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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
926 - A totally unique Wyoming July 4 experience
While watching televised images of the nighttime bombing of Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I turned to someone and said: “I’ve seen that before.”
It looked just like a typical night of July 4 in my hometown of Lander, Wyoming.
The Independence Day holiday has always been a big deal for Lander since it is the home of the oldest paid rodeo on earth – predating Cheyenne’s by one year.
But in recent years, this holiday has become a pyrotechnic maniac’s dream.
In this town of barely 7,000 people, you can find at least forty different locations where neighbors have banded together to light big displays of fireworks.
And this is in addition to the fire department’s official fireworks on the night of July 4. Plus Lander folks enjoy the largest private fireworks show in Wyoming, which is held on July 3 by local orthodontist Dr. Brent Bills and his family. For years, they have put on a tremendous patriotic display that is unmatched in Wyoming. He fires off the fireworks from his home overlooking the town and the event is even carried on the local KOVE radio station.
Sharing the credit (or blame) for Lander’s pyrotechnic excesses is Mayor Mick Wolfe. A Lander native, he has always felt this was a “tradition” that he can remember during his entire life of growing up in the town.
“We want people to be safe and to be responsible,” he says. “But I think people deserve to enjoy fireworks on the fourth. It has always been a tradition here, where Independence Day is our biggest holiday of the year. As long as I am mayor, we will try to make it as much fun as possible for our folks.”
There is another side to the story. Resident Nancy Debevoise had this to say about all the racket: “From sun up until late at night on July 4, I feel as if I`m in some bomb-besieged third-world country.
“While some people are fairly responsible about fireworks, too many seem to spend the entire day and evening (and their paychecks) setting off round after round of peace-shattering noise, with no consideration for neighbors, others` property or passersby’s.
“As a result, each July 4, I flee Lander early in the morning to spend the day and night at a friend`s house out in the country. I find nothing interesting or funny about this mindless siege, and neither do most of my friends, who also plan to get out of town on July 4,” she concludes.
It should pointed out that the Lander Pioneer Days holiday includes three days of rodeo, a wonderful parade on the morning of the fourth, a huge Buffalo Barbeque at City Park at noon on that day plus lots of other activities. Because the 4th is such a big deal in my town, just about all the high school reunions are held during that time, too. It is truly a homecoming for folks to remember.
In our case, my family always shoots off fireworks on the evening of the 4th, but not to the extent of our neighbors. One of our traditions is to use cigars to light them.
Some years ago I had been to Europe and smuggled home five Cuban cigars to smoke at some later time.
Imagine my surprise (and horror) to come home to where our fireworks display was already starting and seeing that my wife Nancy had passed out my Cubans to the folks there to use to light the fireworks instead of my traditional Swisher Sweets. Incredible!
Lucie Whisler recalled a fun-filled July 4 when her neighborhood at Lucky Lane in Lander, which consisted mostly of mountain climbers, lived there. “Some bright souls decided to put a big firecracker in a bowling ball. The ball went to pieces, flying over houses, cars and people. Fortunately, no one was hit or hurt, and nothing was damaged. Don`t try this at home,” she cautions,
The folks in Indian Lookout neighborhood pool their resources and explode a serious show. People are stationed with hoses to extinguish fires that may erupt in the neighboring nature preserve.
It is almost impossible to adequately describe what Lander on the night of July 4 looks like. You just have to experience it. The sight is incredible. Lander sits in a valley and a lot of folks live in the hills around town. They tell amazing stories of what it looks like, peering down at the siege.
Probably somewhat like Baghdad, huh?
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
WBR11 - New construction, empty storefronts offer enigma
My little town of Lander has been booming for a few years and even now during these perilous economic times, to a person visiting, things still look very prosperous. But looks can be deceiving.
Home prices are still relatively high and there is no glut on the market. Not yet, anyway. And the streets are busy. There is a constant hubbub around town. Tourism numbers seem to be on track for a good season. Not a record like last year, but healthy.
And similar things are happening in other Wyoming small towns like Douglas, Powell, Worland, Buffalo and Afton. Or to their slightly larger cousins Cody, Green River, Evanston and Riverton.
If you drive through Lander from one end to the other, here is what you will see:
On the extreme West end is an impressive new Fremont Toyota building going up. Hard to know, but could this be the only car dealership in America building a new store?
On the same side of the street is the new $2.2 million Pioneer Museum, which shares a nice location with the Museum of the American West.
A few blocks further in, you see a three-story Holiday Inn Express hotel going up. It occupies the site of the former high school, which was torn down and replaced with a new $26 million edifice down the road.
Also in that location is the site of the new 44,000 square feet Safeway Store and gas station. Behind it is the site of a new FBI building. Nearby is a new title company building. Dominant building in that whole area called the Tiger Business Park is the brand new Atlantic City Federal Credit Union building.
On the other end of town, you can see six new dorms going up for the Wyoming Catholic College.
There is also a plan for three new apartment complexes plus a new car wash a few blocks from there.
Just off Main is the newly constructed and expanded Library.
Down near the bridge over the Popo Agie River is the new Maverik Convenience Store.
And on the drawing boards are finished plans for the upcoming construction of a new Middle School.
With $2 million already allocated, Lander will see a new rodeo grounds since the present one will be moved to make way for about $12 million of new airport construction in the next few years.
Three miles from town, the Shoshone Rose Casino is expanding its size.
So if business is so great, why does it seem like there are so many empty business buildings town? On Main Street are the following empty business buildings:
• The former pet store, which quietly went out of business.
• A former large restaurant where Sanford’s served its food. For some reason, this successful Wyoming food chain has thrived everywhere in Wyoming but Lander.
• The former credit union building, which is empty because of the new one.
• A former convenience store that was a victim of a new Maverik built last year.
• A former media company office, which is empty because its former tenant was acquired by a Colorado company and moved there.
• Lander’s former Stub’s truck stop, which has been empty for almost a couple of years.
• A “spec” retail location, which has been unable to find a tenant.
It is not unusual to see “for rent” signs on many empty business buildings.
And very soon, we will have a huge empty Safeway building in the center of town and a big car dealership building that is empty – both the result of the good news mentioned earlier in this column.
And yet, realtors tell me that my currently empty Main Street property is still holding its value. If I want to sell, they are sure they can find a buyer.
Right now would be a great time for someone who wanted to own a small business to move to Lander. These building owners might be willing to structure some outstanding terms.
In the big picture, Lander’s economy is still pretty rosy.
I think we still have almost as many realtors as we have homes for sale. We have a busy Chamber of Commerce and an active economic development group.
So you see, in towns like Lander, it is easy to get nervous about empty buildings around town. But when you open your eyes wider, you also see all the new buildings under construction.
Let’s hope this trend continues here in my hometown and all around Wyoming.
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Sunday, June 14, 2009
WCR10 - Seeing the Pope, courtesy of the Wyo Catholic Register
Thanks to the Wyoming Catholic Register, I enjoyed one of the high points of my journalistic career back in April 1986.
Some 23 years ago, my wife Nancy and I got to see the Pope in person while visiting Rome during Easter Week. But before we saw the Pope, we endured some exciting times, courtesy of then-President Ronald Reagan.
But more on that later.
It was exciting being in Rome during Easter Week. The festivities were grand and thousands of people from all over the world descended on Rome.
Pope John Paul II conducted a weekly general audience for about 4,000 people in an auditorium next to St. Peter`s. We took a letter from our parish priest as introduction and were able to get two tickets to the event.
I used my press pass to get a special "Photopho-udience general" photographer’s pass. This allowed me to stand between cameramen from ABC-TV and CNN on the side stage next to where the Pope would be giving his address.
It was well worth the effort to get the tickets. Whether a person is Catholic or not, the general audience was very exciting. The atmosphere was electric. As the pope would read his messages in six different languages, the people of those countries would stand and cheer and wave banners from the audience. At times, it sounded more like a sporting event than a religious experience.
Our parish priest in Lander, at the time, was Fr. Joseph Daley and it was his idea for me to get a press pass, for which I was very thankful. Fr. Tom Ogg had helped us a lot in getting around Rome, too, as he was spending some time there.
It was exciting to get this close to the Pope, a man who is the spiritual leader of a church consisting of one billion people worldwide and who has been such a positive person for the cause of world peace. I took a lot of photos from about 15 feet away.
The Pope had a good sense of humor and had the audience laughing in many languages. There were people from at least a dozen countries represented in the hall.
He spent a lot of time with pilgrims who had made the long journey to Rome. It was sad to see all the handicapped and sick children and adults who attended. The Pope spent a considerable amount of time with each one of them, hugging them and giving them papal blessings.
Just prior to that event, though, we went through some exciting times.
There we were, standing beneath the beautiful ceilings of the Vatican Museum, next to the Sistine Chapel. We were craning our necks looking at the vast number of artworks painted by famous artists.
A souvenir vendor, in halting English, asked us: “What do you think about Reagan bombing Libya?” We were stunned. After traveling 8,000 miles from home and having a fun vacation in a nation just north of Libya, we were being told that our country had started bombing that neighboring country.
We tried to learn more about what happened. The vendor said Americans had blown up missile bases, shot down planes and sunk ships belonging to Libya. “What started it?” we asked him. He said he just didn`t know anything more than that.
We stood there in silence. American tourism to Europe had declined dramatically in 1986 because of fear of terrorism spawned by Libya. Just a few months earlier, innocent people had been gunned down in the Rome airport. And here we were now wondering if anything could possibly happen to us as Americans in Rome during Easter week.
Once we finally got our hands on a copy of a British newspaper did we find out the extent of the incident that was occurring a few hundred miles from where we were standing. It provided an interesting side adventure to the more pleasant one we had been experiencing. The news reports we heard and read gave us a different perspective of how Europe sometimes views Americans and what the U.S. does.
Airport security was high in Europe back then, but higher in Rome than other places. Security around the Vatican is similar to that around the White House for obvious reasons.
A common sight at the airport was seeing two Italian soldiers armed with submachine guns roaming the various terminals. When our plane took off, there were soldiers all around it and patrol cars parked in the distance looking on.
Although this provided an eerie feeling, we felt very safe at almost all times during our Rome visit.
Once home, with stories filed, it was quite a set of experiences to recall. And I owe it to the Wyoming Catholic Register. We will sure miss this wonderful newspaper.
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Saturday, June 13, 2009
925 - Thinking of strong mothers on Father`s Day
Not sure why, but I find myself thinking about all the strong mothers on a day that is designed to honor fathers?
My wife Nancy, my mother Betty, my mother-in-law Viola, my daughters Alicia, Shelli and Amber, my future daughter-in-law Amanda, my sisters Susie and Marybeth – well, when I think of them, the images of strong people come to mind. All.
It just seems to me that women have achieved much more than just token equality these days . . .
Sure, the wage gap in Wyoming is embarrassing and should be fixed. But anywhere you look, you can see strong women outperforming men all day long here in a state that prides itself on how well it treats women.
Now let’s keep in mind that there are still a great many strong men around. But strong here does not just mean physical strength. It means dedication, willpower, stick-to-itiveness, ethics, backbone, a sense of service, loyalty, brainpower, education, willingness to sacrifice and on and on.
For example, we just finished our annual Relay for Life here in Lander to raise money for Cancer Research. It was a big success with lots of hard work. And the names of the people making it a success were Stephanie, Lynette, Lois, JayLynn, Arcalee, Anne, Jennifer, Heidi, Kathy, Tina, Nancy, Evie plus many others.
Are women really taking over?
Here is another example: if John Edwards’ extramarital affairs were revealed earlier, our president today would be named Hillary.
Many of the superintendents of schools here in Fremont County are women named Paige Fenton Hughes, Michelle Hoffman, Tammy Cox and Diana Clapp. Even the president of our Central Wyoming Community College (Jo Anne McFarland) is a woman.
About the only place in Wyoming without a lot of women in it is the Legislature. Not sure why. And I am not sure that more women in there could improve its performance. Would be nice to have 20 or so women in there, instead of the lonely one we have now.
My career has been spent in the community newspaper business (weeklies and small dailies). The only women on staff when way back in 1964 were the receptionists and the token “society reporter.”
We smoked our cigarettes and cigars in the office, told bawdy jokes, hung up girlie photos in the photo darkroom and broke out the Bourbon and Scotch on those late nights.
Today, a typical small town newspaper is composed of almost all women. You can sometimes even find sports reporters that are women. You can even occasionally find women running the presses.
Many of the publishers are women, too, as you can see by Gillette’s Anne Kennedy, Rock Springs’ Holly Dabb and Newcastle Annie Mullen.
Recently, one of the key employees at our ad agency, Wyoming Inc., quit to take a job at a newspaper. Yeah, Shelley Ridenour is the new publisher of a daily newspaper in Oklahoma.
But not all women are automatically getting ahead.
Wyoming has a wonderful program that helps underpaid single mothers get educated for better jobs. It is called Climb Wyoming. Pam Ivey and Derin Ross talked at a meeting that I attended recently and what they said verified what we have been talking about here.
They have taken ex-waitresses, ex-motel maids, ex-receptionists, etc. who were “under employed” and trained them to be electricians, heavy equipment operators. entrepreneurs and sales managers. Typically, their wages doubled and tripled.
And the employers keep calling.
Climb Wyoming cannot keep enough of these newly trained and highly motivated women in the pipeline for all the job opportunities out there.
Check the program out at www.ClimbWyoming.org. They are headquartered in Cheyenne with offices in Laramie, Rock Springs, Gillette, Casper and Jackson.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Father’s Day and shouldn’t all our great male attributes be discussed here, not those of the so-called weaker sex? Well, not so fast.
One of my favorite successful gals, Diane Galloway, has a theory about why women are rising. She thinks that when many of the women who came home from working during World War II and started producing babies while their husbands took all the good jobs, well, it made them frustrated.
In revenge, they pampered their little boys but really poured it on their daughters – they wanted their daughters to regain these strong positions in our society.
She really does have a point. Look around. You can see it everywhere.
So with these words, now I really do expect to get some serious pampering today by all these strong gals that surround me.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
924 - One of my favorite readers tells me: no more pessimism
My friend Isabel stopped me at the grocery store parking lot and said, “you just need to cheer up, Bill!”
She was disappointed in last week’s column which predicted the national economy would perk up the rest of this year and then hit the skids in 2010.
“I like your optimism,” she continued. “Please don’t jolt me on a Sunday morning with bad news.”
Hmmm.
On the other hand, legislator Kermit Brown from Albany County ripped me up recently for always being a Pollyanna. He felt that my sunny predictions about Wyoming’s future just were not accurate. He sent me a clipping from the Wall Street Journal to prove how wrong my observations were.
After reviewing both of these situations, it is obvious that both are correct.
My columns have almost always predicted a consistent economic future for Wyoming, as long as energy is our main product.
Until some miracle application arrives (hydrogen fuel cells that work, for example), our state’s economy will remain sound.
Of course, state officials need to review the way it is taxing those companies that are harvesting our non-renewable resources. And we need to do a better job of auditing just how much oil, coal, natural gas, trona and uranium (and helium, too) are leaving our state.
But as long as three-fourths of our economy is hinged to energy, the state’s outlook should remain relatively healthy, especially in comparison to other states.
So it’s easy to continue to be optimistic when we are talking about Wyoming.
Now Isabel was frustrated with me for what was said about the national economy.
In that instance, the following trends are, unfortunately, very real:
• Yes, we are in for unreal inflation.
• Yes, we have a momentary bright spot, but things will get worse.
• And yes, it is important to warn people so they can get their acts together before the big storm arrives.
So, how can I write about the economy without sounding so negative? Perhaps the best way is to gather some interesting items and pass them along.
State Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander) was talking about the state economy recently and used the phrase “when do things get so bad that you eat your seed corn?” A great line. I had not heard it since moving here from Iowa 40 years ago.
What this phrase means is an expression that would define when you might cut down the last tree or use up the last of our resources that are needed to perpetrate our way of life.
He used the term is discussing whether or not the state of Wyoming should be dipping into our Permanent Mineral Trust Fund or tapping into our various rainy day funds, which add up to over $10 billion in savings accounts.
Once we tap into that money, it is gone.
But the argument the other way would be that if these are funds for a “rainy day,” who gets to decide when it is raining?
This is much like one of my favorite expressions: “It is a recession when you lose your job. It is a depression when I lose mine.”
Now here is an anomaly for you. Recently the state announced its valuation was the highest ever $20 billion plus. And yet Gov. Dave Freudenthal and the legislature are planning big, big budget cuts.
Well, the way the cycles work, the valuations are always behind the curve of reality. At least one year behind.
Current valuations, according to how we figure taxes, show natural gas at $12 billion, coal at $3.7 billion and oil at $4 billion. This does not include trona, uranium or helium, which contribute many millions, too.
The same people doing these estimates predict it will drop a whopping 50 percent next year. Just like that, some $10 billion in worth will disappear right here in our own Wyoming. Now that is a hit to be taken seriously.
Earlier I referred to the Permanent Mineral Trust Fund and other funds. Luckily with the small rebound on Wall Street, state assets in these funds have risen to $10.5 billion. This is lower than the previous $11.3 billion that the state paid for these investments but better than the valuation of $9.7 billion back in February.
Hopefully this monetary gibberish won’t drive Isabel back to the comic pages.
On the other hand, I sure find the ups and downs of our economy to be fascinating and I hope you do, too.
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Saturday, June 6, 2009
923 - Wyoming economy stirring and coming back to life?
A government, which robs Peter to pay Paul, can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw
Despite some scary predictions about the future, it appears that the present is showing some signs of life when it comes to the economy.
The 90 percent of people who have jobs are starting to spend their money again, which will stimulate our state’s economy.
But a lot of folks have lost jobs. Our state lost its lead as the place in America with lowest unemployment recently. We are now third best behind North Dakota and Nebraska.
In April, we experienced our largest job loss since the bust days of 1987. Some 2,200 jobs went away in April, mainly in oil and gas.
The county worst hit was Big Horn with 7.9 percent unemployment followed by Teton with 7.8 percent. Best counties were Albany at 2.6 percent followed by Sublette with 3.2 percent.
Despite that, other indicators are things are improving here as the summer months arrive.
The head of the Wyoming car dealers association was quoted as saying that their overall business is down just 30 percent, which I find remarkable. I know this is a tough statistic, but for car sellers to still be doing 70 percent as well as they were a few years ago is, well, a sign that times are getting better.
Tourism is showing positive signs of life, too, which is good news for Wyoming. Our second largest industry depends on people willing to drive long distances and it appears that this is happening.
We just returned from a family visit to Iowa and the roads were full of travelers and RVs.
And although I think Iowa will be facing tough times when the inevitable ethanol bubble bursts, for the time being everyone I talked with, in that state, seemed bullish.
Another sign that our economy is improving is the recent statement by Gov. Dave Freudenthal that perhaps the 10 percent across the board cut in state government spending he was proposing, may not be necessary. Although he would still like to implement it.
Recent reports by the CREG group (Comprehensive Revenue Estimating Group) indicate that anticipated losses in Wyoming severance tax revenue might not be as severe as initially thought.
Gov. Dave is very conservative about money and his actions made a lot of sense to me. His carpenter’s motto of “measure twice and cut once” came into play correctly in this instance.
While our state’s economy seems pretty stable (as did Iowa’s), other places in the country are not doing so well.
I know a bunch of guys who just made an offer of $55,000 on a house in Arizona that was appraised at $200,000 two years ago. Sounds like a good investment to me.
In Florida, there are 300,000 empty homes. Not homes for sale or in foreclosure, but EMPTY. Dire times there, indeed.
And then there is California. Voters there turned down a plan that would have added $36 billion to state coffers. Now their only alternatives are to legalize marijuana, turn prisoners loose, cut services and send IOUs to people they owe money to.
I know a guy who retired in Wyoming who is scared to death that he will be receiving IOUs from his former residence of California instead of a check from that state’s retirement system. He is not sure he could cash such an IOU here in Wyoming. Pretty scary.
In the big picture, it is easy to deduce (rightly or wrongly) that the big city folks who elected President Obama live in the areas that are hurting the most.
Folks out here in the heartland seem to be doing much better. Does this mean that we will see that “rob Peter to pay Paul” idea that will evolve where we will ultimately pay the bill for those who have not managed their own state economies so well?
Sure looks like a likely scenario.
If the Republican Party could ever get its act together on a national level, this will be the hot button for the near future. But where is the national leader to speak for this?
To wrap this ups, as I said at the beginning, I think we will see the economy come crashing down again in about six months. We all need to prepare for that.
Keep an eye on your wallet and on the politicians in Washington, D. C.
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