A lead story in last Sunday’s New York Times was about one of Wyoming’s most famous native sons - Olympic Gold Medal winner Rulon Gardner.

         Rulon, him of prodigious feats (and an equally prodigious appetite), has been to the top of the highest mountains (Olympic medals, financial independence and international fame) and to the deepest valleys (divorces, weight issues, business failure, near-death experiences) and yet, here he is again.

At 40, he wants to occupy the lone heavyweight spot on the Olympic team competing in London this year.

He won four matches in a recent tourney to get ready. He said he was pleased with both his weight and his stamina.

         Last year, the now 268-pound Greco-Roman wrestler showed up on the Biggest Loser TV show weighing a gargantuan 474 pounds.

         He says he managed to lose 185 pounds during his stint on the show, and more since.

         Rulon is a gigantic icon and yet, we all know he is a pure country Wyoming farm boy from Star Valley. I predict a movie will be made about him some day. What a story! Not sure who could play the role but it would require a pretty big guy with an equally pretty big heart.

         And yet, it appears his story is not over. I am rooting for him.

• As someone with an unusual last name, I can identify with a Wyoming newspaper blooper, as reported by Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.

         As a longtime newspaperman, I both laugh and cringe during Leno’s weekly “headlnes” feature, which details how badly headlines, ads and stories can get fouled up in newspapers.

         With my last name Sniffin, I can certainly sympathize with Del Nose who was recently chosen to be the new coach of the Powell Northwest College rodeo team.

         The Powell Tribune played it straight with the headline: “Del Nose returns to Northwest.”

         But those funny folks at the Rock Springs Rocket Miner made the Leno show with the headline: “Northwest College Picks Nose.”

         If Del is like me, he actually gets used to the funny things that can happen when you have an unusual last name. Good job, all around.

         • Automobiles and trucks provide the best products for Wyoming “quillers.” Yes, that is right, the word is “quiller, not quilter.”

         According to Casper reporter Tom Morton, there were folks at a recent outdoor show in the Oil City demonstrating how Indians made clothing out of porcupine quills.

         A group including Casper College Dean Melissa Connely and others very, very carefully weaved together the various quills.

         She reported to Tom that the best source for the quills is road kill.

         • Members of the Wyoming legislature will be debating ways to raise money to pay for the extensive billion-dollar repairs projected for I-80 when they meet soon in Cheyenne.

         I think some kind of toll road concept makes sense but included in that needs to be a way for Wyoming folks to escape big financial penalties.

         Some folks think you cannot put a toll on an interstate. Obviously not true.

         Not along ago, I again ran into the toll road from Wichita, to Topeka. Cost $3.75 to travel on the “Kansas Turnpike.” It was on I-35. Would that not mean it would be easy to put a toll road on I-80?

         • Wyomingites, for the most part, are huge Denver Bronco fans and hence, big fans of Tim Tebow.

         He has become a cultural phenomenon far eclipsing his heroics on the football field with his displaying his strong Christian beliefs.

         Best joke about him:

New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady, after living a full life, died. When he got to heaven, God was showing him around. They came to a modest little house with a faded Patriots flag in the window. "This house is yours for eternity, Tom," said God. “This is very special; not everyone gets a house up here." Tom felt special, indeed, and walked up to his house.

He noticed another house: a three-story mansion, 50-foot flagpole with an enormous Broncos logo, a swimming pool the shape of a horse and a Tim Tebow Jersey on the front door. Tom looked at God and said, “God, I`m not trying to be ungrateful, but I have a question? I was an all-pro quarterback, I won three Super Bowls, and I even went to the Hall of Fame. So why does Tim Tebow get a better house than mine?"

God chuckled, “Tom, that`s not Tebow`shouse. That`s mine."

         A confused America has been watching recently as the last of our soldiers in Iraq headed for home. Our involvement in that war is officially over.

         After nine years, a trillion dollars and 4,500 men and women killed, was this worth it? 

         More than a few of even my most conservative friends have complained that this whole Iraq adventure was foolhardy and was a primary cause of the country’s current debt disaster.

         Another point of view can be obtained by reading former Vice President Dick Cheney’s accounts of things in his book, In My Time.

In this column, I have both defended Wyomingite Cheney for the actions of the Bush-Cheney administration and took them to task for what appears, in hindsight, to be mistaken long-term wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

         How easy it is to forget those bad times that led to these wars.

         Cheney’s excellent book takes the reader back to the time of 9/11, when President George Bush declared, “we are a country at war” with terrorism. We were under attack from all sides and we need to behave as if we were at war, Cheney reiterates.

         It has always been easy to defend Cheney and Bush for going too far when it came to national defense, implementing harsh interrogation techniques and even creating the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba as a place to house suspected “enemy combatants.”

         If 9/11 had happened on any one of our watches, we would have vowed “never again” and become a true extremist in the way to approach defense.

         Looking back it might be easy to conclude that the national laws limiting our freedoms, the approval of enhanced interrogation techniques (torture?), and the creation of a place in Cuba that seemed to violate just the Bill of Rights made sense at the time.

         Cheney’s proudest moment, as recounted in his book, is the day he and Bush left office knowing that no other terrorist attacks had occurred on American soil during their watch.

         In this sense he was right. But the people of America had given up a lot. No country enjoyed the privacy and individual rights that Americans had prior to 9/11. Today, we have government entities and law enforcement peering into every corner of our lives.    Our individual liberties have been damaged severely. Although it can seem benign to those of us who are behaving most of the time.

As an aside, although he doesn’t write it this way, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a smirk on his face as he sees that President Barack Obama has continued most of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorist policies that the Democrat campaigned that he would eliminate during the campaign of 2008.

         In defending their Iraq actions, Cheney correctly points out that more Democrats in Congress favored the Iraq war than favored Desert Storm back in 1991.

         But huge mistakes were made.

         Two biggest were done based on the post-World War II model of German and Japan. In both of those countries, America abolished the ruling party and disbanded the army.

         But when they did that in Iraq, it was disastrous. 

         All the key workers in the country had had to join the party in order to secure their jobs. An estimated three-fourths of the Baathist workers who lost their jobs were not Saddam loyalists. This threw the country into total chaos. Nobody could run a power plant, preside over a college or keep oil fields running.

         Saddam had a million man army. Sure the officers were mainly Saddam loyalists, but when the Bush-Cheney administration sent them home, these soldiers were now penniless, were furious at their new stations in life and most importantly, were armed.

         This was a key reason for the violence that erupted in Iraq and prolonged the war five years and cost the American people a half a trillion dollars.  

         Based on the World War II model, we should have left 50,000 soldiers there for 60 years. Instead, we are out of there.

         Had Bush and Cheney somehow stayed in office four more years, it is hard to tell what the Iraq outcome would have been. Probably a lot more money spent, but probably a stable Iraq during that time, anyway.

         It is hard to argue with Obama’s bringing the troops home. 

         But Cheney is both proud of what the USA did in Iraq but fearful of what will happen next. 

         After reading his book and re-living his telling of the history of those incredible times, it becomes easier to understand how we ended up where we are now.

         Overall, I think history may judge Cheney and Bush poorly for their actions. But if looked at in the context of what it was like to lead this country in the post 9/11 world, historians may judge them not so harshly about both the how and why of their events.

         The first half of the book is all about Wyoming. I would strongly recommend it. Fascinating stuff.

         My, how things have changed in my wonderful newspaper business over the past 42 years!

         A week ago at this time, I was mingling with the young, earnest reporters and the gray-haired publishers. Plus even a few of the retired silver-haired mossback curmudgeons (like myself) who could still manage to drive across the state in the dead of winter showed up.

         Laramie hosted the annual Wyoming Press Association convention for the first time in almost 50 years and, as near as I could tell, it was a big success,

         What struck me the most is not so much about what has changed in the 42 years that I have been attending this event, but what has stayed the same.

         Back in 1970, I was a 24-year old publisher eager to prove that we knew now to practice solid journalism in our little town of Lander. The big dogs were Russ Stout of Rawlins, Hugh Knoefel of Worland, Bernie Horton of Cheyenne, Bob and Roy Peck of Riverton, Dave Bonner of Powell, Ron Lytle of Lovell, Phil McAuley at the Casper Star Tribune, Milton Chilcott of Sheridan, Fred McCabe of Jackson, Jim Hicks of Buffalo, Bruce Kennedy of Greybull, Russ Allbaugh of Laramie, Chuck Richardson of Rock Springs, Mel Baldwin of Evanston, Adrian Reynolds of Green River, Gerry Bardo of Lusk, Dick Perue of Saratoga and Jack Nisselius of Gillette.

         There were others, too, that I don’t recall, but those folks were every bit as dedicated as I was to the goal of producing a good newspaper for our readers and if things worked out, making a little profit, too.

Sort of seemed to me that the old guard consisted of Stout, Knoefel, Allbaugh and Richardson.

         The press association was run by Nancy Shelton out of her home in Laramie.   

         I was so young and so new to Wyoming, it was impossible to try to figure out who owned what and where exactly their towns were.

         Then there was a group of good old boys who mainly worked for various state government outfits who invited me to join them for a drink.

         So in the bar at Little America the kid from Iowa got a lesson on how Wyoming folks drank at their annual press convention. Thanks to Ray Savage, Randy Wagner, Gene Bryan, Clyde Douglass and others, I spent the next 12 hours holed up in my room suffering from the worst hangover of my life.

         I barely emerged in time for the big awards banquet Saturday night when that same foursome inquired: “Bill, where have you been?” Never again, I vowed.

         So now, four decades later, many things have also remained the same as they were back in those old days. The reporters are just as inquisitive and the goal of trying to sell more advertising to our customers is just as important as it was way back when.

Most publishers are concerned about how many subscribers they have and how to keep them. 

The need of having a strong internet presence is a huge topic today along with the corresponding question of how in the heck can we make any money giving our product away on the net? Another big changes is the constant (but incorrect) assumption that for some reason, newspapers are dinosaurs.  

Despite obstacles and hurdles, Wyoming‘s newspapers are strong, profitable and serving their communities well.

         President of the WPA this year has been Reed Eckhardt of the Cheyenne Tribune-Eagle with Patrick Murphy of the Sheridan Press as vice- president. Bob Bonnar of Newcastle of the WPA board has done some yeoman work helping with open meetings legislation this past year. Former Associated Press writer Jim Angell is the executive who runs the WPA from its office in Cheyenne.

         A staple at the annual convention is the appearance by the governor. At this venue, I have asked questions of Stan Hathaway, Ed Herschler, Mike Sullivan, Jim Geringer, Dave Freudenthal and now, Matt Mead. Well, sometimes it still does feel the same.

         Outside of the internet issues, the biggest change in the press meeting is now two-thirds of the participants are women. Four decades ago, I doubt if it were a fourth. 

         There used to be clouds of cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke everywhere in those bad old good old days. Not any more, thankfully.

         Ken Smith, who now heads the Journalism Dept. at University of Wyoming told me that the numbers of students wanting a career in journalism is at an all-time high, despite this supposedly downtown in newspaper interest. The future is bright for anyone with strong communication skills was my answer to his question about why is this happening?

         Ken is a former publisher of the Green River Star. I recruited him from Ames, Iowa, to come to the Wyoming back in 1978. And now here we are.

         I have never missed a press convention and always felt that it provided both a chance to learn new skills but most importantly, renew old acquaintances and make new ones.

         Like so many statewide organizations, the WPA serves a group of like-minded and energetic people. These are folks who literally work hundreds of miles away from each other, but end up providing that similarly important product to their communities – the hometown community newspaper.

         A few years ago, I published a column listing my Wyoming Bucket List.

         The concept of figuring out those things that you want to do before you die was the theme of a popular movie called The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman back in 2008.

         The movie was inspiring and I   immediately put together my own personal bucket list.

         On the big picture I want to visit the Holy Land, South America, Africa, China, do some major charity work, make a movie, write a novel, spend lots of time with grandkids and well, you can see how this works. (Note: outside of spending time with the grandkids have still not made any of those marvelous treks, but . . .)

         Back then I also put together my own “Wyoming Bucket List,” – those places in our great state that I would like to experience before kicking the proverbial bucket.

         Among the things that I wanted to do, and did do, included finally seeing Sybille Canyon between Laramie and Wheatland and driving the back road over the Snowy Range Mountains between Saratoga and Laramie. Also, I finally took that back road from Rock Springs to South Pass and saw the Boar’s Tusk and the Killpecker Sand Dunes. On my earlier list was a visit to Bill, Wyoming, which I managed to do one Sunday afternoon while listening to a Bronco football game on the radio.

         Also finally drove that fantastic Wild Horse Loop from Green River to north of Rock Springs above the White Mountains. We also re-visited the fantastic petroglyphs just south of Dubois. Amazing.

         But I still have not made it to some very important events. So here goes by 2012 Wyoming Bucket List:

         • Hoping to get back to Frontier Days this summer – there is nothing like this event in the world.

• A closer look at Vedauwoo area outside of Laramie deserves attention. Again, I have driven by hundreds of times. It is time for a closer look. Also, to spend some time at Curt Gowdy State Park.

• Crossing the Wind River Range/Continental Divide via horse pack trip with legendary guide, Jim Allen.

         • There is a man-made rock arrow in the Red Desert that points toward the Medicine Wheel. It is between Jeffrey City and Wamsutter and will make a nice quad runner trip.

         • Between Jeffrey City and Muddy Gap is an odd rock formation I call Stonehenge. Reportedly it has names written in it including John Sublette. Sometime this year it will finally get checked off.

         • Our family lived on Squaw Creek for 23 years outside of Lander and our view looked out at Red Butte. Hope to climb it this summer.

         • If Fossil Butte is not on this list, my friend Vince Tomassi will scold me about it. He serves incredible meals every Thursday night in Kemmerer-Diamondville at Luigi’s. Perhaps a tour and dinner, Vince?

         • Enjoy a Scotch tasting part at historic Miner’s Delight in Atlantic City, just above Lander.

         • I have snowmobiled Yellowstone a couple of times but not for 20 years. Hope to do that again.

         • In 1993, I spent a very nervous time hunting a bighorn ram in the Double Cabin Area northeast of Dubois. Would love to go back for a more relaxed trip this time around.

         • Tour UW with a knowledgeable guide and see first-hand all the new buildings and new programs.

         • Some 36 years ago, I photographed what looked like a horrible scar on Togwotee Pass where the area was clear-cut. Would like to go back to those areas and see if the timber has recovered or not?

         • Is there anyone out there who might give me a tour of the “breaks” north of Lusk?   I flew over that area by private plane many times and looked down in awe at this rough country.

         • NE Wyoming is an interesting area including Keyhole Reservoir and the Vore Buffalo Jump. Would like to spend some quality time around Devil’s Tower, too.

         • A tour of Wyoming’s giant coalmines makes sense.

         • Would like to do some fishing in Bighorn Canyon.

         • It is easy for me to get LaGrange and LaBarge confused – perhaps I need to visit them.

         • On the Wind River Reservation, I would like to visit the Arapaho Ranch and also visit the mountains at the extreme north end of the rez.

         So that’s my Wyoming bucket list. What’s yours?

         When you live in the least populated state in the country, it is easy to possibly over-value the importance of a single individual.

         We live in a world of 7 billion people. And in a country of 310 million. Next to that, our paltry population of 568,000 in Wyoming would seemingly put more importance on each individual than more populous places.

         California, for example, has 37 million people in that state.

         A 2011 story in the New York Times said that Wyoming citizens were, by far, the most powerful people in the country. They printed a small map (which I would like to get hold of) showing the states by proportion of their Congressional clout. 

After all, here in Wyoming we have two U.S. Senators, one per 284,000 people while California has one per 18.5 million people. That makes a typical Wyomingite 65 times more influential than a typical Californian, when it comes to making laws in Washington, D. C.

         But it is not just here in Wyoming that sometimes the individual is valued as much as the state.

         It even comes into play as to how much value we place on our individual men and women serving in wars across the sea.

         Most Americans are relieved to see our soldiers coming home from Iraq. Soon, we will see them coming home from Afghanistan, too.

         Not sure President Barack Obama handled all this in the best way possible, but still we are glad to have our folks out of harm’s way.

         Some 4,500 Americans died in the Iraq conflict in a nine-year war.

         My, how things have changed when it comes to warfare.

         Lately I have been reading books that relate to warfare and some statistics are so staggering that maybe they need to be mentioned.

         I bring this up because we now live in “the time of the individual” whereas in the past, it seems the individual did not count. All that mattered a century or two ago was the state or the country or the empire.

Another example of the power of the individual was Israel trading 1,000 Palestine political prisoners for one Israeli soldier being held as a POW.

         But back to some remarkable statistics. Here are some stats from some recent readings.

         In Ken Follett’s new best seller Fall of the Giants, a lot of time is spent dwelling on World War I. In one battle at Verdun in France, over 300,000 French and German soldiers were killed. Another half million were wounded in the 1916 event.

         It was an artillery battle with over 40 million shells launched by the two armies.

         Other battles were almost as terrible but Verdun stands alone when it comes to statistics like these.

         The battle in Argonne Forest was the worst World War I battle for Americans with more than 125,000 casualties from all Allied countries. 

         Austria, which started the war in response to the assassination of one of its princes, lost 300,000 men in 1914 alone.

         In another passage early in the book, it is reported that the Russian Second Army surrendered to a German force. Over 92,000 Russians surrendered. Often the Germans did not have enough soldiers to guard their prisoners.

In an audio book about the Civil War, narrator George C. Scott reported that the battle of Antietam early in the war saw 23,000 American casualties, counting both sides. It was the bloodiest single day of the Civil War.

The numbers of soldiers killed in previous wars compared to today just seem so breathtaking. It is like as the population of the world doubled, which would seemingly make life less precious, it has become much more precious.

Probably the expansion of modern media has a lot to do with the development of this attitude plus, obviously, the way modern warfare is conducted.

But it is not just soldiers who died in these previous wars.

         Another book I am reading is The Rape of Nanking, which reports about how when Japan invaded China in 1937. The Japanese soldiers systematically murdered over 300,000 men, women and children in seven weeks. And they did it in the most terrible ways imaginable.

         Not sure all this is all that interesting, but I could not help but notice the large numbers jumping off the pages of these books as I was reading them.

         Life is so precious. Just amazing to think that 70 years ago, the life of an individual apparently was just not worth that much.