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Tuesday, September 28, 2010
040 - Is Yellowstone National Park over-loved? Perhaps
Seems like during most of my 40 years in Wyoming, we could go to Yellowstone National Park after Labor Day and have the place pretty much to ourselves.
It was sort of a local joke that folks from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho would head to the park in April and May and then September and October.
“Let the flatlanders have it during June, July and August,” seemed to be the local attitude.
But not so any more.
Yellowstone is enjoying (or enduring) record numbers of tourist visits. This year, the park officials said they set another all-time record for tourists during those three big months of the summer.
This year, we waited until Sept. 12 to head to Yellowstone and wow, was it ever crowded.
Nancy and I loaded up our RV and headed north on a Sunday morning. Without an advance reservation, we felt lucky to get one of the last camping spaces at Grant Village on the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake.
Did I say that I love Yellowstone? Well, even the large crowds could not deter the wonder of the place. The weather was perfect and, despite a few lines, it was a time for new memories.
The next day we toured the lower loop and visited the wonderful sunroom at the Lake Hotel. That room is a place that many folks claim to be one of the most “centering” places on the planet. Some folks like my friend, Lovell native Lee Myers, might agree with me that perhaps a “vortex” can be found there.
Aging hippies in Sedona, Arizona, will claim their hometown has wondrous vortexes that provide good health and insights for its residents.
Well, if such a thing as a vortex exists, I think one can be found there on the north bank of Yellowstone Lake. There is rarely such a place where you can feel more comfortable and self-confident than that old sunroom, which points out toward the lake.
Do others feel the same about that unique location?
Of course, the real vortex-type places in the park would be the natural features like the lake, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, the waterfalls, the thermal features and my favorite, the Norris Geyser Basin.
One of the largest natural hot springs in the world is the Mammoth Hot Springs in the community of that name at the north edge of the park.
We headed up there after circling the upper loop of the park and climbing and descending Dunraven Pass. We enjoyed huge ice cream cones at Tower Falls during that trek.
But we were headed to Mammoth because of the “rut.”
No, not because of the rut we may be in during our day-to-day lives, but because the bull elk were whistling and snorting and storming around the area rounding up their cows during breeding season.
On the day we were there, it would have been hard to be disappointed. The weather was perfect and yes, the crowds were immense. But, there were no elk. They had headed to the hills the night before despite the crowd there to watch them. And there were no campground sites left as everyone else in America had the same idea that we had.
Based on that, we lined up a pricey campsite (most expensive I have ever rented) at an obscure KOA six miles west of West Yellowstone. Glad I did. It was filled to the brim, too.
In my conversations with other locals (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho residents) during our travels, we all agreed that if we could just count on the weather, we probably needed to start visiting the park in October.
There are probably folks out there who believe that the way to sustain Yellowstone would be to limit visitors. This would be nuts.
The park has more than two million acres of space and there are already dozens of maintenance roads cut into the park in various places. Some folks think the Park Service could create some new places for people to camp and to visit, which would eliminate some of the pressure.
A better idea, though, is to continue to promote park visitors to stay outside the park in the wonderful gateway communities.
But meanwhile, it sure seems to me that I no longer have a personal relationship to the park that is different from 3.7 million of my closest friends from around the world.
We all love Yellowstone. What else can I say?
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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
039 - Ford Bussart, the admiral of Flaming Gorge, is gone
Although small in height, attorney Ford T. Bussart was a giant when it came to things he cared about.
Ford, 65, died this past week at his home in Green River.
His death was unexpected. He was working hard on some huge legal cases, which were taking a lot of his time. Those cases will proceed without him, but things will be markedly different without his leadership.
In Wyoming, you can count on the fingers of one hand the most prominent lawyers. Biggest name, of course, is Jackson’s Gerry Spence. But not far behind is the name Ford Bussart.
Ford and I both have boats at Lucerne Marina on Flaming Gorge. Mine is an average-sized boat. Ford’s, of course, is the biggest one on the entire lake.
Called Warm Rain, this 50-foot yacht was a full-time labor of love for Ford and his wife Pati. They spent most of their summer weekends polishing and working on it.
My nickname for Ford was “The Admiral of Flaming Gorge,” although I never called him that to his face. I think he might have enjoyed it if I had, though.
He and Pati worked relentlessly on that boat. It had two huge diesel engines and one broke down last summer. Took all winter to get it going and he was always going to take us on a cruise.
Last time I saw him, he dropped off some homegrown tomatoes and returned my hat, which ended up in their boat during a horrible windstorm.
The Bussart’s had asked me to help them get their smaller fishing boat into a safe slip and the wind was whipping the waves seemingly into five foot swells. I thought the grim reaper was stalking us in those fierce waves.
Ford and I were on each side of the slip at the end of the dock as he was trying to coax Pati through the waves and into the slip so the boat could be tied up safely. It took awhile and scared the daylights out of us, but we managed to get the boat secured. That event showed me Ford’s skills as a boat captain.
Then again, he was a pretty good captain at everything he did.
During his long and varied legal career he was the mastermind in the case that set a legal precedent concerning how our Wyoming schools are funded. The result of that case has reverberated for a decade here in the Cowboy State.
Most recently, he was the lead attorney in representing folks trying to stop a Colorado entrepreneur from piping 61 billion gallons of water per year from Flaming Gorge to the Front Range.
Our company, Wyoming Inc., has also been doing some work to fight that project. During a recent chat, Ford confided: “this case could last a decade. It might still be going on, long after we are not around to participate in it.” Little could we fathom the accuracy of his comment.
Our efforts will continue but it may take awhile to replace the momentum that Ford brought to that project.
Back in 1986, he was a front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor. But he passed it up saying Wyoming was descending into a terrible bust.
As usual, he was prophetic as the Wyoming economy languished for a decade and a half.
Meanwhile, he kept practicing law and serving the people of Green River, Rock Springs, Sweetwater County and Wyoming.
It was interesting that the busy Gov. Dave Freudenthal took his first vacation as governor by spending time with Ford and Pati at Flaming Gorge.
Last year, Gov. Dave nominated Ford to be the new U. S. Federal Judge in Cheyenne. President Obama appointed First Lady Nancy to that post.
Ford was disappointed, but calmly said: “We have lots of other irons in the fire.”
Perhaps it was fate that he was not appointed, based on his premature death.
Others could write much more detailed stories about Ford T. Bussart. I only knew him in recent years, although it was easy to be aware of this powerhouse lawyer over the past decades.
He was a former trustee at UW and a former legislator. As a young man, he was known as a corruption-fighting lawyer during Wyoming’s earlier boom.
Looking ahead, things at the lake just are not going to be the same without our admiral.
His death is a huge loss for Sweetwater County and Wyoming. Our condolences to Pati, their daughter and friends.
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Sunday, September 12, 2010
038 - A visit with an old friend my personal library
Most folks of my generation aspire to have their own private libraries.
Seems that journalists, business folks, retired teachers or professors or just those well-read folks (lots in Wyoming), well, the concept of having hundreds or thousands of favorite books at immediate disposal is wonderful.
I was a newspaper editor for 43 years and collected five huge shelve-sets full of books. Besides those shelves, which are located in three different locations (my office, my home office, and some shelf-sets prominently displayed in our house), we also have scores of books in boxes scattered around the basement and in some old warehouse spaces.
Recently, I stumbled upon my newspaper editor library, which is in my old office in the building next door. It is stashed out of sight in the rear of the building.
I had moved to my current office about two yeas ago and never got around to moving those books.
It was with a warm feeling of familiarity that I greeted my old (book) friends. The experience was with similar feelings of that when you meet an old friend. As I leafed through some of the books two things happened:
• Dust and lint sailed into the air from years of obscurity.
• I actually felt a little guilt for not visiting with my old friends for so long.
Could it be that I could now get along without these sources of knowledge, which had been so indispensable to me?
The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding yes!
History Prof. Steve Thulin of Northwest Community College of Powell offers another thought: “When you revisited your old friends, you experienced something that you and I once experienced in libraries the blessings of serendipity.
“Wandering through stacks of real books, you are drawn to a volume out of mere curiosity on a subject you had not targeted on your expedition. And hours later you had read scores of pages about something you had not imagined accidental growth!
“It can happen even in your own home library when you haul down a book unvisited for years and you read it with different eyes. And you don`t know why you decided to grab that book, that day.
“You don`t get that serendipity from the highly-targeted process that so rapidly delivers a specific title to your Droid or via Google on your computer.”
Good points.
Three things have caused me to not need this library any longer. First was the advent of computers, which can store gigantic amounts of information. Second, is the Internet, where I can go and access anything that was on these shelves. Third, is my Kindle, an effective little e-reader from Amazon, which has 22 books stored on it with the capacity for another 80.
There is even a Kindle application on my new Droid cell phone that allows me to “read” my e-books on that tiny phone! Amazing. It works so well, I may never pick up my Kindle again – just read books on my phone. What a shock.
Dave and May Raynolds of Lander own a house, which is lined with shelf after shelf of books. I was always envious. The Dartmouth-educated Raynolds even has a ladder installed like in a library so he could access every volume.
Dr. Dale and Jen Peterson of Lander recently built a beautiful new house and it also has a library, of which they are very proud of its existence.
And finally, my wife Nancy has been nagging me to create a larger library space in our house. “We have so many great books. They should be where we can get to them,” she argues.
Not surprising, I have been resisting.
Despite my ego, I just think these books will become dust catchers going forward into the future. Someday our kids and grandkids will have to lug all these books to some terrible place (like the dump?).
No, we have enough shelves. Will I win this argument?
No, I am not going to dismantle my office library. It will continue to exist a little while longer. Or at least until I rent out that space.
But I promise to visit my old friends more often.
In the meantime, my computer will continue to store more data and my Kindle will provide me with any reading that I want to do.
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Thursday, September 2, 2010
037 - Wyomingites need to informed about future of energy
Historians studying energy at some distant point in the future will look back on the first decade of the 21st century with a mixture of surprise and dismay. It will be both the attitudes of the consumers and the lack of progress by producers when it comes to technology opportunities that will give them consternation.
Smack in the middle of these discussions should be a place called Wyoming. This is a state with the smallest population in the union, which yet produces so much energy, its leaders proudly call itself the energy breadbasket of the Western Hemisphere. A full 10 percent of the energy used by the rest of the USA is produced here and sent to the other 49 states.
A futurist looking back at the Wyoming of today will study coal, natural gas, oil and uranium production. Such future discussions will also talk about the need for conservation and development of cleaner energy sources like solar and wind (both of which are also in abundance in Wyoming). Plus perhaps the biggest questions: How can utilities guarantee that the lights will not go out? And how to utilize energy produced by huge power plants that goes unused?
These historians will note the year 2010 as a time when coal, the cheapest, most abundant fuel on the planet, was vilified in many circles as a dirty contaminant that was fouling the earth’s upper atmospheres causing climate change and wreaking havoc on the planet’s weather systems.
And Wyoming, as the largest coal producing state, again found its leaders sitting astride this push-pull of public opinion and contrasting scientific conclusions.
The year 2010 is a time when planned coal-fired power plants are being scrapped as big utilities try to become better citizens. One way utility leaders thought they could appease a loud portion of their customers, who seek cleaner forms of energy generation, was by scrapping coal projects in favor of cleaner alternatives.
Thus, based on news reports, the common belief of people would be that the USA was in the midst of a paradigm shift as its utilities switched to clean energy like wind power from dirty energy like coal.
As usual, there is more to this story than what appears on the surface.
While many of these technology changes were getting the headlines, something quite unpredicted was happening on the energy production side of the issue. Some 22 new coal-fired powered plants were coming online and another eight had completed their permitting in the USA. More coal-fired plants came online in 2009 than any other year since 1991, to the dismay of ardent environmentalist s wanting to clean up the atmosphere.
The amount of coal produced in Wyoming did take its first dip in 2009 after a dozen years of tonnage increases. The industry still produced 433 million tons, most of which were shipped all over the USA to plants owned by utilities, which are under mandates to never let the lights go out.
Despite coal being so cheap and abundant, there is another downside byproduct of its use. The biggest source of unused electrical power in America in 2010 is energy that is produced by coal plants but which was not needed by consumers and could not be stored. It often just disappears into thin air.
The two biggest energy issues of our time could arguably be first, how to get consumers to conserve more energy, and second, is there a technology out there in the future that could figure out how to store (or use) this excess coal-fired energy?
Better conservation will come with more effective insulation in buildings using smart thermostats. Production savings could also come by seeing big utilities using a smarter grid to transport electricity, which could save billions of dollars.
Big decisions are being made by both political leaders and business leaders concerning how both energy is produced and consumed. Let’s hope Wyoming leaders will be consulted. As the country’s only state that is a leader in both coal and natural gas production, you would think that what happens in Wyoming would be critical to the national energy outlook.
Wyoming’s energy history is still being written back here in 2010. Based on how slowly progress can be made, this state’s citizens should be able to capitalize on whatever direction is taken both on the producing and consuming ends of the energy equation.
But most importantly, both our leaders and our citizens must keep informed of all trends relating to both consumption and production.
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Wednesday, September 1, 2010
036 - Some 118,500 legal pot users around Wyoming
One issue that is all over the news in neighboring states of Colorado and Montana, which will not be discussed soon in Wyoming, is the legalization of medical marijuana.
Both of these states that cover our north and south borders have given in the idea of “medical marijuana” and that has effectively decriminalized the drug. In fact, there are reportedly now more pot stores in metropolitan Denver than liquor establishments.
Meanwhile states like Wyoming, Nebraska and Utah view marijuana as a gateway drug and have pretty harsh penalties for both the possession of and the delivery thereof.
Are leaders in Wyoming and these other states wrong?
Not long ago, one prominent former Wyoming drug fighter told me confidentially that it was time for our state to modify its policies. Some of the facts used to support this argument were pretty compelling. However, I am not endorsing this.
My, how the world has changed in the last four years.
From 2003 to 2006, our Advertising Agency (Wyoming Inc.) created the state’s first anti-Meth campaign. That experience provided our staff with a tremendous education on drug abuse and treatment alternatives.
The experience made it easy to become anti-drug.
In one way I have come to the conclusion that Wyoming actions toward marijuana have been wrong. The penalties are too stiff.
Some smart medical folks came up with a conclusion over a decade ago called “the disease concept.” This claims addicts are prone from early in their lives to become addicted to drugs and alcohol.
These folks need treatment more than jail time. People with this “disease” should be treated much like someone who has diabetes, heart disease, M. S., or any other chronic diseases.
It was with that in mind that our neighboring states copied California and Oregon programs where medicinal marijuana was has been available since 1996.
But it has not been a perfect plan in Montana and Colorado.
Recently, Billings Gazette reporter Diane Cochran managed to get a marijuana prescription over the phone in eight minutes. Most Montana residents, especially the conservative ones, became pretty vocal upon reading that news story. Her story generated an astonishing 190 comments to the newspaper.
Ms. Cochran is now one of 23,500 Montanans who are eligible to smoke or ingest marijuana legally. She told the doctor that she had a sore back from a fall on a concrete floor 15 years earlier.
Most recently, the biggest furor in Montana is that folks there discovered a loophole in their law that does not require people participating to even be Montana residents.
South of our border, there are 95,000 people in Colorado who have been issued cards allowing them to purchase medical marijuana.
It has become such a big business in Denver, that over $1 million in special taxes were collected during a recent 12-month period by the city.
Some leaders of Colorado cities and towns have become so upset about the explosion of dispensaries, they have measures on the ballot this November to try to shut them down.
Some Wyoming folks are even getting involved in the Colorado pot bonanza.
Scott Mullner, a city councilman in Laramie, recently bought the 67-acre organic Szymanski Farm in Boulder County, which news stories say, could become one of that state’s largest pot farms.
“I had to do this. It’s the highest and best use as far as farming goes,” Mullner told the Boulder Camera newspaper.
Even national figures are getting into the act.
Conservative political darling Sarah Palin (former governor of Alaska) chimed in on the controversy. On Fox News, she talked about decriminalizing marijuana: “If somebody’s gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, the fuzz should just leave them alone.” Her state is among 14 states that have some kind of medical marijuana program. Another 13 have ballot measures or legislation pending on the issue.
I do not agree with Ms. Palin on her ideas about general decriminalization. But the facts seem to indicate there really is a need for effective medical marijuana. It is a fact that the drug helps people who are suffering from some serious diseases.
But the abuses appear to be rampant and based on the experience in California and Oregon, and more locally, Colorado and Montana, it does not look like anything close to medical marijuana will be happening any time soon here in Wyoming.
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