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Sometimes, it is just fun to write about odd and crazy
stuff. And there has been no shortage of that here in Wyoming over the past few
months.
UFOs from
Wyoming were in the news recently in Australia. You can find this on Facebook
where a photo went viral all over the world, especially down under.
It proved to
be a photo of a Jackson Hole lake that had a lampshade reflected in a window. Looked just like a UFO was floating out there
in space. Someone went to Signal Mountain Lodge and duplicated
the photo so believers would change their minds. The photo had 314,000 shares on Facebook
before taken down.
Down in
Saratoga, actor Tom Hanks officiated at the wedding of scorned NBC news anchor
Brian Williams’ daughter at the Brush Creek Ranch. Hanks had earned his
“official” ministerial degree on the Internet.
More on the
celebrity front, it appears that actress Sandra Bullock is trying to make a $10
million purchase of the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar in Jackson. Might be a long
shot but she loves that scenic Wyoming town.
Some years
ago, she was in the news when her private jet went off the runway there. Most
recently she celebrated her 50th birthday at the Cowboy Bar.
Denver Bronco
quarterback Peyton Manning recently paid for the flight for a Rock Springs gal,
who has breast cancer, to Denver. After getting a letter request, Manning
arranged to fly Kari Barnett Bollig of Rock Springs (who has stage 4 breast
cancer) and her husband Ed to Denver and gave them tickets and sideline passes
for the game against Baltimore.
Peyton greeted
them. “It was so sweet because he shakes my hand and says, ‘ I’m Peyton
Manning.’ It was cute. It was kind of like, I know who you are, Peyton,” Mrs.
Bollig later recounted.
Mrs. Bollig’s
sister, Dana Benbow, of Indianapolis, wrote an open letter to Peyton in the
Indianapolis newspaper: From Benbow:
“I didn’t love you before, Peyton.
Even when you were in Indianapolis, even when you won a Super Bowl for the
Colts during the 2006 season. I didn’t love you even when you made me cry with
laughter in Saturday Night Live or those goofy ESPN commercials.
“But I want to tell you something. I do love
you now. I love you for what you did for my childhood friend from Greenfield,
IN. Ind., who is so sick with breast cancer.”
One of my favorite column writers
in Wyoming is Sagebrush Sven (usually interpreted by Jim Hicks), who tried to
explain how wealth is distributed around a community.
This very complicated economic
theory takes on new overtones with Sven’s explanation (which may have had its
origin on the Internet from another source):
Down at the coffee shop a discussion
got started over the popular idea of “redistributing: the wealth of the country
One of the smarter guys there said
he had an explanation of wealth re-distribution. He said: “It is a slow February day in Buffalo. The cold wind was blowing and the streets are
deserted. Times are tough, everybody is
in debt and all are living on credit.
“On this
particular day a rich tourist is driving through town and stops at a local
motel. He lays a $100 bill on the desk and says he wants to inspect the rooms
before he picks one for the night.
“The owner gives him the master key to all the
rooms, grabs the $100 bill and runs up the street to pay his bill at the drug
store.
“The drug store owner takes the money and
slips next door to pay the bill he owes for new boots at the sports store.
“That store owner slips over to the grocery
store and settles up for last month’s charges.
“The grocer runs quickly takes the $100 to the
feed store pay a bill for dog food, and the feed store owner gives the money to
the motel owner to pay for a room he rented last month when his in-laws were in
town.
“About that time the traveler comes back into
the office and says he thinks the rooms are not very clean so he’s going to
look somewhere else to spend the night.
He picks up the $100 bill and
leaves town.
“No one produced anything.
“No one earned anything.
“However, everyone in Buffalo is now out of
debt and looking to the future with optimism.”
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