Turn out the lights, the party's all over

Locals prepare for total eclipse of the sun

By Rob Carrigan, rob.carrigan@pikespeaknewspapers.com

On Monday, Aug. 21, everyone across America has a chance to see a total eclipse of the sun for the first time in our lifetime unless you are nearly 100. It has been that long since the last total solar eclipse darkened the United States from coast to coast, and it is not predicted to occur again for another 18 years.

Locally, you may have received quite a few invites.

“We are doing a campus wide eclipse event on Monday, if you were interested ... The maximum coverage occurs around 11:45 so that is when we will all be outside,” says Terry Bramschreiber, Ph.D., 9-12 Assistant Principal, Discovery Canyon Campus.

“We are giving glasses to all students and staff campus wide. PTO will be selling “moon pies” and other topic related treats. We will also be sending out some lessons for those teachers that want to learn and teach more about it. Additionally, all staff has eclipse T shirts,” he said.

“Victor Lowell Thomas Museum Offers Eclipse Safe Sun Glasses. Are you ready to watch the Solar Eclipse on August 21?” asks Ruth Zalewski, for the Victor Improvement Association/Victor Lowell Thomas Museum. Special sunglasses are required to safely view the eclipse, she advised.

“Colorado's Touchstone Energy Cooperative's 2017 Golf Classic is the perfect opportunity to mix business with pleasure. And it also is the day of the eclipse,” said Terri Hayes, executive director for the Tri-Lakes Chamber of Commerce. “This shotgun start, best ball tournament with an all-inclusive golfer package includes a luncheon, auction and awards ceremony following the tournament. The morning is well-spent networking, enjoying the beautiful Colorado scenery and playing on one of the area's finest exclusive golf courses,” she said. The tournament is at Perry Park Country Club near Larkspur, and the Chamber is also selling glasses.

To celebrate this astronomical event, the Space Foundation Discovery Center, which is typically closed on Mondays, will open to the public from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Aug. 21 for a Solar Eclipse Party. Special solar viewing telescopes, viewing tubes and boxes will be available for guests to experience the eclipse with friends, family, neighbors and informative Space Foundation staff at the Discovery Center.

Space Foundation Vice President - Education Bryan DeBates said, “This is an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime event for many people. This type of eclipse is extremely rare and can interest and inspire those who don’t typically get interested in astronomy.

The Space Foundation Discovery Center is excited to host this 2017 Solar Eclipse Party for anyone who would like to join in this extraordinary experience.”

Colorado Department of Transportation is asking anyone who is planning to drive to Wyoming or Nebraska (both in the “totality” path of the eclipse) to be prepared for a lot of traffic, delays and headaches for this unique event.

Larimer County has set up a great way to stay in touch with traffic, emergency and weather alerts for the event. Just text the word “ECLIPSE” to 888777 and you will get all you need to know. In Colorado, you can also go to www.cotrip.org and in Wyoming, you can go to www.wyoroad.info for real-time traffic updates.

Currently, predictions for attendance in Wyoming and Nebraska are very high. Some experts are predicting up to 600,000 more people cramming into Wyoming to witness this. That’s basically doubling the population of the state. And we know a lot of those folks are going to be coming from the south so all Colorado highways heading there (I-25, US 287, US 85, CO 52, etc.) are expected to be busy.

Since the eclipse is on a Monday, traffic is expected to be heavy through the whole weekend before but will probably be even worse coming back after the sun shines again.

CDOT is partnering with our local first responders and the Colorado State Patrol – as well as our partners at the Wyoming Department of Transportation – to provide some tips on making your eclipse trip something great to remember:

Pay attention, and don’t drive distracted. Drive defensively because there will be more motorists on the road, and some of them may be slowing down or may not be paying attention when the eclipse is occurring.

Ensure vehicles have plenty of fuel.

Don’t stop and pull off onto the side of the roads.
Don’t use the center median crossings on the interstates for turning around or parking. Those crossings are for authorized vehicles. Emergency vehicles need to keep these areas clear for response to emergency situations.

Don’t park on any highway shoulder or in any ditch area. That can not only be dangerous for you and other drivers, but a person’s car exhaust could start a grass fire.

Plan ahead and move to a safe and legal area prior to the eclipse so you can enjoy the experience.

Use eclipse glasses to safely view the eclipse. These glasses provide eye protection from the eclipse.Bring plenty of water, sunscreen and snacks. It is unknown how busy traffic will be, but with hotels and campsites sold out, we are expecting large amounts of traffic surrounding this momentous event.

This is also the first day for Colorado State University students and freshman orientation for Colorado University.

It's been a long time but it seems so familar

You’re so vain, I bet you think this about you

By Rob Carrigan, rob.carrigan@pikespeaknewspapers.com


As many local skywatchers make plans to view the solar eclipse next Monday, I can’t help but think of, and identify with, the Carly Simon hit written ages ago, in 1972, and featuring Mick Jagger in its most popular version.

“Well I hear you went up to Saratoga and your horse naturally won. Then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia, To see the total eclipse of the sun,” wrote Simon and songwriting partner Chun Keung Lam.

Many years ago, I ran the newspaper in the little town of Saratoga, Wyoming. Interestingly, the paper was the Saratoga Sun. It is where I came to realize that even the big national and international stories can have a profound impact here at home.

Because of a more complete eclipse in Wyoming, many folks from here and points south, plan to make sojourns up into Wind River reservation country where my old high school football coach resides in Shoshoni, Wyo., north of Saratoga. The resident Shoshoni tribe has close ties to Utes, (of Ute Pass) and Piute.

Native Americans however, are sort of divided about the eclipse. Take reports from Indian Country Today on the Navajos’ take.

“Generally in traditional Navajo in the culture you don’t watch eclipses. It’s something out of the ordinary, something that’s not in the regular order of things, and so people were taught to be very respectful. And that included staying inside, not eating, not drinking, not having sex, things like that,” said Nancy Maryboy, Cherokee-Navajo, president and executive director of the Indigenous Education Institute and a liaison with NASA. “And that has been pretty well followed on the Navajo Nation even up to today. And in some cases, up to a few years ago, they would let school out during an eclipse and the kids would go home, stay at home.”

For a 2012 event however, she noted some surprises among the buzz generated on the Internet, especially social media, about the solar eclipse then.

“Interestingly enough, a lot of younger people who are very hip, younger people were sending out messages on their Facebook not to – you know, that it was more traditional to stay in and not look at the eclipse. A lot of people were doing that. I found that very interesting,” Maryboy told Indian Country Today Media Network in an interview. “And then some of the traditional people, several of them that I knew decided it might be okay if you looked at it through dark glasses that NASA gave out. So basically everybody did it in the way that made the most sense to them.”

However, she added, “I would say that because of that traditional viewpoint probably a lot less people watched it on the Navajo nation than other tribal areas.”

The Cherokee, for instance, do not have such a taboo. Maryboy, of both heritages, said she was torn about whether to watch but that cloudy skies in Washington State, where she was at the time, made the decision for her.

At the Navajo National Monument, Melba Martin, an archeo-astronomer and Navajo who works with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), was scheduled to give an inside presentation for those who wanted to learn while observing the taboo. However, she said, only five people came. The most traditional Navajo observed the taboo in a separate room, sequestered, while the rangers allowed visitors into the park, where they set up shop with telescopes.

Martin went the nontraditional route, opting to watch through a filtered telescope.

“We managed to pass out the eclipse glasses to make sure everyone was safe, and check on the people who were viewing through the telescopes. We talked with them for a short time about the traditions, in a respectful way, and told them that was why they weren’t seeing many Navajos out,” she said of the outside observers. “They were very accepting, very interested in the culture. And so for about 2 hours we were out there before, during and after the eclipse.”

She called it a unique experience and said the balance was so well struck that she is now planning a similar event to observe the transit of Venus on June 5.

“So it was quite interesting what I experienced at Navajo National Monument. And I really think the park rangers at Navajo National Monument did a great job at observing their traditional way and allowing people into the park who were not Navajos to see the eclipse.”

The Wind River Indian Reservation is an enticing viewing location for the Aug. 21 Wind RiverEclipse. To make this dream a reality, the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes have identified locations in which they prefer people to park and camp, and they have created a special eclipse permitting process.

A PDF document of the map and permitting details has been published by the WindRiver Reservation and the Tribal Game and Fish Department. If a traveler asks you, “How or where can I watch the eclipse on the Wind River Reservation,” show it to them, says information from the tribe.

“The Wind River Eclipse is almost upon us. After years of preparation across Wind River Country, WY, we are all ready for the sky to go dark on Aug. 21, and to welcome the travelers who will be coming from all over the world!,” says information from the county and the tribe.

“As a result of the hard work, hospitality, and important planning on the part of many people across the county, the week of Aug. 17—22 is rife with events. The Wind River Visitors Council has compiled all these events going on during the eclipse week across the county into a flyer handout for travelers to pick up at convenient locations. We have attached that black and white handout for you to use and share!” say Wyoming hospitality organizations.

Carly Simon over years has been reluctant to identify who her song is actually about. Speculation has included Mick Jagger, Warren Beatty, David Geffen, David Bowie, David Cassidy and Cat Stevens, and even James Taylor, who Simon was married to shortly before writing the song. She said it is definitely not about Taylor.

Two solar eclipses ("Then you flew your Learjet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun") were visible from Nova Scotia in the early 1970s, on March 7, 1970, and July 10, 1972. Simon said she wrote the song in 1971, so she likely referenced the one from 1970.

Family farms, legacy and traveling Lakota land

Only one map in life's journey, 

and it is within your heart

"A traveler has a right to relate and embellish his adventures as he pleases, and it is very impolite to refuse that deference and applause they deserve."
__ Rudolf Erich Raspe, Travels of Baron Munchausen

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Lingle, Wyoming, 1985: The Treaty of Fort Laramie, an agreement between the U.S. government and the Ogalala, Miniconjou and Brule bands of the Lakota, Yanktonai Dakota and Arapaho, signed in April of 1868, said the Lakota owned the Black Hills of South Dakota and outlined hunting rights in South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. The Powder River area was supposed to be closed to western expansion by white settlers.
That is all history, of course, but I'm a dedicated traveler of such paths.
There was about 10 and half miles, distance by car from Fort Laramie to the Stage Coach Restaurant in Lingle, Wyoming.
I lived in apartments next door to the Stage Coach, and worked across the street. I ate there almost every day, and knew the owners Sam and Wilma Bingham pretty well, I guess, for a traveler, and a newspaper hack. Wilma's sister, Meriam Bremmer, worked at paper years before, and years after I traveled on.
Back then, it was the height of the farm crisis. We ran auction ads, selling off equipment that families had worked years to accumulate, at pennies on the dollar. Times were more than tough.
In the summer, bikers headed for Sturgis rumbled through in groups and individually, often stopping and parking their Harleys diagonally in front of the Stage Coach, or Rose Bros. Tractor, or the Corner Bar that had once been a bank. I think now it is called "Bitch's Corner Bar," since about 2000, but there was trouble about that name, five or six years later.
There was also a little grocery store. A fabulously popular barber shop was run by a local woman then, and the Lingle City Hall and Post Office was nearby. Lingle-Fort Laramie High School educated the masses, and of course, the red-white-and-blue band shell with the American Flag flying out front, sometimes kept them entertained.
I remember the divorced woman who lived behind me in the apartments seem to have her eye on me, and worked for Sam and Wilma at Stage Coach. Meriam protected me, however, and besides that, I was always working, trying the get the latest Lingle Guide or Guernsey Gazette out, at all hours of the night and day. Plenty of time for lunch, though.
Merriam's cowboy rancher husband Dale would meet us over there, and we usually ate at one big table with Wilma and sometimes Sam (unless he was still cooking) and other stragglers we picked up along the way. Beef and Barley Soup. And maybe a sandwich, or something. Almost every day. Wonderful stuff, for sure.
On Friday nights, I would take photos at the first half of the Lingle football game, then jump in the car and drive to Guernsey thirty-some miles away and shoot part of the second half of that game — then run home and soup film in the tiny darkroom at our office in Lingle. Other nights and days were not remarkably different, with Lingle Council, Fort Laramie happenings, Guernsey School Board, and some kind of feature for both.  That was, when you could get the equipment to work.
We set copy on an old Compugraphic VDT, transferred the five-inch floppy to a silver monster in the back running three-inch light sensitive paper out in galleys, and under the cover of night (in the dark room) process a hundred yards at a time (or, at least it seemed like it was that long).
But the meanest piece of equipment in the place was an old address machine that still used metal address plates to mail the paper.  Meriam was really the only one that could make that work.
Though the stuff was old, the equipment was pretty hearty however. I recall more than once, when the Pat Davarn had to bring Torrington copy over from our sister paper in the middle of the night because their newer stuff was not working and he knew our old silver beast typesetter would slowly grind through it.
My history was made up of bear stories mostly at that time. My travels were colored by them. Much of my first two decades had been spent among the Dolores Bears in an idyllic river valley in southwestern Colorado. I don't think the life I had lived to date, was quite as rough as the wind-blown sugar beet farmers and cattle ranchers in Goshen Hole, by comparison. Family owned farms were in deep trouble.
Even Willie Nelson felt like he had to do something, despite his own troubles.
Farm Aid, a benefit concert first held Sept. 22, 1985 in Champaign, Illinois, was organized by Willie, John Mellencamp and Neil Young. Reportedly nudged forward by comments made by Bob Dylan at Live Aid earlier, the three hoped to raise money to help farmers in danger of losing their farms under the crush of mortgage debt.
80,000 people, and performers including Dylan, Billy Joel, B.B. King, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison and others showed up in Champaign,  and raised over $9 million for America's family farmers that September. I was familiar, at least with the name and idea of Champaign, Ill., because I'd heard of it most of my life from the neighbor kids I grew up next-door to. Their parents had moved to Colorado from there, and gone to school at University of Illinois.
The organization is still going strong, but with the money from that first concert, Farm Aid established emergency hotlines for farmers and farm associations. I remember thinking how good an idea that was at the time.  Reason being, I had attended those farmers meetings and seen the anguish on generational agricultural  families about to lose the farm.
Strike that. They were about to lose their whole identity.
While covering a standoff between local police and a long-time farmer who holed himself up in the barn across the road, because he couldn't take the auction process and evaporation of generations of family legacy — I had heard the shot of his own gun that ended it.
Later, in California, I saw a man that lost everything, he said because banks had convinced him to borrow money recklessly prior to the farm crisis. The fellow worked himself to death in his 50s trying to recover ground, and died on the toilet during one of his few breaks in his 18-hour days.
Even their neighbors were sometimes unsympathetic, and of the opinion that they did it to themselves.
The hotlines were a good idea, though. And probably provided gentleness of words — words, like the shot, that can never be taken back.
But as I said, I was just a traveler in that space and time.  According to the treaty of Fort Laramie, the Lakota owned the ground and hunting rights anyway. It was supposed to be closed to white settlers since 1868.
As Willie said, "There is only one map to the journey of life, and it is within your heart."

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Where True western symbols came from

“It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.”

___Thomas Jefferson

It is important to know the 'True' origin of things

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

After recently noting some disagreement about which horse and rider’s likeness might actually grace Wyoming license plates, and commenting on the tendency of our neighbors-to-the-north’s reference to Colorado folks as “greenies,” I have encountered another interesting twist in my tale.

As it turns out, the designer who developed the “Cowboy State’s” plates was actually a “greenie.”

According to three venerated Colorado institutions, the Colorado Historical Society, the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Public Library, which hosted the Allen True exhibit in Oct. of 2009, at all three locations, True designed the bucking bronco and rider on Wyoming license plates.

Allan Tupper True was a prolific muralist, magazine illustrator, and studio painter who produced commissioned works all over the American West including the capitols of Colorado and Missouri, as well as Hoover Dam and Denver’s Civic Center.

“The bucking horse and rider first appeared on Wyoming license plate in 1936,” according to information from University of Wyoming. “That design was developed by the then Secretary of State, Lester C. Hunt (who later became the Governor of Wyoming, and a U.S. Senator) in 1935.”

Hunt commissioned True to do the work. The Wyoming Secretary of State’s Web site confirms that.

“In 1935, Secretary of State Lester Hunt proposed legislation to make changes to the Wyoming license plate design to combat the problem of wide-spread counterfeiting of Wyoming's license plate. Therefore, Secretary Hunt commissioned Mr. Allen T. True of Littleton, Colorado to 'put to paper' his concept for a new license plate design which included the famous Bucking Horse and Rider,” says the state's site.

Though, the University of Wyoming says it was really Hunt who planted the seed.

“It was his idea to use the bucking horse and rider,” according to the University of Wyoming’s official Athletic Site. “The horse and rider he utilized for the license plates differs from the Steamboat image. For plates, Hunt used a photo of a rider named ‘Stub’ Farlow, and a horse called ‘Deadman.’ ‘Deadman’ belonged to the Jackson Hole Frontier Association.”

“This symbol has been a part of the University of Wyoming Athletics Department since the early 1920s, when UW Equipment Manager Deane Hunton obtained a photograph of a cowboy, Guy Holt, riding the world famous bucking horse Steamboat.”

I always thought that perhaps the horse’s name was a reflection on the town in Northern Colorado, but ...

“Steamboat was born on a ranch between Laramie and Bosler in 1901, and is regarded as one of the greatest bucking horses ever. Hunton traced the photo, and had it made into a logo that was utilized by UW athletic teams. In later years the symbol more closely resembled the logo on the state’s automobile license plates which was a depiction of another horse and rider,” according to UW Athletics.

“Whether it is Steamboat or Deadman on those Cowboy and Cowgirl uniforms, one thing is certain … the bucking-horse-and-rider-logo is one of the nation’s best and most distinctive.”

Maybe so, but it is important to know the 'True' origin of things.

As for the Denver art exhibits, the Denver Public Library focused on Allen Tupper Trues’ magazine work, the Denver Art Museum will display True’s paintings, and the Colorado History Museum featured full-scale murals, studies, photographs, and other objects that True produced over the life of his career.

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See related story

Once a 'Greenie,' always a 'Greenie.'

Wind in Wyoming

I thought of evil winds and angels.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Today the wind blew with force and power. It doubled over trees and sent trash, cans and all, bouncing down the street. It reminded me of my Wyoming days and I thought of evil winds and angels.
I had to fight wind 30 years ago on the way to the high school to meet up with the track coach in Saratoga, Wyo. I was working on a preview story before they left for the state track meet in Casper early the next day. When I arrived that Friday afternoon, the coach was shaken.
Miles away on the western edge of the state in Cokeville, Wyo, 154 students in addition to teachers, school workers and others, were held hostage in a 30-by 30-foot elementary classroom. Hometown Saratoga competed against Cokeville’s students on occasion.
In Cokeville that day, David Young, 42, and his wife Doris, 47, had pulled their white van up to the Cokeville Elementary School in the middle of town and calmly unloaded three gasoline bombs, nine handguns and four rifles into a grocery cart at about 1 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and then herded everyone into the cramped room.
David Young, the former Cokeville town marshal, had been fired eight years before for being overzealous, according to Time magazine, and was known to dress up like and old-time sheriff and brandish his pistol at the slightest provocation.
“Eventually, Young sent out his demands to the police officers who had surrounded the school. He wanted $300 million in ransom for the 167 hostages he held--students, teachers, school workers, and a UPS driver, nearly a quarter of Cokeville’s population. He also wanted a personal phone call from the president of the United States,” according to an account in “Angels on Earth” by Ron Hartley, a Lincoln County sherriff’s investigator whose four children were among the hostages.
“After 2 1/2 hours of terror, the bomb went off accidentally. Seventy-nine people were injured, but the Youngs were the only ones to die — David Young shot his severely burned wife, then himself,” according to an August 31, 2002 follow-up story by Alan Edwards in the Deseret News about the youngest survivor of the ordeal, Gina Taylor Madsen who was married that fall.
The grocery cart which was full of the three gasoline bombs and outfitted with five blasting caps and a “dead man’s switch,” went off when Doris Young momentarily forgot her husband had rigged the switch to detonate by raising her wrist above her head.
“We will seeing those poor kid’s injuries for years,” worried the Saratoga track coach at the time. But fortunately, most of hostages injuries were relatively minor.
I recall reports in the Casper Star-Tribune, Denver Post, Associated Press and other media that related an account of the children held hostage in the room. The swirling stories reported that those children passed the time making drawings that seemed to depict angels. Several of the children, swore “guardian angels” reduced their fear and protected them through the Cokeville horror. The book “Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near Death Experiences of Children,” by Melvin Morse also recalls the “angel incident.”
Susan Fiscus, who when contacted several years ago, served as webmaster of cokevillewy.com, says the town has moved on.
“I personally, did not live here at the time, and most of those people who lived through the experience are somewhat reluctant to share information about it,” she said. “One gentleman whose wife was a teacher and also had children in the elementary school is trying very hard to get some type of memorial/museum here in town celebrating the fact that all of the innocents survived. Unfortunately it is somewhat of an uphill battle for him.”
I don’t know if guardian angels do that sort thing — protect the innocents and surgically smite those that are evil. But it was a nice thought — especially today, with such an evil wind blowing.

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Tell you how to run your little newspaper

Only three things you need to know 

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Three was the dominant number around this place. The rural Wyoming newspaper office was really three rooms. The front room had a counter, a Compugraphic video display terminal and a nook with three light tables in a semi-circle. The dark room was just that, dark, and about three yards square. In the back room was a very large table where all the addressing, inserting and mailing occurred.
An editor, an office manager, and a parttime ad sales person put together all the local news for three towns that were collectively 33 miles apart. Each and every week, about 3,000 newspapers went out into a circulation area which overlapped into three different counties; Goshen, Platte and Niobrara.
The news was the usual fare — city council coverage, fires, accidents, arrests, school lunches, honor rolls, irrigation schedules, business briefs, service club info, and high school sports — for the most part. I had been the managing editor for about three months when this elderly character — he appeared to be a rancher — walked in to the office and leaned on the counter.
“Let me tell you how to run your little newspaper here,” he began.
“There is only three things you need to know about putting out a newspaper in this country.” And he proceeded to tell me.
The first thing, he said, is the most important. “Put something in there we are likely to read,” which seemed sort of obvious to me but I perked up my ears anyway. I tried to listen to him like he was telling me a long lost secret.
“This is easier said than done,” continued the rancher. “We have had to run off more than a few of you editors because you have a different idea of what’s news than we do.” He said too many have come into his community and “started right off the bat, trying to tell folks what is wrong with this place, and how wherever they came from, is better. They want us to know how smart they are, and offer suggestions on how to fix it.”
“We know what’s wrong with this place. We have known it for years, and for the most part, we’re not inclined to fix it. But if we did decide to work on it, you telling us to do so would certainly be counter-productive.”
“Just tell us who got caught this week, and where to meet and what time. Make sure our kids names get into the paper if they happen to do something right. Try to keep an eye out and your ears open at those government meetings nobody has time to go to.”
I get the idea, I said, but you mentioned three things. What were the other two?
“Hold your horses. The second thing, and it is important too, is to make sure the paper is delivered on time,” he said. “If it is supposed to be at the post office at such and such time, it better be there. If you usually have it in the rack over at Wilma’s by 5 p.m., don’t deviate. The first time it is late, you are going to be persona non grata for a month. Old ladies will shun you. Children will laugh and point. Grown men will turn and walk away when you enter a room. The next time it’s late, they’ll burn you and the building, string you up, shoot you, stab you, drag you behind a team of horses, and maybe even try some other bad stuff like evisceration, pulverization or decapitation. Let it happen three times, and God help you, son.”
By this time I was beginning to get nervous about this fellow’s advice and whether I might live up to the local expectations of practicing the newspaper craft. I wondered to myself if the rancher’s ideas were truly a reflection of the community, and if his warnings had any basis in fact. I also wanted to hear his last little bit of advice. So I asked him, “What’s the third thing?”
He leaned on the counter even more. “Don’t let anyone come in here and try to tell you how to run your little newspaper,” he said.

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