Students Against Drunk Driving, designated dork – I mean driver – at the few parties I managed to locate by dead reckoning because certainly no one was going to tell the cop’s kid, etc. This was our Governor of Vice, everyone said, skeptically? Whatever.

But it turned out to be pretty prophetic, didn’t it? Because now I make my living tempting people from far away to come out here and spend all their money tooling around the mountainside on snowmobiles and hoping they don’t get lost, freezing half to death as they shiver over an ice hole in Saratoga Lake, paying $10 a head for unlimited sampling at Wyoming’s state microbrew competition, and betting, betting, betting on chariot and mule races.

Betting! On mule races!

And drinking, always drinking, because of course as your chamber chick I run the beer tent! Made extra appealing by the addition of a masseuse!

Tent of Decadence! Tent of Decadence!

Strongly contrasting with the Trailer of Virtue next door, where the boy scouts were serving up wholesome fare like hamburgers and hot dogs and hot chocolate and coffee.

But even that wasn’t so virtuous, since the Trailer of Virtue was also a Trailer of Vice, where all that calcutta money changed hands all weekend long...

Oh, I just can’t win! My entire lifestyle is drenched in sin!

I repent in dust and ashes, and vow to reform all. It’s going to be nothing but straight shooting for me and my chamber from now on. Clean living, milk-drinking, mom-and-apple-pie, maybe some hymn singing...

Oh man, that sounds like a drag!

Good god, what was I thinking?

I really probably just need a nap, don’t I? I mean, listen to me! I almost had myself convinced to start a Saratoga chapter of like the WCTU or something. What’s next, marching around with signs like “Gin is poison?”

OK, false alarm. Tent of Decadence it is.

Thank you for calling the Saratoga/Platte Valley Cham-beer of Commerce. No, that’s not a typo.

I’m on the job!

AH, CURST, CURST CLEVERNESS!

I have already taken my lumps for sic'ing the Squawkers on the Sewer King; as I stood out in the messy drizzle that can't decide whether it is rain or snow, hauling mightily on the canvas of the chamber's 14x14 tent, my cell phone rang.

"You have a Valentine's Day greeting," my Enabling Assistant proclaimed on the other end, with an ominous snicker.

And so the Squawkers launched into, what else, "Rock of Ages" over the phone.

Curse the cleverness of whomever deduced that I was reachable after all; I thought I had timed it all perfectly: nail the King, abscond into busy work outside the city limits, and then just wait out the afternoon. Curses!

But I still think I came out ahead. After all, they called from the Empire of Hardware, which means the Sewer King had to listen to them twice. In a row. And the second time, he even had to pay for it.

Some days it's great to be me.

WEIRD ENOUGH

Readers often ask me if the stuff I print on this website is really true. Can one person’s life possibly be this weird? Am I demented? Where can they get some of whatever it is the Sewer King, the Lord Macklebrains and I have all been accused of smoking? Etc.?

And how weird does something have to be before I’ll write about it.

Oh, anything will do, really. Sometimes, even just lunch.

But what a lunch!

I lunched today with the kooky, kooky core of the Saratoga club of Soroptimists International, who rightly discovered many years ago, along with FTD and Godiva and Hallmark, that Valentine’s Day is money in the bank if it is exploited correctly.

Enter the Sweetheart Squawkers, a group that, were it not composed mostly of sweet little grey-haired (or almost grey-haired) ladies and the odd certifiable medical bombshell (our own dear Dr. Di and her assistant, Mrs. Sketch, definitely qualify in this category), would certainly be prosecutable under RICO. For a mere five dollars American, anyone in town can aim them like a guided “musical” missile at anyone else in town for a special V-Day serenade, which serenade will continue unabated until the recipient also pays the crew five dollars American.

This isn’t exactly the Saratoga Community Choir, either, folks, though in terms of sheer goofy exuberance many of these girls could perhaps qualify for honorary membership in the Propeller Beanie Club (a.k.a. the tenor section).

Since I am of the disposition to patronize this group quite a lot on Valentine’s Day (a holiday I otherwise loathe, of course) – I sent them to both the Sewer King and his brother the Oracle last year, and wound up playing a lusty game of Squawker Ping-Pong with the Sewer King – they graciously invited me to lunch, to help them giggle and plot and, well, practice.

My Enabling Assistant was there with... oh god... the horror, the horror!... a Casio SK-1 keyboard. I know that one of the medical bombshells traditionally deploys a clarinet, but she was unable to lunch with us... And then there was My Own Dear Personal Mother and our Walking Partner... who both had combs and wax paper.

And were trying to figure out how to play them without getting the lip buzz of their lives.

And giggling.

And trying again.

And finally developing the knack for the placement of the wax paper, the proper tautness of the grip on the comb, the volume at which to hum. A great deal of work went into this.

So now that I know what’s coming, I deeply, deeply regret the fact that I have egged them on so very enthusiastically again this year.

And I hope that the Sewer King will someday find it in his heart to forgive me for being subjected to, what else, “Rock of Ages.”

IN CASE ANYBODY IS INTERESTED...

There's some good news on the Legislature's web site. One of those bills I'm always on about, HB 91, creating a sales tax exemption for the purchase of agricultural implements, made it out of the Senate Revenue Committee today and is on the Senate's General File.

Thanks to everyone who wrote to the committee members. But it's not done yet. Keep calling and writing, everybody.

APOPHENIA

Once in a while, the world outside that I left behind when I returned home to “Brigadoon” still manages to intrude into mine. Usually it does so in very weird ways that leave me pinching myself and suspicious, or confused and bleary-eyed, or peeking over my shoulder every few minutes to see if David Lynch is hiding behind a curtain, directing the scene.

This morning before I set down to beaver away some more at the chamber’s web page, I took a moment to peek at one of the many online magazines I sample at odd intervals throughout the day (this, probably, explaining much of why the intrusions of the real world come at such odd intervals, in such precise and tiny bites, and are, on the whole, so weird: I am choosing to let the real world in via controlled bursts, choosing the sources, and I have very odd and esoteric taste in sources) and saw an interview with one of my favorite living authors, William Gibson, he whose 1984 novel Neuromancer rocked my little 14-year-old world and taught me to see it in terms of data flow, cutthroat technological innovation, cultural melange...

Gibson has published a new book, Pattern Recognition and my first shock was realizing that the fact that he has written a new novel was news to me. My second was that he’s no longer extrapolating current trends into a sci-fi future. My third was learning that Gibson, who, while one of the original writers (along with Vernor Vinge) who coined the term “cyberspace” in his fiction, has long been a noted non-computer user of the Oracle’s caliber, is now keeping a blog, just like me (well, sort of)! My fourth was that I was being seduced into apophenia - or, actually, seducing myself into apophenia (for actually whenever one is seduced, it is the self seducing the self, seeking excuses for engaging in behavior or thought patterns in which one wanted to engage anyway, and not in any way the actions of another agent triggering the behavior), “the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things” as Gibson defined the word in his interview.

Gibson’s last couple of books have dealt, in some ways, with this phenomenon, which I have noted at odd times in this here blog when I catch myself becoming fixated on what appear to be leitmotifs for a day, a week, an event. Gibson has foreseen this as a species-wide tendency in his creation of characters who have uncanny, intuitive knacks for finding patterns in vast accumulations of data from which they can extract all kinds of useful knowledge; one character, cyberspying on a minor celebrity’s shopping and media consumption habits, suddenly deduces that she is about to commit suicide, even though he’s never met her, for example.

I’m not quite there yet, but I have today found myself plunged right into the soup. And it’s hard not to see it as weird or meaningful, when Gibson is talking in his magazine interview about how Cornell boxes of various kinds keep turning up in his fiction (at one point in his third novel he even has a slightly crazed Artificial Intelligence constructing them in an orbiting space station) and then a few hours later, in another stray moment, reading a completely different magazine with a completely different slant on things I find myself reading a brief “Hit and Run” reference to an appreciative retrospective on, who else, Joseph Cornell that appears in another magazine and so of course I go and read the retrospective because I’ve always liked Cornell anyway (fun and funky to learn, in reading that article, that I’m not the only one who looked at Cornell’s boxes and thought of one of my favorite poets, fellow New Yorker Hart Crane. Now, of course, I feel stupid for having felt like the only one, but before I hit the nodal point of that article, I didn’t realize just how natural and obvious that connection really was!)...

A few hours later, taking a break from bean counting and answering the same freaking question six times an hour – no, folks, I’m sorry, there are no motel rooms left in Saratoga for the chariot races – I hit upon a different article in a different magazine, one in defense of being a less than perfect housekeeper (which definition anyone who has visited the Unabomber Cabin unannounced would bestow on me in a New York minute), and here’s this woman going on and on about how much more interesting it is to have a car that friends of mine tend to call a “white trash storage shed,” how debris within it, left undisturbed, becomes kind of a time capsule, and oh my God, I’ve been making Cornell boxes all along!

Of course, we all are, whenever we deposit a bit of trash in a wastebasket in a room we don’t use much, or put the less important papers on our desks aside on the “stuff I’ll get to someday” pile, or put our grandfather’s weirdly eclectic mix of valuable antiques and stunningly pointless junk onto a bookcase shelf, so this is really nothing radical, but there it is, anyway.

Apophenia.

William Gibson’s new book. Cornell boxes. Cornell’s career. Messy houses. Messy cars. Cornell boxes.

I’m just waiting now for William Gibson to come back.

Probably, I’ll just make that happen by reading some more of his blog.

GETTING OUR ROCKS OFF

“Holy sh*t, it’s bigger than I thought!”

“Mmm... Much more magnificent in person!”

“That’s a big ***ing rock.”

No, no, no, get your minds out of the gutter, dear readers. I’m actually talking about a rock. As in bones of the earth, pre-dirt, giant hunks of granite and lichen that poke out of the soil like icebergs in the North Atlantic.

And, Titanic-like, my Co-Conspirator In Everything (aka, of course, The Sewer King) and I have struck a doozy, though it’s still anybody’s guess if this Rock of Ages will sink us. As it stands, it’s become rather an unhealthy obsession with the pair of us, turning us into wild-eyed maniacs at the mere mention of the construction project on the Snowy Range Road, bridges, digging, playgrounds, anything, really that could be connected by even the wildest leaps of logic (and the pair of us are quite capable of those) to the general, Platonic ur-idea of rocks and thus to “Our Rock.”

“Have you seen it?” we demand of anyone who is dumb enough to trigger this Pavlovian reaction in us. “That rock, that beautiful rock, that hugewonderfulgorgeousworldclassrock sticking out where they’re carving out a section to straighten the road after the bridge?” (pause to wipe drool off our chins, to smooth down hair that has stood up on end, to shift back onto the chairs or barstools abandoned in our excitement to discuss The Rock).

Oh, Sweet Pan-Fried Jesus, we’ve got to have that rock. We know right where to put it, smack in the middle of Kathy Glode Park for the little tykes to climb all over in place of those giant truck tires that leave said tykes well vulcanized at day’s end, to the dismay of mothers everywhere. It would look magnificent there, remarkable, a monument to what this town was, is and could be (or could not be, if we don’t find a way out of our current economic mess... that rock could be all that is left of us, someday) and to its Creator, and yes, I, the Manichaen, the heretic, invoke the Creator in glory as I contemplate this rock.

Choirs of angels sing in soaring harmonies as one beholds this rock. A shimmering, blinding ray of sun has been specially assigned to pierce the clouds and illuminate this rock’s glory.

And we want to move it to town.

All of this is, of course, old news to our coffee buddies, our friends and neighbors and relatives and lackeys.

But this week, we stopped flapping our jaws, realized we’re the only people who really care about this project, and decided to see what we could do about it.

Can it be removed whole and entire or will LeGrand Johnson, the prime contractors widening the road out there, have to blow it to smithereens?

Once it’s removed, can it be transported to town (some 15 miles)?

Once it’s transported, how do we get it laid in at the park (at least the Sewer King, being in truth the king of all manner of things hydrological, geological, and paralogical, knows where the sprinker system runs underneath the park’s soil)?

Our coffee buddies finally convinced us that they didn’t know. Our Minister of Fun has stopped returning our calls. Our contractor buddies tap their foreheads at each other at the mere mention of our names*

So today, my CCIE and I climbed into his truck and went out to harass the people whose job it will be, ultimately, to deal with this gorgeous behemoth.

I had caught one of the sub-contractors at Happy Hour the night before, and he had promised to introduce me to the Big Boys today, so it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise to the nice young men in clean white coats who are coming to... I mean, the guys widening the highway.

Shouldn’t have been, but probably was.

Still, the nice foreman from LeGrand Johnson was very nice to us, hardly cracking a smirk at all as we outlined to him our grand, King Ludwig-like scheme for The Rock, and dutifully headed up the road a piece to contemplate the thing directly.

Hence the bits of dialog which begin today’s blog entry. See, my partner and I had only before glanced longingly at it from within the pickup. It really is bigger in person. A lot bigger.

According to Contractor Man, it may well weigh 300,000 pounds!

That’s a lot of granite.

And that’s only if we are actually seeing most of the rock. If it truly is iceberg-like... if it truly is... underneath that soil which surrounds and partly covers it may be more stone than was used to build the works of Ozymandias, King of Kings, in which case, Contractor Man will have to drill little holes in it, shove in big pieces of dynamite, and we shall have to look upon them and despair.

But while there’s rock, there’s hope. We haven’t bothered everyone there is to bother just yet. We know people who know people who have truly formidable equipment. And we are persistent, yes, and patient.

And it’s probably going to be a couple of months yet before the contractors have to do anything with the thing. Probably.

So, nobody’s safe for months yet. Months. Or more.

And regardless, we’ll be telling his grandchildren about this rock. I may write poems about this rock. It shall go down in local lore or we will die trying to put it there.

Go see it while ye may.

*Authorial postulate

HEH HEH HEH...

So after a weekend of celebrating an apparent victory – the House of Representatives passed HB 296 on the first reading, and approved Rep. Latta’s amendments – and Winter Carnivaling (registration tent for the nordic ski races, one of many unofficial assistants at the Sewer King’s craps table at the casino night*, slogging along on my skis through the poker run), I came to work Monday feeling my oats.

A web search for the internet home of Recreationists of the Bow, a group dedicated to preserving all current uses of the Medicine Bow National Forest (but especially motorized recreation), turned up some interesting stuff that got me thinking more seriously in the direction a lot of my pals have as far as what to do about the current economy-wrecking Draft Management Plan for the Medicine Bow National Forest.

The tools and techniques of an opponent are often as effective against that opponent as against oneself. The stump humpers have proven themselves masterful litigators and petitioners (though pretty shitty scientists, on the whole), and we are going to have to become so as well.

So, as I clicked over to a silly and emotion-fraught petition to “Save the Bow” I saw that a perfect tool for this was easily available: a website called, what else, ThePetitionSite.com that is run by an organization called Care2, which, as you might guess from the name, is, well, Stump Humper Central.

Hey, I can do this, too! I don’t know ultimately how effective e-mail petitions really are in getting results, but if one side is using that tool, the other side ought to as well, to provide balance in the universe if for no other reason!

So, I made a silly and emotion-fraught petition of my own, emphasizing that the current management program has already put more than 200 people out of work and that the new plan in its current state poses an even greater threat to the livelihoods of some really nice people who actually love this particular forest way more than a bunch of college kids who’ve never even been to Wyoming do, and submitted it.

There is, however, something slightly ominous called an “approval process.” Someone from Care2 is going to “review” my petition and let me know if it is “acceptable” within a few days. Hmm. Big skeptical eyebrow raising, this.

I’m now taking bets on whether my petition makes the cut or not. What are the odds? Better ask the Sewer King.

*A deeply deceptive experience, that craps table: I am known far and wide as a person who will never in her life be able to rely on luck. If an element of chance is present in an activity, I fail it every time. But somehow, somehow, I was “hot” on the dice playing SKC (Sewer King Craps, which differs from regular craps in a few important respects, because the Sewer King was trying to run the whole table by himself AFTER a hard day’s skiing and so some of the finer points – like what pays “two for one” and what pays “30 for one” – tended to get ignored until we crapsolytes caught on to the basic stuff like the pass line). Blazingly hot. Nobody ever bet against me. I won a million dollars and hardly ever lost anything. Terrifying, terrifying stuff.

MATCHING, SCHMATCHING

As I mentioned yesterday, I am paying particular attention to a couple of bills currently under consideration in the Wyoming State House, HB 264 and HB 302, both of which are intended to set aside a chunk of the state’s Permanent Mineral Trust Fund for helping communities become “business ready” in the current jargon.

Each bill creates a fund, to be administered by the Wyoming Business Council as a grant program to allow towns like ours to make significant investments in their own economic development on a physically tangible, brick-and-mortar basis, and it’s high time something like this was made a reality. I’ve been studying economic development almost since the day I came back to Wyoming, and the realities of it are harsh and inescapable: businesses who are seeking to relocate have been trained to expect facilities that are in “move-in” condition. If they have to wait around for something to be built... if they have to pay to have something built or renovated... if they have to go through the giant flaming hoops of permits and easements and utilities development themselves, they’re not going to come. They’ll go where this work and the financial burdens accompanying it have been done for them. And there are, dear readers, cities and counties and economic development corporations all over this company who have and will do it for them.

Our new governor, Dave Freudenthal, knows this all too well, which is why one of his significant campaign pledges – and yes, I’m talking about the very one which finally decided me to become a supporter – was the very program HB 264 and 302, in their slightly different ways, would implement.

So what’s the difference between these two bills?

The two significant issues are the amount of money to be set aside to start this program, and whether or not the towns and counties who will apply for grants under this program will be required to put up matching funds in order to secure the money.

Now, it’s not the amount that concerns me so terribly much – 302 has a dollar amount of $15 million, which is chapter and verse Governor Freudenthal’s original proposal, while 264 currently has only $5 million (I say currently because I know Rep. Latta and some of my other friends in Cheyenne are planning to submit an amendment to bump this figure up to $10 million) – although I would naturally be happy to see more money in the original pot because that just means there’s an opportunity there to help more communities. Saratoga has taken a huge hit this year, but there are lots of other towns in Wyoming who are facing hard times because of the drought, the brain drain, the Forest Plan, etc.

But this matching issue is a bad, bad deal, folks.

Think back to two years ago, when you were hearing a lot of your local elected officials and other cranks complaining about a little thing called legislative de-earmarking.

See, before the year 2000, a certain percentage of state mineral royalties, gasoline taxes, etc. was earmarked for local governments, to help equalize those local governments’ abilities to deliver basic services to the residents they serve. Every single town in Wyoming has a basic responsibility to its citizens by state law, custom, and the Social Contract, to provide things like potable water, sewer, police and fire protection, emergency medical care, safe streets and bridges, etc. And there are bottom-line, fixed costs associated with these whether a town is serving 2000 or 10,000 people.

But all local governments are not created equal when it comes to their abilities to raise the revenue needed to pay for all of this stuff. Different towns, different counties, have different property values (on which property taxes/mill levies are based), different ways of digging money out of the ground (Campbell County is sitting on all that CBM; Goshen County... grows some cheap crops), different visitor bases and different business communities, which means different levels of sales tax income.

Enter earmarking, a way for the State of Wyoming, which is bringing in significant revenue from all over the state, to help level the playing field and make sure that everyone gets the basics no matter where in Wyoming he or she lives.

But in 2000, the Wyoming State Legislature were looking at about a $125 million shortfall (largely because of severence tax reductions they themselves had granted, and, too, because there wasn’t a lot of mineral auditing going on, something else GovDave is fixin’ to try and fix) and started looking around for what could be done about it. Cutting spending on state level stuff, of course, was not desirable to them. So they decided on de-earmarking those revenues that were supposed to be guaranteed to local governments and school districts.

[And, to soften the blow and delay its effects a little bit, they generously bestowed a one-time “rainy day” payment on each affected local government according to the size of the population served (Saratoga got a whopping $208,000)]

Now, de-earmarking didn’t out and out take that money away from local governments and school districts, it just removed the requirement that a certain portion of those revenues go there. If the legislature so chooses, it can still share that money with us, and it is, after a fashion, but...

Oh, there’s always a “but”!!!

But... now when we need money for a water project, or a building project, or to buy a new firetruck or ambulance, or whatever, we have to go begging to the state bureaucracies for it. Usually, we have to write grants. And usually, we have to put up matching funds in order to receive these grants.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Now, making matters worse, with an ever worsening economic climate (really, the only people in Wyoming who are doing well are the people who brought their own money from other states, and a few very well compensated minerals workers and the like. The rest of us are flipping burgers, running cash registers, and ranting on web pages because we can’t afford the paper and printing costs to become real pamphleteers) most of the cities and towns already hurting and reeling from this also received another blow when the 2000 census figures came in.

Saratoga, for example, lost nearly 300 people between 1990 and 2000.

And remember, our share of state and county sales tax, fuel taxes, cigarette taxes, etc. is based on, yes, population.

So those revenues are going down, down, down, too.

(And we’re not even in the same league as poor Riverside, down something in the neighborhood of 33% of its population, but still trying to run the same basic infrastructure it did when there were officially more than 80 residents!)

So, dear readers, especially those of you who are or are personally acquainted with Wyoming legislators, how the hell are we supposed to come up with even more matching funds, when the communities who need the help proposed by HB264 and HB302 most are the ones who are also feeling de-earmarking and population loss the most?

Longtime LIANT readers know what’s coming next. A call to action.

My sources tell me that HB264 is due to come to the House floor either today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday). Rep. Latta, as I said, is going to propose amendments to make it more effective and worthwhile. Folks, support for these amendments is needed.

I haven’t heard back from our own Representative, but Latta sounds pretty sure that Mr. Bucholz is with him on this.

But there are lots of other House members out there who need to hear from YOU, folks. The program these bills would create could be an important part of Saratoga’s effort to pull itself out of its current economic slump and begin recovering from our loss of the mill, but it ain’t going to happen without help.

HERE is the legislator e-mail list for the 2003-04 legislature. They all have computers now, and a lot of them have demonstrated to me over the last few days that they really do read their e-mail, and respond.

Send some messages their way, while there’s still time, folks.

If you don’t have time to bug all of them, here’s a few key people that need a little persuading on the matching issue (click on the name to send a message):

Pete Illoway

Fred Parady

Kurt Bucholz

THERE ARE SOME DANGEROUSLY SEXY...

...New features on the Wyoming State Legislature's web page. And they are newly cause for concern for Your Humble Blogger.

Just now, I was consulting this page to check up on a few bills in which I am interested (those being HB 264 and 302, which concern an effort to implement Governor Freudenthal's economic development idea of pulling $15 million out of the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund for a grant program to help Wyoming towns and cities improve their business development chances, about which, if I know me, and I do, more anon), I happened to notice that there is a whole new realm of presentation attached to the Bills Index.

I'm talking about those little old "Fiscal Notes" you can click on next to the other information about each bill.

These are prepared by the Department of Revenue (click on a Fiscal Note, any Fiscal note, and you can even see which bureaucrat did the analysis) and show that bureau's expert analysis on each bill's implications for the state government's finances. Looks pretty nifty, doesn't it? Might help that huge passel of freshman legislators, especially, make some better-informed decisions, mightn't it?

Ah, but as ever, the devil is in the details.

For example: There is a measure, House Bill 91, that would create a sales and use tax exemption for agricultural implements (i.e. tractors, balers, etc.), which even my dear friend the Oracle, who assures me on a daily basis that he is the most conservative person I know, supports heartily, as do I*

Take a look at HB91's Fiscal Note. It appears to show, in stark and scary terms, that if HB91 were passed the state would lose a little more than $1 million a year in sales and use tax.

Of course, what it doesn't show is anything even remotely acknowledging what money all of us, not just the state government, lose when people skip across the border to save a few bucks on taxes. That is, I'll grant you, hard to quantify, but think of it in the common terms we all know, how "one dollar spent in the community turns over at least seven times before it leaves." When a fella heads down to Colorado to buy a tractor, all that money he is spending to buy the thing (and gasoline to get there... and lunch for the trip... oh, and as long as he's there, why not get a sack of groceries... or a lottery ticket?... how about stopping for another meal? maybe a little movie?)... turns over in Colorado.

In other words, that projected loss of $1 million a year in state revenue doesn't tell the whole story. How much are we all, as a people, losing by adhering to the status quo?

These questions need to be considered, folks. The legislature is voting on this issue (and many others, of course) right now. House Bill 91 passed the House this week (with some shocking no votes... this should have been a no-brainer, guys!) and is on the way to the Senate. Your input, dear readers, can still help.

Fight the power. Or something.

*This may seem odd for two tremendous fans of Sam Western's PUSHED OFF THE MOUNTAIN, SOLD DOWN THE RIVER, a tome which takes Wyoming rather severely to task for coddling its ag producers in various absurd ways, but that tome also advocates bringing our state and its policies in line to maybe share in a little of the stunning prosperity all of our neighboring states (note for the geographically challenged: Wyoming borders Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, and Utah) - all of which have a sales and use tax exemption on ag equipment. Which, yes, class, sends a whole lot of ranchers and other implement buyers out of state to do their shopping. Is this looking inward? Is this grassroots business development? NO. It's leaving the bung out of the barrel and letting more of our resources pour across our already hideously porous borders.

MOSTLY TRUE

The Sewer King has given me kudos for producing a "mostly true" account of yesterday's events.

And so I am conscience stricken, and must 'fess up so that I might sleep tonight the sleep of the just, the sleep of the untroubled soul, the sleep of the mostly accurate chronicler who has done her humble duty and done it well.

I didn't really make those witty geometrical allusions.

And the King doesn't really look that much like the Roadrunner when he skis off into the distance. More like a cat burglar on skis; I always have to fight the urge to check his pockets for ill-gotten booty after each adventure.

Poetic license. Poetic license, my dear readers.

ADVENTURES IN APPLIED PHYSICS

So, my ski partner, known to LIANT readers also as The Sewer King, got tired of my having to turn back early every Sunday because I kept developing dauntingly hideous and painful blisters on my heels no matter what combination of socks, moleskin and bandages I applied as prophylactics, and furthermore, got tired of my also occasionally having to turn back because my “trailpacker” skis were not stiff enough or thick enough to keep me up on the really deep snow he prefers to muck about in.

His solution? Stick me on some different skis, skis with different bindings, skis that would a) require the acquisition of different boots and b) support me better in the gnarly deep snow, etc. etc.

Fine. Great. Fabulous. It is pretty embarrassing to be the one lagging behind, and limping on skis is bad for the body as well as the dignity, and trying to free onself from the mess when one has sunk hip deep into the snow with a big pair of skis on burns up energy that could otherwise be spent going the extra mile.

But oooohhhh... I didn’t know from embarrassing until yesterday.

Just to give you a hint of the flavor, I present an encapsulation of a typical verbal exchange between my cloacal ski partner and myself from our latest Sunday outing.

SK: OK, you’re going to have to really dig your skis into the –

YHB (wobbling and sliding like Bambi on the ice): YELP!

SK (gently mocking): Yelp!

YHB (getting back up again with much effort): Grunt.

SK: OK, really dig that ski in. Here, perpendicular to the fall line...

YHB: There’s a fall line? Looks like a whole fall plane to me... YELP!

SK (gently mocking): Yelp!

Collie of Folly: Lick, lick, lick.

YHB: Molly, not now. (Finally hauls herself back up just to get out from under the barrage of doggie kisses).

SK: OK, now really PLOP down that ski. OK, lean hard into it. Look! You’re standing!

YHB: YELP!

SK (gently mocking): Yelp!

Etc.

You see, before yesterday, I’d been tooling around on a pair of touring skis, made, as the Sewer King sneered, for farting around on very groomed, well-maintained trails in Colorado. These skis have style (my dear partner forgets, methinks, how he originally admired them on our first outing last December. “Those are some good looking skis,” he remarked then as he loaded them and the Collie of Folly into his pickup), and, more importantly, serious traction, so I never even had to execute the dreaded “herringbone” maneuver when heading up hills, and didn’t have to pay much attention to my technique at all. But... therein lay my downfall.

A very sloppy skier I was, I now realize.

Very sloppy.

As I realized immediately when I bound my new NNNBC boots to a pair of SK’s backcountry skis and fell down. And fell down again. And again. Even though the ground was level and I had shown no previous signs of inner ear disorders or other problems with balance. It had even been, oh, at least six hours since I’d pounded back my last glass of the cooking wine at the Minister of Fun’s house.

No, this was all physics. As in the importance of downward pressure and exquisite balance to provide the friction that my flimsy trailpackers had led me to take for granted in the three or so years I’ve been skiing as an adult but these other skis, skis coated in weird, sticky wax and a bit skinnier than my others, did not in and of themselves provide.

The watchword of the day, repeated like the refrain of some borderline-obscene Anglo-Saxon campfire song by the Sewer King, was “PLOP.”

If there is any slope at all, I learned, I would continue to yelp in freaked-out amazement as my skis slid right out from under me until I learned to PLOP – plant each ski very decisively into the snow, leaning slightly forward and putting all of my strength and weight into that plopping motion and plopping for keeps. And when the slope was at all challenging, my poles must go behind me to prop me up and keep me stable.

All of this is, as I’ve said, a bit more work than I was used to. Fortunately for me, I’m stubborn as hell, and so with only about twelve hours of patient encouragement from the Sewer King, shivering in the cold of an approaching snowstorm because he dresses to allow for the warmth of serious exercise and not for standing around in crappy weather watching someone fall down a lot, at last I managed to stay upright, crowing in triumph and yelling at my dog to stop nudging me in the knees because it wasn’t really that funny to make momma fall, was it?

Then it was time to (GASP) start trying to make actual forward progress, and once again I found I’ve been doing it all wrong. But here’s the thing: when I started doing it right, the movement felt so much better, so much more graceful and closer to being effortless kind of like... kind of like the way my partner looks just before he zooms off, Roadrunner like, around the corner and beyond the horizon.

Oh, wait, I can do it too! Sort of! As long as I pay attention and concentrate on the new, correct movement, and don’t slack off into the lazy old movement. But that, too, was easy, because the penalty for slacking off was immediate: the slacking foot and ski would slip backwards, my leg would snap back and I would teeter on the brink of falling (again, yelping amusingly) and feel like a perfect ass.

What’s that? What’s he saying to me? OK, try it without poles. Carry the poles uselessly in one hand and skate along... it really is like skating! Much more so than the old way, in the old boots, on the old skis. Oh, it feels good, gliding along, whistling a happy tune between the backslide-induced yelps... but then... but then...

The first real slope. It’s not long, and I would have trudged easily up it on my trailpackers (if they didn’t betray me and sink me hip-deep into the snow) but now... now... time for the ultimate PLOPstep, and heavy work for my arms and shoulders because a) the poles become crucial for balance as I try correctly to place my skis and b) the poles are even more crucial for pulling myself up out of the snow after I’ve slid backwards a few feet and fallen down with a resounding... PLOP.

I therefore wound up working harder than I’ve yet done on one of our outings this winter, and skied a shorter distance than I’ve done since our first day out, and my muscles as I type this Monday afternoon are quite sore, but I’ve yet to wipe the silly, happy grin off my face... not just over the bliss of blister-free feet (though that is bliss indeed), but also over the memory of feeling I might finally get this ski thing right.

The Skiwer King now thinks maybe I would have been better off, that most people would be better off, learning the whole thing on slick backcountry skis from the get-go, comparing such to the practice of teaching a kid to drive on a stick-shift vehicle; you have to learn everything, can’t rely on any crutches of technology or convenience, and master techniques that will always serve you well no matter how harsh or marshmallow-y the conditions.

(Of course, my walking buddy remarks, by the same analogy, it’s best to throw someone into the English Channel during a seastorm to teach him to swim... but that’s maybe taking analogy to extremes)

I say better late than never... and know myself well enough to know also that when I was younger I would not have had quite the right stubbornness and patience to keep falling and rising and sticking my tongue out at my even more patient pal, who finally taught me to ski after all.

THE THOUSAND-EYED GODDESS

I usually leave the job of stating the obvious to those media entities that get paid to do so, but an important truth seems to have fallen by the wayside in our little valley in recent months, and so I find myself forced to remind everyone that...

...If something sounds too good/weird/unlikely/impossible to be true, then it probably is not true.

Is that really so hard to grasp?

So difficult to comprehend?

Or maybe it sounds... too good to be true?

The Greeks were right to depict Rumor as the goddess with a thousand eyes and a million tongues, but they didn’t go far enough with that.

The Goddess Rumor has a thousand very, very near-sighted eyes, a million ears with severe and daunting ear wax problems, and a thousand thick and cleft and otherwise deeply impaired tongues. Regard her not as an authority to be feared or respected, but as a creature worthy of your deepest pity and compassion, like a sick old dog that keeps trying to attack a table leg, thinking it the offending limb of a vandal or burgler trying to invade the family home.

Scary economic times like we’re facing, when we’ve taken it in the shorts in so many ways and are poised, if we sit here and continue to do nothing about the Forest Plan and other delights, to get creamed even worse, do not bring out the best in us as a polis even before the bullshit factory cranks up.

And it only gets worse if we don’t remember to take the output of said factory with all of the seriousness it deserves, a.k.a. none at all, most of the time.

If it sounds at all plausible, by all means investigate it and see if it’s true. Is there physical evidence? Documentation? Horse’s mouth testimony?

But for pity’s sake, if there’s none of that, shut the hell up and find something constructive to do with all of that worry and angst and air. The Forest Plan beckons. Oh, and we’re probably going to war. Remember the outside world, people? There’s a president and a Congress out there who do.

LOOK WHO FINALLY CARES!

I promise that sooner or later I'll stop being so pissed off, but another person has made the official LIANT shit list, for being the ultimate Babsy-Come-Lately to the Saratoga pity party.

I refer to no less a person than Representative Barbara Cubin, our favorite Congresswoman from Wyoming.

Or her press secretary, at least.

OK, disclosure time: Part of why I'm cranky is that today was supposed to be my day off as compensation for the very long hours I worked to bring you the 2003 Saratoga Ice Fishing Derby, but instead I spent most of it in my office anyway, because my enabling assistant's dog managed to get hit by a car, and both dog and EA are too distraught to make public appearances.

SO ANYWAY, I will leave it to you, dear readers, to decide if I'm overreacting to the message that greeted me on the chamber's answering machine this A.M.:

In brief, Babs' press secretary (or a lackey thereof), "Joe" saw on TV last night that something seems to be happening with our local sawmill that doesn't sound too good, and he would really like, on Babs' behalf, to get details on that, on what's happening and why and how it's affecting us (HELLOOOOOO????) for some newspaper columns and the like that Babsy Baby might like to write.

In other words, her staff has finally deigned to notice that we're in a bind here, and sees in it potential to make some political hay picking on the pro-NAFTAites and the Forest Service, holding us up as your poster children.

Of which I shall surely be one, as I am to appear this very evening on the KTWO Wyoming news giving my two cents on what's next for us in Saratoga and trying really hard not to blubber (I got to thinking about how many of my friends who are leaving, and also about certain assholes who have never, ever spoken to me on the matter but have somehow concluded that I don't give a shit about those people who are going to have to leave, and couldn't help but look a little pathetic, I guess) about "a tripod with only two legs."

God, I hope "Joe" doesn't see that.

I ask again, where were all of these people last year, when we actually asked for their help?

MAYBE MORE THAN 25 POUNDS…

So, as several members of our local Soroptimist Club are faithful LIANT readers, they graciously invited me to heat up the oil and help them boil our District Forest Ranger. OK, maybe boil is a bit harsh, but they did hope to grill him on some of the finer and scarier points of the Forest Plan…

What he said was not quite as interesting as what he didn’t say… For instance, when he was asked (by My Own Dear Personal Mom) if the closure of the Louisiana Pacific mill here in Saratoga was factored into the Plan’s calculations regarding “loss of forest-related jobs” (stated in his nifty Power Point presentation to be “insignificant”), he, um, err, changed the subject.

He also said the Forest Service “needs mills” to buy and use the trees removed in the management of our forest, but neglected to say which mills were needed, or if this Important and Interesting Fact was in any way part of last month’s deliberations between the Forest Service and the two companies (formerly) interested in buying LP-Saratoga.

And he didn’t say who was going to process what few trees are allowed to be removed. The Log Fairy, perhaps.

He also didn’t know a bleeding thing about these little “sub-nievian” voles that are being used as “indicator species” for deciding the fate of snowmobile use in the Snowy Range, mimicking the behavior of…pretty much everyone who is just asking us to take his or her word for it that snowmobiles “impact” these voles (betraying, as always, a shocking disrespect for the English language in using “impact” as a transitive verb, but as that sin is widespread within and without government circles, I can’t directly fault him for that, though I still had to snort at it. Call it a reflex. I’m only human).

Nor did he have much to say on the subject of doing business locally, after I shared with him his agency’s PR problem in that regard (our two largest remaining employers in the Platte Valley are the Forest Service and the school district, neither of whose employees are often seen shopping in our local grocery, hardware or other stores, but would most certainly have Frequent Shopper Cards at WalMart if such things existed) and encouraged him to encourage his employees to use Carbon Bucks to prove me wrong, if indeed I was wrong on this Important and Popular fact.

Meanwhile, the last long went through our mill this very morning, and my neighborhood is eerily silent without the mill’s low hum, occasional industrial creaking and cranking, and all of the other oddly soothing sounds that lulled me to sleep each night, a constant aural reminder that at least some aspect of our local economy flourished still.

No more, no more.

Now, I can’t lay this entirely at the Forest Service’s door; this is also a NAFTA issue (Canadian lumber flooding the market at impossibly cheap prices is what finally drove LP to sell off its lumber division in the first place), but I also can’t praise this agency and it’s hangers-on and tale-bearers for going out of its way to help keep this vital sector of our economy functioning, either.

I was alarmed by one other thing: When I brought out the foot-thick excretion and thumped it on the table at lunch, our guest speaker eyed it and remarked that even THAT is not the entire plan.

At least, as I remarked when the luncheon broke up, the Forest Service is doing its bit to support the paper industry.

Too bad it wasn’t a paper mill that closed down today.

SHORT AND SWEET AND SOUR

Where the fuck were all of these geniuses a year ago when there was still time to pursue all of these brilliant schemes (which all boil down to whining to the governor and Wyoming's congressional delegation) for "saving the mill"?

Oh yes. Without even the gumption to pursue the bandwagon upon which they are jumping only now, they were waiting for it to trundle past their homes so they could embark at their leisure.

But by all means, yes, continue bitching and making inaccurate accusations at one another. We are most entertained.

TELLING MBNF FOREST PLAN FACT #1

All I have seen so far regarding the towns living under the long dark shadow of the U.S. Forest Service's PROPOSED REVISED LAND AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PLAN is contained in the following paragraphs, and contains some interesting omissions therein:

Social and Economic Environment

"More than half of Wyoming's population lives in the vicinity of the Medicine Bow National Forest. The state capital, Cheyenne, population 50,000, is 50 miles from the Supervisor's Office and 30 miles from the Forest boundary. Populations of other Medicine Bow area communities are: Laramie, 27,000; Casper, 50,000; and Douglas, 5700. The state's only four-year university is in Laramie, and most of the population of Colorado's Front Range lives within several hours of the Medicine Bow. Interstate 80 crosses the Forest; in fact, the Medicine Bow National Forest and its ranges are the Rockies are the first mountains encountered on I-80 by westbound travelers from population centers in the Midwest. Interstate 25 is nearby and is within sight of much of the Laramie Range."

Notice a few towns that have been omitted from this list? Any idea why?

WE'RE NOT EVEN A BLIP ON THEIR RADAR SCREENS, folks! Not even worth mentioning, even though it's OUR economy more than anyone else's that is being affected by this plan.

Cheyenne, Cheyenne made the list because, of course, that's where all the big bureaucrats are.

Laramie? Where all the Friends of the Bow are, and the University that shelters them.

Casper? Where the rest of the bureaucrats are.

Douglas? Well, they had to name something close to Thunder Basin National Grassland, which is technically part of Medicine Bow National Forest.

Saratoga, Encampment and Riverside don't even exist, so far, in this plan. Of course, I'm not done reading it and they may throw us a bone somewhere in the small print, but...

Interesting, no?

More to come, dears, more to come...