THANK GOD ALMIGHTY... OR SOMETHING!

Oh my dear readers, I've been trying these last few days to come up with the right way to break the news to you, and finally, subscribing as I do to the notion that it's better to rip the band-aid off in one swift ouch of a motion rather than peel it back slowly and agonizingly so that one feels the rip of each individual hair from its follicle, I'm just gonna tell ya!

No, I'm not going to discontinue this page. Heavens no! But the content is going to change some. Probably for the juicier and the better overall.

That's because as of last Thursday I am a HOBO!

That's right, HOBO.

Possibly because of this here web page and other daunting personal problems of my own, like my complete inability to keep a desk neat and purty without assistance, possibly for reasons I can't even imagine and really don't want to waste the brain space trying, they just don't want me to be a chamber chick anymore.

So, I must fall back on my own personal resources to keep Molly the Collie of Folly in dog food and a roof over my library.

No, I don't know for sure yet if staying in Saratoga is an option, though it is my dearest wish. I live here for a reason, and it sure isn't for the lucre, and I have commitments to keep. Like two years or so yet on my term as a town council member, like the community center we've yet to build, like being the Savant of the Sewer, like holding down the floorboards on the porch of the Hotel Wolf. And I'm going to try.

I'm harrassing every publication whom I even think might be interested in featuring some form (possibly a bit less, ah, trenchant) of Content By Kate (if you know of one, suggest me! Pick me!). I'm wandering around town looking at part-time work. I'm probably going to be a substitute teacher for a while.

And I'm enjoying the freedom, the paradisacal slackerdom I've never allowed myself to enjoy before. As is the Anthropologist Formerly Known As The Minister Of Fun (AFKATMOF) who was strongly encouraged to fall on his own dear personal sword within 24 hours of my own receipt of the invitation to do so. We sat at his house on Friday (a funky little shack that makes the Unabomber Cabin look like a... well, words fail me. Suffice it to say that his house is in much the same general condition of mine, but is slightly larger and somewhat cheaper. We're friends for a reason, dear readers) and toasted our unexpected good fortune as we gleefully listed off all of the monkeys that are no longer on our backs, all of the pressing issues and deadlines and other crap that is no longer our problem, singly or together.

It was pretty fun.

Only a little bit scary. At odd moments. But we're both young and brilliant and completely unencumbered (I consider the Collie of Folly a partner rather than a dependent; at least she's a good remedy for writer's block) and not afraid of living like Spartans. We love the Spartans. We actually know their lifestyles in intimate detail. We even know the names of the kings who reigned before Leonidas (Cleonymus, if anyone cares). But we probably won't be declaring war on Athens anytime soon. We'll be too busy fishing. And floating the river.

The options that lay before each of us are truly staggering, now that almost the last claims on our loyalties have been rendered farcical. The hard part is choosing.

I even sat for a while this morning and thought about moseying over to our local urn-and-boomerang manufacturing plant and seeing if they'd want my help from time to time. I got an A+ in wood shop once upon a time, am not afraid of sharp metal objects or of computers, and am terribly, terribly fond of the smell of sawdust. Plus the idea has appeal in other ways.

No one is likely to question my motivations while I am making a boomerang.

No one is going to be trying to sniff out my agenda in making boomerangs.

It is highly unlikely that one person will start raising holy hell because I am making someone else's boomerang first.

The possibilities that I shall be hilariously misquoted in the newspaper while making boomerangs is quite remote.

I shall probably not be required to constantly explain, while making boomerangs, that I have no control over when the state highway department decides to open Snowy Range Road for the season.

The political implications of my boomerang making would not be scandalously discussed, in hushed tones, over cheap cocktails and cheaper cigars by people who don't even know what a boomerang is.

I would not be required to tell anyone what I'm thinking about while I make boomerangs.

Nor would I be likely to be accused of imaginary personal slights to people I haven't seen in six months while making boomerangs.

Somebody stop me, I've got myself half talked into this!

No, not really. Don't be silly, dear readers. Just another temporary case of YHBPsychosis. Still giddy with freedom and possibility and the notion that my time is my own. Mostly.

Let's see... it's 1 p.m. and once I click "publish" everything on my to-do list will be completed for the day. I think I'll have a glass of wine with MODPM.

Hope your day is as happy and productive.

P.S. Please ignore the banner ads currently sponsoring this page. Stupid protesters. I have no control over whose banner ads get placed on this page - something I only gain if I start paying for hosting, which is doubly not an option now. But I am not opposed to our action in Iraq, and do not encourage anyone to give money to the loonies who are, no matter how stylish the clothing they're offering.

THIS AIN'T MY MOMMY'S WAR

As My Own Dear Personal Mother and I enjoyed a round of harumphing about how we were going to miss finding out who got voted out of the Amazon because some trigger-happy goon in Baghdad tawt he taw a missile coming (Mountain Standard Time meant that TV news went on full splash coverage alert halfway through Survivor), something became abundantly clear as we surfed through the channels.

This ain't my mommy's war. Or my granny's war. Or even my Gulf War.

"My god, these people would have been taken out and shot for blabbing like this during World War II," MODPM exclaimed as we watched the parade of armaments on screen, complete with information on how far our missiles can go, how they're guided, what their payloads were, even which company made them (cynically, we both agreed this vital information – presented on ABC in a subtly larger typeface than the rest of the data – must be part of President Bush's economic stimulus package. Hey, we're going to need some more Tomahawk Missiles pretty soon, so call your broker and buy all the General Dynamics you can afford!). This after watching a report earlier in the evening about how some military experts were worried that Hussein would blow up his own dams so the floodwaters would impede coalition forces' progress, prompting us both to cry out "Oh yes, let's give the bastard some more ideas!!"

After a couple of hours of last night's coverage, I almost feel like I could build a stealth bomber out of household materials, which really just makes me wonder how much our enemies have learned. Obviously our leadership is assuming that some folks in Iraq can see what's being broadcast, else why would Dubya bother addressing the Iraqi people directly?

So does this just mean we're so confident that we just plain don't care what the Iraqis know about what we can do? We're so badass that secrecy is not a concern at all?

Or is it part of the much-vaunted "shock and awe" campaign?

Or is it, as my more paranoid coffee buddies posited this morning, just that the media is so rife with America-hating "pinkos" that they're happy to give Saddam whatever information he needs to "teach us a lesson?"

Whatever it is, it's just plain weird.

GOT MILK?

We don’t.

It’s something like day three of our one and only serious winter storm of the season, and all of the roads to anywhere are closed, meaning no merchandise deliveries of any kind have been made, meaning there is no milk for sale at any price anywhere in our little valley, unless you count the powdered kind, and since this is day three, I betcha that’s all gone, too.

No, nobody’s panicking. There will be no Great Milk Riot of 2003 in Saratoga or anything like that. It’s just a cause for jokes and for the odd weird phenomenon: I have talked to no fewer than six people today who all sincerely believe themselves to be the one who got the very last jug of milk off the shelf at Tad the Grocer’s store. Make of that what you will.

So, we’re basically snowed in, though typically it’s not snowfall but rather ground blizzards that have us isolated. I often joke that we along the Snow Chi Minh Trail (otherwise known as Interstate 80 between Laramie and Rawlins, mapped out originally according to landowner interests rather than any engineering opinions as to the safest or most reliable route) are so ruthlessly efficient that we even manage to get four or five storms out of every snowfall, each progressively more impressive than the last. The snow that falls is light and dry, and the wind that follows can whip it up into a complete white-out in no time, so while the visibility above a stranded driver’s head may go for miles into the clear, blue stratosphere, he can’t see two feet ahead of him.

100 years ago were we in this situation it would be much more unsettling. As our country is poised to invade Iraq, we get constant updates on the situation from CNN and the internet (so even here, in snowed-in Saratoga, we talked at coffee this morning about the Debka-inspired rumor that Tariq Aziz had been shot) and so we feel as connected to the outside world as we ever did.

It’s only when we go to the grocery store that we realize we’ve been cut off for three days. There’s still no milk, and the supply of orange juice is dwindling, too.

I ordered the pizza for my evening of mommy-sitting and giggling at Survivor right after coffee this morning, because I realized the Cantina is running low on mozzerella and I wanted to make sure I got mine, by god!

Of course, it’s easy to be sanguine at the moment: there’s still plenty of beer to be had about town because the Budweiser truck made it ahead of the storm. Were that not the case, there would be concern indeed.

SPEAKING OF AIR QUALITY

We might yet need gas masks, since we're not going to be cutting down trees anymore (if the Forest Service gets its way):

As detailed HERE and in a recent issue of the science journal Nature, "Coniferous forests around the world may be emitting more smog-causing nitrogen oxides than traffic and industry combined".

Of course, no one is yet brave enough to seriously entertain the possibility that the environmental issues that have certain sets of panties more or less permanently in a twist might not be entirely our fault, but still, isn't this interesting?

SO, UM, WOW...

Because this week hasn't been weird enough yet, of course I had to get a phone call completely out of left field.

I was just asked if I would accept a nomination to serve on the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality's Air Quality Complance Advisory Committee (let's see... that would be the WDEQAQCAC?).

I've never even heard of this board, the members of which are appointed by the governor, and I have no idea by what line of reasoning the powers that be decided that I would be a good candidate, but I went ahead and said OK. Once I firmly established that yes, this board only meets three or four times a year.

So all of you who have been sniggering at my remark that I have a pie for every finger and one or two toes as well are probably now sniggering indeed that I now would appear to have one for my nose as well.

Well, how else does one evaluate air quality?

UGLY MUSH

Some days I just get a reminder that it’s wise to trust my instincts.

I have certain bedrock prejudices that occasionally get me labeled closed-minded, a snob, an elitist, a coward – which means that every once in a while I feel compelled to try to violate them, to test them against reality, to see if they’re still justified.

Some are more justifiable than others.

For instance, I have this aversion that almost amounts to a phobia against being observed in possession of a book with the words “Now a major motion picture” on the cover. This is one of my less defensible prejudices; not even I, the great lit savant of Saratoga, learn of every novel or book-length work of journalism that is worth reading before it makes the big or the small screen, and I’ve almost missed out on some very good stuff by my slavish adherence to my no-movie-books dogma. I saw the PBS TV show of Cadillac Desert a year or so before I bought the book (and yes, my delay in buying the book was also due to my prejudice; if I absolutely have to buy a companion book or the novel on which a movie was based or whatever, at least I can delay this gratification long enough to where I cannot be accused of jumping any bandwagons. I fully stipulate that this is stupid, bordering on the insane, and totally a product of a monstrous ego, but naming my demon has brought me nowhere near conquering it), for example, and it was only after seeing Ray Lawrence’s wonderful film adaptation of Peter Carey’s Bliss that I discovered that fantastic novelist’s work.

Another deep aversion I have is toward films that have won Best Picture Oscars, at least those which have won them in my lifetime (I’ll not quibble a bit over stuff like Casablanca or Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, but it’s a sign of early decline in the critical faculties of the Academy that in 1941 How Green Was My Valley beat out Citizen Kane. No. Freaking. Way.). I still can’t bring myself to even look at the box for The English Patient, I occasionally subject myself to American Beauty only to give myself a painful reminder of how not to tell a story and of just how very, very annoying two hours of cliches really are, and I can’t even think about Platoon without channelling the tortured, screaming spirit of Sam Kinnison. And then I remember that Platoon beat out The Mission and pretty much just black out for the rest of the day. And don’t even get me started on Schindler’s List, Titanic, or Forrest Fucking Gump.

Now, I’m not saying that the Academy is an infallible guide for picking out the one motion picture each year that is most likely to make me physically ill. The Last Emperor was pretty good, and I have an unshakeable fondness for The Silence of the Lambs (though that’s mostly because of its High Insect Content, putting it on a plateau it shares with Creepshow and all of the Indiana Jones movies), but its track record in my lifetime is still, well, daunting. Daunting enough, at any rate, to regard the bestowing of Best Picture or Best Director honors on a film my gut has advised me to avoid anyway as a sure-fire sign that my best bet is to do my best to forget it was ever made.

Into this category I must thrust last year’s winner, A Beautiful Mind, which I slid into my VCR last night in a fit of I-don’t-know-what (I’m going to go ahead and blame the nuclear antibiotics and the cold medicine, okay?).

The warning signs had been there almost immediately. Ron Howard directed it, and we all know he’s a complete schlockmeister. Putting the story of a seriously troubled mathematical genius, famous for having believed aliens were communicating with him via the New York Times, for getting into messy bisexual affairs, and for being kind of an unpleasant person to know as well as for winning the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work in the challenging and wildly uncinematic realm of game theory was just a bad, bad, bad idea. And early reviews bore this out: Howard had butchered the story in impressively uninventive ways (what kind of yobbo finds it necessary to invent imaginary characters, for god’s sake? A yobbo who doesn’t think the audience can handle the messy unpleasantness of the real delusions the protagonist experienced) (oh, and he added a car chase with guns, a feat right on a par with James Cameron’s famous contortionist addition of two teenagers losing their virginity in the back of a car to the story of the sinking of the Titanic!), Russell Crowe totally didn’t understand the character he was playing, yah yah yah.

I was prepared for these outrages, but what I wasn’t prepared for was that even the small stuff would be so poorly handled. I mean, it’s one thing to plunk down a viewer or reader into an unfamiliar milieu and let him sort things out as the story unfolds, but quite another when the story never unfolds, is laden with McGuffins, packed with empty signifiers the way this film is.

For instance, in the first act, when Movie Nash is at Princeton, he sees an older man, obviously distinguished and revered, being presented with pen after pen. It’s obviously some kind of ritual, and, because this is a Big Hollywood Movie it’s obviously foreshadowing (and indeed, Movie Nash winds up getting pens in the penultimate act, awkwardly manouevered into that room by a stranger), but what’s supposed to be the significance of the pens? Why pens? Who are these people handing out pens? The implication is that those “in the know” about the Ivy League will understand exactly what’s going on, and the rest of us poor slobs should just take it for granted that it is a hallowed tradition among those Superior Smart People and shut up about it, except to thank Ron Howard et al for giving us this special, privileged peek at them.

Bullshit. Ain’t no such thang. I have friends who went to Princeton, and their reaction to that scene was, approximately, “Huh?” Similarly, Princeton mathematics Professor Hale Trotter said, in an article in the campus newspaper: "As far as I know that's a complete invention of the script writer. Nobody that I've come across has ever heard of it anywhere."

Why, why, why, why, why? Why? Dammit, why? What, then, is the point of these two scenes? Emotional manipulation, is all. Like conveniently leaving out Real Nash’s divorce from Real Alicia in the 1960s, like inserting an adorable moppet of an imaginary niece to look hurt and tearful when Movie Nash ignores her, like having Movie Nash give a speech at the Nobel ceremony, it’s all to make the story of an interesting, messed-up but important man fit nicely into an inspirational pre-cut Hollywood narrative about the power of the human will and the love of a good woman to overcome any and all odds.

So of course the Academy fell for it.

Never, ever again. I’ll plop down and watch the also-rans, like L.A. Confidential (see, Russell Crowe doesn’t suck, just the script and film he got stuck in last year), Pulp Fiction, Almost Famous, and oh, yeah, The Lord of the Rings, but if I haven't seen the film that has won Best Picture for a particular year, I'm going to avoid it like the plague, unless someone who's judgment I absolutely trust (maybe three of these people exist, all of them personal friends of mine who are not and never would be professional critics of any kind) says it's maybe not so bad and just possibly worth seeing some night when it's on HBO and you have insomnia.

Oh holy shit. I was just looking at the Academy’s home page and got another slap in the face. Guess which film won Best Screenplay (Adaptation) last year?

I think I need to lay down now.

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.”