October 11 18, 2013

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October 11 - 18, 2013

This Week’s June 17 - 24, 2011 Highlights

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The Cleanup “If it doesn’t have to do with Campbell County, we don’t • Incare!”

My Garden ............... Page 2 Begins. Load after load of tree limbs and debris • City’s Storm Debris are being hauled Cleanup Info.................... Page 6 daily to dump sites throughout • Simpson Critical the Gillette area by private resiof Shutdown .................... Page 9 dents. The City is not scheduled • Congress is to begin official cleanup activiSickening ...................... Page 13 ties until Monday, October 14.

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By Holly Galloway - Campbell County Observer A concerned citizen at Tuesday night’s city council meeting asked about the city’s plans to help with the tree limb clean-up that is under way.

He believes that the city has said that it “cannot afford” to help with the removal of tree limbs. He urged the council to remember that the priority of using city monies should be toward

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helping all of the citizens after storms like we had on Friday.

Carter Napier, city administrator, remarked that, “it is the intent of the city to help with the clearing.” The plan in place is to make sure that city roads, electrical facilities, parks, and public areas are secured first. Then the city will go into the neighborhoods.

“This could take place as late as next week,” Napier said.

The citizen has a pickup and a trailer, and thought he would have to make several trips to the dump or compost center to clean up his own yard. His concern is for those who do not have vehicles to haul branches to the compost center.

UW Will Help Students Whose Veterans’ Benefits are Affected by Shutdown The University of Wyoming will work to help military veterans attending UW continue their studies, regardless of what happens with federally funded programs affected by the government shutdown, UW President Bob Sternberg says.

The president has issued a directive that no veterans will be forced to leave UW or to have their studies curtailed because of inability to pay expenses to the university, including tuition and

residence hall costs, due to the shutdown. And the university will take steps to assist veterans who have relied upon monthly stipends under the GI Bill to cover off-campus rent and other living expenses.

“We will do our best to find a way to tide them over, the details as yet to be determined,” Sternberg says.

“Our objective is to make sure all veterans will be able to continue their studies uninterrupted, regardless of what happens with

the federal shutdown.”

More than 400 veterans are students at UW, and the university’s Office of Student Financial Aid and the Veterans Services Center help connect them with a variety of federally funded programs to support their education. Both offices will continue to keep the students updated on developments regarding the shutdown’s effect on their benefits.

The university expects to review each veteran’s

needs, and a customized variety of resources will be employed to help address each student’s immediate financial needs.

Students with immediate financial concerns should contact Student Financial Aid Director Joanna Carter atjcarte22@uwyo.edu or (307) 766-6726. For other information about veterans services, the UW Veterans Services Center is located in Room 23 of Knight Hall, under the direction of Marty Martinez.

Wyoming Trout Unlimited Honored by National Organization At the 2013 Trout Unlimited (TU) annual meeting held in Madison, Wis., last week, Wyoming Trout Unlimited (WYTU) was honored with the organization’s prestigious “State Council Award for Excellence.” The award was presented to WYTU Chair Mike Jensen, of Evanston, during the awards banquet on Sept. 27. Trout Unlimited Vice President of Volunteer Operations Bryan Moore presented the award.

“I’m deeply honored to accept this award on behalf of our council leadership, our 11 chapters, our 1,700 members, and of course, our incredible

TU staff members in Wyoming,” said Jensen.

WYTU was honored for leadership and organizational actions that recognize the Protect-Reconnect-RestoreSustain conservation campaign; attracting new members; mentoring and encouraging leaders to step forward; communications with council members through the pages of the quarterly “Trout Tale” newsletter and reaching out to other conservation groups, organizations and partners, and carrying out TU’s coldwater conservation mission and vision.

“This award is the result of many

dedicated and passionate volunteers and staff members that have worked so hard, for so long in the Cowboy state,” Jensen said. “We are truly honored.

WYTU National Leadership Council representative Jim Broderick of Jackson, and Wyoming Coordinator Scott Christy of Lander, nominated the council for the award.

“We received many deserving nominations this year, which made it difficult for the committee to agree on selecting winners,” said Trout Unlimited National Events Coordinator Nancy Bradley.

Wyoming-Made Merchandise Sees Strong Sales

A mercantile for Wyoming-made products garnered more than $32,000 in sales this summer during Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Wyoming State Fair.

The store boasted 67 vendors and saw more than $12,000 in sales at Cheyenne Frontier Days. At the Wyoming State Fair, the store hosted goods from over 70 vendors and saw about $20,000 in sales.

The Wyoming Mercantile showcases merchandise made by companies in Wyoming. Products at the store range from sauces, jams and honey, to holiday ornaments, photography,

jewelry, soaps and lotions, glassware, leather items, pottery and more.

This year, 24 new Wyoming First program members sold product at the stores.

“It was a great year for the Wyoming companies whose products were sold at the store,” said Terri Barr, Wyoming Products program manager. “Customers from all over the U.S. and from other countries stopped in to see what Wyoming has to offer. There were a lot of positive reactions to the products and art featured in the stores, and we are very pleased with this year’s sales.”

The Mercantile is part of the Wyoming First program at the Wyoming Business Council. The program assists companies located in the state with the promotion of their Wyomingmade products or substantially enhanced products and services. Member companies receive the ability to use the Wyoming First Bucking Horse and Rider stickers and tags, are notified of marketing opportunities, are eligible for Trade Show Incentive Grants and Wyoming First posters, and more.

For more information on the Wyoming First program contact Barr at 307.777.2807 or terri.barr@wyo.gov.

Community

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

In My Garden...

By Kathy Hall (khgardenhelp@gmail.com) o, did you grow winter squash and pumpkins this year? They can add wonderful variety to your winter diet and are rich in vitamins. There are countless varieties and each brings its own special something to the table. Roasted, baked, steamed, mashed, stuffed, grilled, pie filling or turned into soup there are more ways to prepare these delicacies than can be counted. But what kind should you grow and how well will they keep?

I love to experiment and have been adding different varieties every season. My first word of caution…many pumpkins and squash are related and will cross pollinate. This can yield some rather interesting results if you save seeds. The results the following year can make identification nearly impossible. Cross pollination will not affect the current year’s harvest so if you aren’t saving seed mix varieties to your hearts content! What was my most fun cross; pumpkin skinned spaghetti shaped squash with a salmon colored meat. It was yummy! But if you are looking for basic identifiable fruits research your seed a bit and choose only one variety from a squash family if you wish to save your seed for further planting.

Squash, summer and winter, cucumbers, melons and pumpkins are all members of the Cucurbitaceae family (genus). Not all members within this family will cross pollinate with each much like different species of birds will not cross breed. Within this family are closer cousins (species) C. maxima (hubbard, buttercup and some prize pumpkins); C. argyrosperma (cushaw); C. moschata (butternut); C. pepo (acorn, most pumpkins, summer squash, zucchini); C. ficifolia.

Members within a species are capable of cross pollination. (No, cucumbers and melons cannot cross with squash.) So..if

you wish to save seed for next season only grow one variety from each species.

Enough with the technical, what squash stores best? First you must harvest, cure and prep them for storage. Mature (ripe) squash store best so let them mature on the vine as long as possible. Pick before a heavy frost or freeze as these can damage the fruit and reduce storage abilities.

When fruit reaches full color, has a hard rind, and the vines are dying and dried, cut the fruit from the vine with sharp shears leaving as much stem as possible. (Never handle a squash or pumpkin by the stem.)

Wash the fruit in a 1-10 solution of bleach water to kill bacteria removing all dirt then dry thoroughly. Let them cure in a warm area with good air circulation 10 days to 2 weeks then store in a dark cool area (50-55 degrees) in a single layer with the fruits not touching. Do not store any damaged, blemished, or immature fruits as these will rot more quickly.

Acorn and turban varieties of squash will decay most quickly so use them first.

Storage pumpkins, butternut, spaghetti and Hubbard squash store for many months and can last well into late winter. I have kept butternut squash until spring and I still have several spaghetti squash and one pumpkin in storage from last season.

If you have large numbers of squash or pumpkins and don’t think you’ll be able to use them quickly enough from your storage area freezing is also an option. With pumpkins I cook and puree the flesh then store in containers with the perfect amount for 1 pie. Most yellow/orange fleshed squash can also be cooked and frozen in chunks or puree for later addition to soups and recipes.

Enjoy your bounty of squash and pumpkins for many months to come. Happy eating everyone!

Find the Solution on Page 18

Native American Artifact Show and Presentation The Campbell County Rockpile Museum and the Pumpkin Buttes Chapter of the Wyoming Archaeological Society invite the public to attend their 18th Native American Artifact Show on Saturday, October 19, 2013. This event brings together some of the finest collections of projectile points, drills, scrapers, knives, and beaded items in northeast Wyoming.

The show will be from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and admission is free. Come enjoy these fine collections of artifacts and listen to a great presentation by Dr. Richard Adams at 1:00 p.m. Anyone interested in displaying a collection may call CCRM Registrar Robert Henning to reserve table space.

This year’s featured guest speaker is Dr. Richard Adams from Colorado State University. Adams will teach us about his work at high altitude archaeological sites in Wyoming.

Dr. Adams grew up in Centennial, Wyoming and received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Wyoming. For 24 years he worked as a Senior Archaeologist at the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist and has worked on archaeological

projects in each of Wyoming’s 23 counties. His research interests include prehistoric soapstone use, high altitude archaeology, prehistoric cuisine, and Shoshone ethnohistory. In 2010, he completed a PhD in Anthropology entitled Archaeology with Altitude: Late Prehistoric Settlement and Subsistence in the Northern Wind River Range, Wyoming.

For more than a thousand years, Shoshone Indians spent their summers at high altitudes in the mountains of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

These mountain-adapted people hunted bighorn sheep, dug abundant root crops, harvested whitebark pine nuts, and constructed villages at treeline near the Continental Divide. Since 2000, teams of archaeologists, students, and volunteers from around the state have located and documented more than a dozen of these high altitude villages. Dr. Adams’ slide show uses vivid images, ethnographic analogy, and re-creation of prehistorically correct cuisine to argue that the high mountains were the preferred summertime destination, rather than places to be avoided.

Bob Rohan is a cartoonist in Houston, Texas and has been drawing “Buffalo Gals” since 1995. He was awarded “Best Cowboy Cartoonist” in 2009 by The Academy of Western Artists Will Rogers Awards out of Gene Autry, Oklahoma.

Campbell County Observer

CampbellCountyObserver.net (307) 670-8980 1001 S. Douglas Hwy. B-6 • Gillette, WY 82716 (PP-1) Volume 3 Issue 41 The Campbell County Observer is published

by Patriot Publishing L.L.C. in Gillette, WY every Friday.

1001 S. Douglas Hwy. B-6 • Gillette, WY 82716 Postmaster: Send address changes to 1001 S. Douglas Hwy. B-6 • Gillette, WY 82716 Candice De Laat - Owner/Publisher CandiceDeLaat@CampbellCountyObserver.com Nicholas De Laat - Publisher NicholasDeLaat@CampbellCountyObserver.com Jeff Morrison - Editor (Local History Columnist) JeffMorrison@CampbellCountyObserver.com Clint Burton - Photographer ClintBurton@CampbellCountyObserver.com Anne Peterson - Advertising Sales Manager AnnePeterson@CampbellCountyObserver.com Lisa Sherman - Advertising Sales Rep LisaSherman@CampbellCountyObserver.com Bridget Storm - Advertising Sales Rep B.Storm@CampbellCountyObserver.com

Writers Glenn Woods (Political Column) GlennWoods@CampbellCountyObserver.com Mike Borda (American History) MichaelBorda@CampbellCountyObserver.com James Grabrick (Where is This?)

JamesGrabrick@CampbellCountyObserver.com Holly Galloway - Writer/Government H.Galloway@CampbellCountyObserver.com Tony Heidel - Writer/The Cole Sports Report Sports@CampbellCountyObserver.com Duke Taber - Writer/Comunity/Ad Design DukeTaber@CampbellCountyObserver.com

Weekly Weather Forecast Saturday,

Sunday,

Monday,

Tuesday,

Wednesday,

Thursday,

Friday,

October 12

October 13

October 14

October 15

October 16

October 17

October 18

53/34

50/29

37/25

44/28

56/31

Precipitation: 0% Wind: S at 11

Precipitation: 10% Wind: ENE at 10

Precipitation: 60% Wind: N at 13

Precipitation: 30% Wind: NW at 14

Precipitation: 0% Wind: W at 11

53/33

Precipitation: 0% Wind: W at 11

52/33 Precipitation: 0% Wind: W at 12

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Community

Campbell County Observer

October 11 - 18, 2013

First Class Chosen for Wyoming Business Hall of Fame our historic Wyoming business icons and a groundbreaking businesswoman comprise the inaugural class of the Wyoming Business Hall of Fame.

James Cash Penney, W. Edwards Deming, H.A. “Dave” True, Homer Scott Sr. and Clarene Law will be recognized at a gala Hall of Fame dinner Tuesday, Nov. 19, at the Little America Hotel and Resort in Cheyenne.

“I am thrilled that the Wyoming Business Hall of Fame will have its kickoff event at this year’s business forum,” Gov. Matt Mead says. “It is important to recognize individuals whose lifelong achievements in business stand out, and this Hall of Fame provides such recognition.”

The Wyoming Business Hall of Fame is a cooperative project of the University of Wyoming’s College of Business, the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation, and the Wyoming Business Council.

“The inaugural Wyoming Business Hall of Fame recognizes business leaders who have demonstrated remarkable insights, risk taking, and management principles,” says Bill Schilling, president of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation. “The honorees represent finance and banking, energy development, tourism, retail and business consulting.”

Penney and Deming will be inducted posthumously as “Pioneer Award” honorees, a category recognizing Wyoming’s earliest contributors to business excellence in the years before 1945. Penney’s well-chronicled rise from retail store clerk to establishing the nationwide JC Penney chain had its roots with his opening of a “Golden Rule Store” in Kemmerer in 1902. Deming, meanwhile, grew up in Powell and graduated from

UW in 1921 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering before going on to become an eminent scholar, teacher and industrial expert. He was a consultant to influential business leaders, powerful corporations and governments around the world. He is credited with inspiring and guiding the spectacular rise of Japanese industry after World War II, and the resurgence of the American automobile industry in the late 1980s.

True and Scott will be inducted posthumously as “Historic Award” honorees, a category recognizing the contributions of the generation that, between 1945 and 1985, established the economic base on which the state, country and world continues to grow and prosper.

True, who moved from Cody to Casper in 1948 as manager and part owner of a small oil and gas drilling company, went from a one-rig operation to establishing more than 10 companies operating across the country and overseas, and earning a name for himself in energy, agriculture and banking. True Companies, now a third-generation operation based in Casper, employs about 875 people in nine states.

Scott, who was raised in poverty in Nebraska, began working for Peter Kiewit and Sons Construction Co. in 1931 and moved to Sheridan in 1937. There, he expanded the construction business across the region and the country while branching into ranching and banking. He bought the Padlock Ranch near Dayton in 1943 and built it into a major cow-calf operation, and he established First Interstate Bank in 1968.

Law, who owns hotels comprising more than 400 rooms in Jackson, will be inducted as a “Contemporary Award” honoree. That category recognizes post-1986

contributions of business excellence in Wyoming and beyond. Law came to Jackson in 1958 and worked as a bookkeeper at the Wort Hotel. She bought the then12-unit Antler Inn in 1959 and has been a fixture of Jackson’s hospitality industry ever since, employing dozens of locals and foreign workers. Law also served her community and state as a member of the local school board, as a member of the Wyoming Legislature for 14 years, and as a member of the Wyoming Business Council.

The Nov. 19, Wyoming Business Hall of Fame ceremonies will include a 5:45 p.m. reception, dinner at 6:30 p.m., and a program at 7:30 p.m. The master of ceremonies is Mick McMurry. For more information or to register to attend, go to www.wyomingbusinessalliance.com.

“The first-ever Wyoming Business Hall of Fame is a UW College of Businessinspired recognition, led by former Dean Brent Hathaway,” says McMurry, of Nerd Gas Co. and the McMurry Foundation. “The College of Business continues to foster excellence and relationship building across our great state with groups like the Wyoming Business Alliance and Wyoming Business Council.”

The inaugural Wyoming Business Hall of Fame class was selected from among 16 nominees gathered from the Wyoming Business Council’s seven regions. The statewide selection committee included Hathaway, Wyoming Business Council CEO Bob Jensen, Dennis Carruth of the College of Business Advisory Board, UW history professor Phil Roberts, and Schilling of the Wyoming Business Alliance.

Plans call for a new Hall of Fame class to be selected every other year for the first decade, with each class

including no more than five honorees, and at least one winner coming from each of the seven regions.

The gala Hall of Fame dinner is a key feature of Governor Matthew H. Mead’s Business Forum, which begins at 8 a.m.

Tuesday, Nov. 19, and ends at noon Wednesday, Nov. 20. The 31st annual forum of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation features presentations by the governor and five national leaders, 23 Wyoming “success stories,” and a program on civility in business, government and society.

“The Wyoming Business Alliance is proud to be hosting the Hall of Fame event,” says Dave Bell, chairman of BW Insurance and chairman of the Wyoming Business Alliance/Wyoming Heritage Foundation. “It is the right fit to have this at the Governor’s Business Forum, which teams our efforts with the governor’s conscientious staff.”

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Hunting Access on Yellowtail Limited Sportsmen planning to hunt the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s Yellowtail Wildlife Habitat Management area northeast of Lovell can expect limited access to the management area due to the recent closure of National Park Service lands.

“There are approximately 12,000 acres of National Park Service land within Yellowtail,” said Cody Region Wildlife Supervisor Alan Osterland. “All lands administered by the National Park Service within Yellowtail are closed to recreational use, including hunting and as such, hunters should plan accordingly.”

“While access to Yellowtail may be impacted, resident general license deer hunters still have a large percentage of the state to hunt, while non-resident deer region “F” license holders will have to look at other accessible lands to hunt within region “F”,” Osterland said. “The department recognizes that sportsmen are currently plan-

ning their fall hunts and wants to minimize the impacts of these unfortunate closures.”

“Deer hunters with limited quota Hunt Area 123 type 6 licenses will not be affected because those licenses are valid only on private lands within Hunt Area 123,” Osterland added.

Hunters have access to all other lands within Yellowtail that are not owned by the National Park Service. Hunters are urged to consult the Game and Fish website at: http://gf.state.wy.us/accessto/Whmas/yellowtail.asp for land ownership status within Yellowtail.

The 19,424 acre Yellowtail Habitat Management area is managed by Game and Fish through a cooperative agreement and contains National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and Wyoming Game and Fish Commission-owned lands.

Find the Solution on Page 18

3

Community

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

UW Researcher Studies Factors That Could Affect Wyoming’s Horned Lizard Population hey can flatten like a pancake and puff out their armor-like hide for protection. They can use their heads like a drill to dig a hole and burrow, or catch rain in their scales for drinking water.

They are one of the few reptiles that give live birth rather than lay eggs. And they can even shoot blood from their eyes to fend off their canid predators.

Greater short-horned lizards may not be super heroes, but they’re pretty cool, nonetheless, says Reilly Dibner.

Dibner, a doctoral candidate in the University of Wyoming’s program in ecology in the Department of Zoology and Physiology, has been studying Wyoming’s state reptile for three years. Specifically, she’s studying a number of factors -- diet, development and predators -- that may be affecting horned lizard numbers.

Horned lizards, often referred to as “horny toads” because of their resemblance to the amphibians, are tied to specific resources. This means they are more likely to be affected by the loss of a particular host plant, favored prey or required soil type.

“I’m looking at a number of different factors limiting them,” says Dibner, whose research is funded by the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Wyoming NASA Space Grant and several departmental fellowships.

Dibner says one of the most striking specialist traits of these lizards -- of which there are eight species in the United States and an additional six found only in Mexico -- is that they prey exclusively on one or

two types of ants. However, Wyoming’s horned lizard expands its menu a bit, as it has a taste for many types of ants (there are more than 90 species in Wyoming alone) and also feeds on beetles.

“Typically, horned lizards are dietary specialists, really picky kids in the candy store. Some horned lizards just like green or yellow M&M’s,” Dibner says. “The greater short-horned lizard is more likely to eat all kinds of M&M’s and maybe some Skittles.”

Dibner knows this through examining the contents in samples of the lizard’s scat. She also clips the claws on some adult lizards. The clippings can be used for an isotope analysis to also help understand the reptile’s diet.

Dibner theorizes that their less picky palate is one reason that the greater shorthorned lizard has a wider range than other species of horned lizards. A Horned Lizard Conservation Society newsletter includes a map that shows ranges for the eight species of American horned lizards. According to the map, the range for the greater short-horned lizard is by far the largest, running from southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, through Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and into parts of Mexico.

Greater short-horned lizards prefer sagebrush, short grass and prairie.

While such habitat is abundant throughout Wyoming, it doesn’t necessarily mean horned lizards are everywhere that particular habitat exists, Dibner says.

“The numbers are very sparse. I’ve found nearly

only move 10-25 meters a week, Dibner says.

“I’ve recognized some adults that have only moved 50 meters within the last two years,” she says.

That recognition comes from checking tiny brands she placed on one or two scales of each lizard. To do this, she used a miniature “hot rod” typically administered during human eye surgery.

Even though she has identified roughly 400 lizards at her various plot points, Dibner says there are no concrete estimates of how many actually exist in Wyoming. When she talks to people, including ranchers she meets at her field sites, she says the response is usually the same: Folks remember seeing the horned lizards frequently as kids, but not so much now.

Dibner doesn’t know if that means there are fewer lizards now or that adults just don’t look for the reptiles like children do.

Still, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has listed the greater shorthorned lizard as “a Species of Greatest Conservation Need.” This means a particular species may be secure at present but, because it has limited distribution and is confined to a particular place, it could be vulnerable under largescale changes.

400 at a total of 100 plots in the state,” she says. “If lizards were there, there were ants. But, in some locations, if there were ants, I found no lizards. Ants are necessary for lizards, but not sufficient for presence (of lizards).”

Development deliberations

Dibner also has looked at development as a piece of her research puzzle.

Because oil and gas development in abundant in the state, she has dedicated time analyzing in and around the Jonah Field, a large natural gas field in Sublette County that is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

“I’ve found, in the densest areas of development, there’s no sign of lizards,” she says. “As for ants and beetles, there was no detectable difference from many other sites.”

One mile outside of Jonah Field, where there is no oil and gas development, a number of her reference plots contained healthy lizard populations. In areas of lower development or closer to the oil field, she found fewer lizards, but not significantly less.

“Why wouldn’t they be there? That’s the milliondollar question,” she says.

“One possibility is just the increase of humans or activity elevates their (lizards’) stress response.”

However, Dibner has drawn no concrete conclusions so far. She is not sure whether there were no lizards in the Jonah Field to begin with or whether the reptiles moved when drilling began there.

Greater short-horned lizards, which live four to five years in the wild, typically

farms. These areas include Game and Fish wildlife habitat management areas, numerous walk-in areas, Glendo State Park, and all state lands in Sheridan and Johnson Counties. A complete listing of areas where the stamp is required is found on page 20 of the Upland Bird Regulations pamphlet. An exception is made for landowners and their immediate families who hunt pheasants on their lands enrolled in the walk-in program. An exception is also made for hunters who hunt walk-in areas in Bighorn, Fremont, Hot Springs, Park, and Washakie counties where pheasants are not released by the department.

Elk Feedground Special Management Permit - This permit is required of all hunters who hunt elk in areas 70, 71, 74, 75, and 7798.

Federal Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp (Duck Stamp) - Required of waterfowl hunters 16-years and older. Required for ducks, geese, and mergansers (not needed for dove, sandhill crane, coots, snipe, rails, or crows).

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they are actually docile and non-confrontational creatures, Dibner says.

Dibner says they may squirm around in your hand at first, but you can stroke the lizard’s head and it will close its eyes, much like the relaxing effect a dog feels when one rubs its belly.

Dibner spreads her knowledge about the lizards around the state as part of UW’s Science Posse, which pays her stipend.

In time, Dibner plans to submit her research to the Journal of Herpetology and Herpetological Review for publication consideration.

“They’re such unique, hardy creatures,” Dibner says. “That’s how we have to be. We’re a state of hardy individuals.”

A show of resilience

Despite Dibner’s concern about their current and future numbers, the little reptiles aren’t exactly helpless.

“I’ve seen a picture of its scales penetrating through a rattlesnake’s neck,” she says. “The lizard went from an armored pancake to a puffer fish.”

Hunters Reminded to Pick Up Stamps Hunters are well aware of the necessity of having hunting licenses before going afield, but along with those licenses, certain stamps are also required.

The following is a listing of the various stamps and permits applicable to Wyoming hunting.

Conservation Stamp - Required of all licensed hunters or anglers with several exceptions. It is not required of holders of daily fishing or hunting licenses. It is also not required of persons exercising hunting or fishing privileges granted by valid Pioneer Licenses. Holders of any Pioneer License are not required to buy a conservation stamp and shall be in possession of their Pioneer License while in the field.

Additional information on Pioneer Licenses is found in the hunting and fishing regulations.

Pheasant Management Permit - Required of most pheasant hunters including youth who do not need a bird license and holders of the Pioneer Bird/Small Game license who hunt areas wherever pheasants may be stocked from Game and Fish Department bird

Their gray, yellow and reddish-brownish color allows them to camouflage themselves into the landscape from known predators, including birds, coyotes and foxes. They can shuffle their heads from side to side to tunnel into the ground, where they can burrow themselves from threats or hibernate, which they do from the end of September to late May. And, if they do get caught in a canine predator’s mouth, the lizard, as a last resort, can squirt blood from its eyes -- something that leaves a nasty taste in the animal’s mouth and often allows the reptile to escape.

The horned lizard may have an intimidating dragon-like appearance, but

Photo by Reilly Dibner

Greater short-horned lizards in Wyoming average about 2.5 inches - from snout to vent - in length and weigh a half-ounce.

Larger ones can reach 5 inches in length and weigh an ounce.

Wyoming Meats Grassfed is Better!

gram Permit (HIP permit) - Required of all licensed hunters who hunt migratory game birds. The HIP permit is also applicable for holders of Pioneer and Lifetime hunting licenses. HIP permits are nontransferable to other states. A separate validation is required in each state where migratory birds are hunted. Hip permits are available free on the Game and Fish website wgfd.wyo.gov. (Contact: Al Langston (307) 777-4540)

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Community

Campbell County Observer

October 11 - 18, 2013

UW Geoscience Students in Demand at Rocky Mountain Rendezvous Job Fair

rowing up in Houston, Texas, Karen Aydinian remembers her father, a petroleum geologist, working with few female geoscientists in what was then a predominantly male business. Today, about one-half of such geologists in the industry are women, she says.

Aydinian, a University of Wyoming master’s student in geology, is likely to soon join those growing ranks.

She was interviewed for jobs by eight petroleum or oil and gas companies during the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous (RMR) Job Fair, which took place Sept. 27-30 at the University of Wyoming Conference Center and Hilton Garden Inn. The 12th annual fair drew recruiters -- many of them UW graduates themselves -- from 23 petroleum companies and roughly 375 geoscience students nationwide from 80 colleges and universities. Of that total, 44 were UW students, according to Randi Martinsen, a senior lecturer in geology and geophysics, and the event’s founder and coordinator.

The UW Department of Geology and Geophysics and the School of Energy Resources (SER) were co-hosts of the event.

The RMR is one of five regional job fairs and is sponsored by the American Association of Geologists (AAPG) and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).

“I’m a fracture specialist, and they are hard to find,” says Aydinian, who already has three internships with oil and gas companies on her resume. “Basically, I look at natural fractures in the earth and analyze the state of stress. It’s crucial for companies involved in hydraulic fracturing. You want the fractures to go in an orientation where the oil and gas will flow up into the well.”

In addition to her promising job prospects, Aydinian also placed second in the job fair’s poster contest and took home $600.

Garnering face time

Like Aydinian, a number of UW students secured multiple interviews.

Ryan Armstrong, a first-year master’s student in geology at UW, was hopeful he would secure an internship after he interviewed with Chevron, ExxonMobil and Marathon.

“I think my biggest strength is that I actually did a double major in geology and phys-

UW in 1996 and 1999, respectively. “We can teach them how to use the software, the tools and the gas industry. We can’t teach them fundamental geology.”

“We are quite successful here. This is one of our high-profile recruiting events,” says Kurt Tollestrup, a senior geophysicist with BP America and a 2000 UW graduate.

“There is no graduate department in the country that has 200 students to choose from in one locale. That’s the beauty of the RMR.” Aydinian says it was inspiring to see many of the recruiters were young women.

Margie Kloska, a geological adviser for Hess Corporation, was a prime example.

Kloska, who spent the last seven years working as a geologist in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as managing exploration for Hess in Indonesia, says this was her first time recruiting at the RMR. “We love coming to UW. The students are well rounded in their skill outside the classroom, and the level of education in the department is very high,” says Kloska, who received her master’s degree in geophysics

ics,” the Fort Wayne, Ind., native says of his undergraduate days at Colorado College that included field work in all of his geology courses.

From his interviews, Armstrong said companies appear to have projects they need completed or help with, but no one available to take on these projects. That’s why they are looking to interns for help, he says.

Ryan Herz-Thyhsen, a UW graduate student in geology and geophysics from Media, Pa., says he took the approach to just be himself and not oversell his qualifications during his interviews with Anadarko, ExxonMobil and Marathon.

Charles Nye, a UW graduate student majoring in geology, says his plan was to emphasize his communication skills and his ability to complete projects. He also was aware to be flexible, and not be over-prepared with his answers.

“That could result in a person ending up in a company and culture where they don’t fit,” says Nye, of Laramie. “These companies will be making an investment. They want to hire a good person as well as a good geologist.”

Tom McClurg, a geologist with ConocoPhillips who received his master’s in geology from UW in 1990, says that is true.

During interviews, McClurg describes what it’s like working for a larger oil company, where there may be many layers of approval for projects; or a smaller company, where there may be a little more freedom.

The candidates can then make informed decisions on what size of company is a better fit for their personality.

He adds that ConocoPhillips has more resources than smaller companies and provides job opportunities overseas in addition to North America.

from UW in 1999. “I use all of my coursework in my job.”

Hess interviewed 18 students, including Nye, at the RMR. In all, Kloska says Hess will look at about 1,300 students -- including those interviewed at other job fairs and during visits to universities -- to fill 10 available slots.

During his interview, Nye says he provided examples of situations in the lab or field, including those that involved safety, and how he handled them.

“The recruiters asked me to tell them about a situation,” Nye says. “They wanted a story, not a list. With the details that fill a story, recruiters get a less canned response.”

In addition to on-site job interviews, the four-day event included a vendor expo, receptions, short courses, student poster presentations that included cash prizes; and field trips, including an Anadarko oil rig tour and a visit to the Niobrara Formation, a major shale oil area in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming.

Finding strong candidates

Like other recruiters, Mark Olson says he finds good candidates at the RMR because most geology students in Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain region have had field experience due to the geology available for study. Olson is manager of sedimentology and stratigraphy at ConocoPhillips.

“We look for candidates with field experience,” says Olson, who received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in geology from

Charles Nye, a UW graduate student in geology, talks with Margie Kloska, a geological adviser with Hess Corporation. Nye was one of 44 UW geoscience students who interviewed for jobs or internships at the recent Rocky Mountain Rendezvous Job Fair.

What’s Going On? -AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm -AA Last Call Group 10pm -American Legion Friday Night Dinner 200 Rockpile Blvd. 7 p.m.

-AVA Community Center Featuring Karen Jensen for the Month -Little Tikes at the AVA Community Center 10 a.m.

-Uncorked! Featuring Sarah Ferguson at the AVA Community Center 7pm – 9pm -Roller Derby - Left Turn Coaching Clinic at Wyoming Center Frontier Hall -Northwest Barrel Racing Association Finals at Cam-Plex East Pavilion, Central Pavilion & Barn 3 -Judd Hoos at Jakes Tavern

Saturday, October 12, 2013

- Farmers Market at the Gillette College Tech Center 8 a.m. - 12 p.m.

-Teen Dungeons and Dragons at C.C. Public Library 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

-Wii Play at C.C. Public Library 1 p.m.

-Teen Open Pay Gaming at C.C. Public Library 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.

-Roller Derby - Left Turn Coaching Clinic at Wyoming Center Frontier Hall -Northwest Barrel Racing Association Finals at Cam-Plex East Pavilion, Central Pavilion & Barn 3 -Powder River Collector’s Antique & Craft Show at Cam-plex Energy Hall 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

-YES Housing Dancing with the Stars at Wyo Center Equality Hall -Rotary Club Polio Awareness 5K Run/ Walk at Expresso Lube Registration starts at 8 a.m.

-Zombies For A Cause 5K Walk/Run at Lasting Legacy Memorial Park Registration 3 p.m.

-Judd Hoos at Jakes Tavern

Sunday, October 13, 2013

-No School -County Library (Gillette and Wright) Closed -AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

-AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm -Kids Storytime at C.C. Library 10:30 -Teen Club Card at C.C. Library 4 p.m.

-Adult Amine Club (Age 18+) at C.C. Library 6:30 p.m.

-Pottery Planet at the AVA Community Center 4pm – 5pm -Gillette Challenger League Games (Special Needs Children Games) at Cam-Plex Central Pavilion 6pm

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

-AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm -WBL Story time at C.C. Library 11 a.m.

-Kids Story time at C.C. Library 10:30 -Super Sculptor Series at the AVA Community Center 4:00pm – 5:30pm -Open Art Night at the AVA Community Center 7 p.m.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

-AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm -Toddler Time at C.C. Library 9:30 a.m.

-Kids Storytime at C.C. Library 10:30 -Families and Jammies at C.C. Library 6:30 p.m.

-Teen Anime Club at C.C. Library 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

-Survivors of Suicide Support Group at Gillette College Room 153 and 155 6:30 p.m.

-The Affordable Healthcare Act Explained presented by Renee Gamino, AARP Wyoming Associate State Director for Outreach at CCPL 7 p.m.

-Doodler’s Kid Club at the AVA Community Center 4 p.m.

Bear’s Dry Cleaning

Friday, October 18, 2013

-AA Midday Serenity Group 12pm -AA Out to Lunch Bunch Group 12pm -AA Happy Hour Group 5:30pm -AA Grupo Nuevo Milenio 6:45pm -AA Hopefuls Group 8pm -AA Last Call Group 10pm -AVA Community Center Featuring Karen Jensen for the Month -Little Tikes at the AVA Community Center 10 a.m.

-Musical - Twin Spruce Junior High at Cam-Plex Heritage Center 7 p.m.

-WRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity at CamPlex East Pavilion 8 a.m.

-Badger Horse at Jake’s Tavern

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Saturday, October 19, 2013

-Early Bird Dinner At American Legion 200 Rockpile Blvd. 7 p.m.

-Father-Son Duct Tape Duel Wyo Center Frontier Hall 5:30pm – 8:00pm -4-H Horse Dev. Royalty Tryouts at Cam-Plex Barn 3 -Basin Radio Network Octoberfest Business Expo at Cam-Plex Central Pavilion 9a.m. – 6 p.m.

-WRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity at CamPlex East Pavilion 8 a.m.

-Teen Dungeons and Dragons at C.C. Public Library 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.

-Wii Play at C.C. Public Library 1 p.m.

-Teen Open Pay Gaming at C.C. Public Library 1 p.m. – 4 p.m.

-Jayden’s Friends Auction w/Badger Horse at Jake’s Tavern

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Sunday, October 20, 2013

-Basin Radio Network Octoberfest Business Expo at Cam-Plex Central Pavilion 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

-AA Morning Spiritual Group 10:15 a.m.

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Government Tuesday, October 15, 2013

-Board Briefing in Commish Conference Room 8 a.m.

-Commissioners Meeting in Chambers 9 a.m.

-Fair Board Quarterly Meeting Fair Board Room 6 p.m.

-Select Investigative Committee-Subcommittee on issues Surrounding WDE Involvement with Fremont#38 School District Buffalo City Hall 8 a.m.

-City/County/Town of Wright Luncheon George Amos Memorial Building - Cottonwood Room 12 p.m.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

-Airport Board Quarterly Meeting at C.C. Airport 4 p.m. – 5 p.m.

-Public Works & Utilities Advisory Committee Engineering Conference Room, City Hall 5:30 p.m.

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-AA Morning Spiritual Group 10:15 a.m.

-Roller Derby - Left Turn Coaching Clinic at Wyoming Center Frontier Hall -Northwest Barrel Racing Association Finals at Cam-Plex East Pavilion, Central Pavilion & Barn 3 -Powder River Collector’s Antique & Craft Show at Cam-plex Energy Hall 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.

-YES Housing Dancing with the Stars at Wyo Center Equality Hall -UMF Meeting at Jakes Tavern 1 p.m.

Monday, October 14, 2013

P

Friday, October 11, 2013

COMMUNITY

Anne Peterson

advertising sales manager annepeterson@campbellcountyobserver.com (307) 299-4662

Community

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Forums Set for Developmental Disability Programs ith changes coming to programs that support Wyoming residents with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries, the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) has scheduled several meetings to explain details about the changes.

WDH has been providing services through an “Adult Developmental Disabilities Waiver,” a “Child Developmental Disabilities Waiver” and an “Acquired Brain Injury Waiver” using a

combination of state and federal Wyoming Medicaid dollars.

A law approved by the Wyoming Legislature and the governor earlier this year called for two new waivers: a “Supports Waiver” and a “Comprehensive Waiver.” Current participants will be transitioned to the new comprehensive waiver over the coming months and new participants from the waiting list will be brought on to the supports waiver as funding becomes available.

“We realize change can lead to concerns from our participants and their family members as well as from providers,” said Chris Newman, WDH Behavioral Health Division senior administrator. “People on the waiting lists may also have questions.

We want these informational forums to help people understand the planned changes and the reasons we’re making them.”

Each informational forum will run from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Details include:

• October 9, Cheyenne – Laramie County Community College, Center for Conferences and Institutes, Centennial Room, 1400 East College Drive • October 10, Casper-Natrona County Extension Building, 2011 Fairgrounds Rd • October 14, Lander- Lander Valley High School Auditorium, 350 Baldwin Creek Rd • October 14, Green RiverWestern Wyoming Community College, John Wesley Powell Room, 1 College Way

• October 15, Buffalo- Senior Center, 671 W Fetterman St • October 15, Afton- Afton Civic Center, 150 S Washington St For those unable to attend a community meeting, a webinar/ teleconference will be held on October 18 from 1 -3 p.m.

Details about how to access the webinar, and more information about the waiver programs, are available online at http://www. health.wyo.gov/DDD/index.html.

Questions can also be sent to bhdmail@wyo.gov.

Storm Debris Cleanup Information

The City of Gillette released storm debris cleanup information. The storm cleanup begins Monday, October 14th and is scheduled to last six weeks.

While the City will be going through neighborhoods to pick up the storm debris, citizens are encouraged to transport their storm debris to one of nine drop-off sites . If you do transport your storm debris to a drop-off site, please do your best to cover the debris to keep leaves and other materials from blowing out of your truck and/or trailer.

The City of Gillette’s Public Works crews are working hard to clean up the storm debris all over town, and they will get to your neighborhood. Here are some things you can do to help them help you: Please move your storm debris (trees/tree limbs/ branches) as close as you can to the curb without placing your debris in the street and blocking the sidewalk and stormdrains. (This isn’t possible in all neighborhoods, but do your best.)

Please do not attempt to dislodge branches from overhead wires. Please call (307) 686-5262 to report trees or tree branches hanging in powerlines.

Please do not mix trash or other materials in with the storm debris. All storm debris will be moved and/or chipped to be used for compost. If the debris is mixed with trash it is no good for compost.

Please do not place any materials in the alley.

Placing debris in the alleys will hinder solid waste and other utility operations in the alleys. Please move all debris from the alley to the curbline in front of your house. This may be difficult in some instances, but it needs to be done.

Please understand that this schedule may be altered due to additional weather events. If it snows, the cleanup crews will have to plow snow, and debris cleanup operations will temporarily be halted.

If that happens, the City will release a revised schedule.

If you hire a contractor to trim your trees and/or remove your storm debris, please make sure they are a licensed contractor. Contractors trimming trees should have a Class C - Tree Trimming license.

Please be patient. It’s very rare for this much snow to fall at this time of year (or any time of year) and a tremendous amount of trees and branches have fallen/broken. Public Works will get to your neighborhood and remove your debris, but it may take some time.

The quickest way to deal with storm debris is to transport any debris to one of the nine drop-off sites.

Cleanup Details and Schedule The City of Gillette will only be picking up storm debris inside City Limits. If you live outside of City Limits and have storm debris, you may transport your storm debris to a drop-off site. (There is no charge for dropping off storm debris at a drop-off site.)

Area 1 (October 14th - 18th): Area 1 includes the subdivisions north of Interstate 90 and south of 2nd Street.

Area 2 (October 21st - 25th): Area 2 includes the subdivisions south of Interstate 90 and north of Southern Drive between 4J Road and South Douglas Highway.

Area 3 (October 28th - November 1st): Area 3 includes the subdivisions in City Limits south of Interstate 90 and between Skyline Drive and 4J Road.

Area 4 (November 4th - 8th): Area 4 includes the subdivisions in City Limits west of Skyline Drive and West of Highway 14/16.

Area 5 (November 11th - 15th): Area 5 includes the subdivisions in City Limits north of Interstate 90 and north and east of 2nd Street/Highway 14/16.

Area 6 (November 18th - 22nd): Area 6 includes the subdivisions south of Interstate 90 and east of South Douglas Highway.

The City of Gillette’s Public Works Department acknowledges that some residents may face extenuating circumstances with their storm debris, please contact Public Works at (307) 686-5320 if you have any questions.

6

Drop-off Site Information Eight of the nine drop-off sites are located in City Park parking lots and will be open 24/7. If you transport debris to a drop-off site, please follow these guidelines: Please cover your load to keep leaves and other storm debris from falling out of your truck/trailer.

Please drop your storm debris in the areas marked by cones.

Only use the drop-sites for storm debris, do not dump trash, yard waste or any other materials at the drop sites.

Drop-off site locations: City Park/City Pool (upper parking lot) Hidden Valley Park Collins Heights Park Dalbey Park (near Little League Fields) Heritage Park Willamette Park (Sunburst) Northwest Park (Tarver) McManamen Park Yard Waste Drop-Off Facility at Wastewater Treatment Plant (3101 S. Garner Lake Road)

Community

Campbell County Observer

Strong Town Designed to Help Communities Prosper tarting Monday, the Wyoming Rural Development Council will host the first of four Strong Town presentations throughout the state.

The WRDC, in partnership with the nonprofit organization Strong Towns, invites community leaders, business owners and residents to these presentations to learn more about keeping your community strong during lean times.

Information regarding each Strong Town presentation follows: • Lander - Monday October 7 at 6 p.m.; Fremont County Library - Carnegie Hall; 451 N 2nd St, Lander, WY • Saratoga - Tuesday October 8 at 6:30 p.m.; Platte Valley Community Center; 210 West Elm Street, Saratoga WY • Laramie - Wednesday October 9 at

6 p.m.; Historic Train Depot; 1st and Kearney – Laramie WY (Depot Park) • Douglas - Thursday October 10 at 6 p.m.; CANDO Offices; 130 South 3rd Street Douglas WY “These presentations are open to everyone at these locations and we hope to see as many people at these events as possible,” said Kim Porter, Wyoming Rural Development Council program manager. “During unstable times, it’s good to know there are resources available to keep your town moving forward.”

Strong Towns, based in Brainerd, Minn., is an organization that supports and promotes a model for growth that allows America’s towns to become financially strong and self-sufficient during times when typically their budgets are stretched thin and public funding resources have dwindled.

According to information provided

by Strong Towns, the organization will cover ways communities can think differently about growth, thus thinking differently about accomplishing this growth by alternative methods and a more creative philosophy.

This approach ultimately requires a reorientation of emphasis and a renewed understanding of what it takes to build a town or a neighborhood. A Strong Towns approach emphasizes obtaining a higher return on existing infrastructure investments—making better use of that which we are already committed to publicly maintain.

For more information about the Strong Town presentations contact Kim Porter by email at kim.porter@ wyo.gov or by phone at 307.777.6319.

Obituaries

FORREST HARRIS Funeral services for Forrest “Gus” Harris was at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, October 9, 2013 at Walker Funeral Home in Gillette, Wy with Pastor Doug Rumsey of the Antelope Valley Baptist Church officiating.

Forrest “Gus” Harris, age 55, of Gillette Wyoming,

made his journey home on October 5, 2013 after suffering a heart attack.

Forrest Fredrick Harris was born May 21, 1958 in Lander, WY, the son of Martha Massie. He was known to his family and friends as “Gus”. He attended high school at Wind River High, where he enjoyed playing football, wrestling and track.

He attended college at L.H. Bates Vocational Technical Institute in Tacoma, Washington where he received his certification in Diesel and Heavy Equipment Mechanics. Gus met Colleen Fergueson and later the couple married on October 30, 1976 in Pavillion, Wyoming.

The family moved to Gillette

in 1990 where Gus began working for Powder River Coal. He continued his work in coal and worked for Peabody Energy for twenty four years. Gus enjoyed spending time with his family especially his grandsons. He was their biggest fan and they could do no wrong in Grandpa’s eyes. He enjoyed fly fishing, bowling and life.

He will most be remembered by his smile and sense of humor.

Gus is survived by his wife Colleen Harris; son Forrest “Bowdie” Harris; daughter July (Mike) Lockhart; grandkids: Tyneisha Lippert of Kentucky, Jayden Harris, Jackson Harris, Xavier Harris, Xander Lockhart, Xa-

bian Lockhart; grandmother Rose Harris of Ft. Washakie, one uncle, many cousins, nephews, nieces and many, many friends.

Those he loved that he followed home to heaven are his mother Martha Massie, his grandfather Freddie Harris, which was his father figure, uncle Muck, grandsons Peter and Morgan and many cousins.

A memorial has been established in Gus’ name.

Memorials and condolences may be sent in care of Walker Funeral Home, 410 Medical Arts Court, Gillette, WY 82716. Condolences may also be sent via our website: www.walkerfuneralgillette. com

October 11 - 18, 2013

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Campbell Co. Fire Dept.

October 3, 2013 - At 10:15 AM to the 500 block of E. 5th St for an EMS assist.

- At 1:19 PM to the 5300 block of Antelope Valley Street for an EMS assist.

- At 8:19 PM to 18 American Lane for a possible structure fire. Upon arrival to the scene CCFD determined the flames seen by the 911 caller were from a BBQ grill.

- At 8:46 PM to South Douglas HWY for an EMS assist.

October 4, 2013 - At 12:40 AM to 907 Greenwood for an power line that came in contact with tree limbs due to snow load.

- At 2:05 AM to 5 MES Dr. for a fire alarm, no fire or signs of fire were found.

- At 3:33 AM to 905 E. 5th St. for a reported structure fire, upon arrival it was determined that there was no fire but there was an electri-

cal issue in the residence.

- At 6:18 AM to Longmont and Brooks for an arcing power line.

- At 8:15 AM to 310 W. 8th St. for a CO alarm activation, crews monitored the house and did not find any CO. - At 9:59 AM to 904 Country Club Rd. (Candlewood Suites) for a fire alarm, it was determined that they had an issue with the sprinkler system, they contacted a repair company.

- At 11:35 AM to 1402 Jim Ct. for a citizen assist, downed tree.

- At 12:00 PM to 12652 N. Hwy 59 for an EMS assist.

- At 1:04 PM to Highway 59 near mile marker 98, prior to arrival all units were cancelled as it was a non injury accident.

- At 3:45 PM to 207 N Gillette Ave for an arcing power line in contact with trees.

- At 4:31 PM to 5200 Knickerbocker for a fire alarm, units were cancelled

Construction Updates Beginning October 5, 2013 the approaches along Southern Drive will be temporarily closed for repaving.

The main impacts will effect Magnuson Road. The road is expected to be open on October 12, 2013 Project: Gillette Madison Pipeline Beginning October 13, 2013 Swanson Road south of Mohan Road will be closed for the installation of a 12” waterline. The road is scheduled to be opened on October 16, 2013.

Project Name: Gillette Madison Pipeline

en route.

- At 4:43 PM to Antelope Valley St. for EMS assist.

- At 8:21 PM to 101 E. Tapadera St. for a CO check, we found no CO but did find vents covered with snow, we cleared the snow.

- (Numerous citizen assists throughout the day and evening)

a medical assist.

- At 7:18 AM to 1312 Muscovy Drive for an automatic fire alarm activation. CCFD cancelled en route when it was determined that steam from a shower set off the alarm.

- At 9:16 AM to Echeta Road for an EMS assist.

- At 8:46 PM to the 900 block of Camel Drive for a medical assist. CCFD was cancelled en route.

October 5, 2013 - At 3:16 AM to Express Dr. for an EMS assist.

- At 12:16 PM to 40 Daisy Street for a structure fire.

Upon arrival CCFD found a 30’ X 50’ garage with fire burning on the inside and the homeowners attempting to extinguish the fire.

CCFD directly attacked the flames and brought the fire under control in approximately 30 minutes. The fire totally destroyed a pick-up truck parked inside and heavily damaged another along with various contents and portions of the building. Total damaged is estimated at $35,000. The fire was caused by gasoline fumes that were ignited by a nearby pellet stove while gas was being siphoned from one of the trucks to a jerry can.

- At 8:20 PM to Beech Street for an EMS assist.

- At 22:55 to Sako Drive for an EMS assist.

October 8, 2013 - At 3:38 AM to Desert Hills Circle for a medical assist.

- At 10:10 AM to 700 block of West 6th Street for a medical assist.

- At 10:19 AM to Bearclaw Circle for a medical assist.

- At 11:14 AM to 501 South Burma for a fire alarm that turned out to be a false alarm.

- At 4:21 to the corner of South Gillette Avenue and 7th Street for a smoldering trash receptacle. Firefighters extinguished the smoldering fire that was caused by a lit discarded cigarette butt. There was no property damage to the trash receptacle.

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October 7, 2013 - At 1:05 AM to the 1000 block of West 2nd Street for

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Community

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Wyoming Wildlife Photo Contest Deadline Nov. 25 hotographers are reminded that less than two months remain to submit entries for the annual Wyoming Wildlife photo contest.

The contest deadline this year is Nov.25. Photographers should note that as with the 2012 contest, images must be sent in a digital format. This format reduces staff time needed to administer the contest and eliminates the need to return images. If photographers are working in color negative or transparency format, the images can be scanned into digital JPEG form.

Images are required to be submitted in digital form on a CD or DVD. Photographers will need to send all images on a single disk, placed in separate folders by category.

For example, all flora images would be in one folder, all wildlife images in another folder, etc. Disks will not be returned and will be destroyed after judging and use by Game and Fish.

To be eligible, all photos must have been taken in Wyoming. Photographers can compete in several categories, including Wildlife, Scenic-Pictorial, Recreational Activities, and Flora. There will be no separate division for black-and-white images; all photos in a category will be judged together.

The grand-prize winner will receive $300. First place in each category will be awarded $150, second $100 and third $50. Winning entries will be featured in a 2014 issue of Wyoming Wildlife.

Entry forms and contest rules are available in current issues of Wyoming Wildlife and are on the Game and Fish website http://wgfd.wyo.gov.

Charity Chili Cook Off and Dustin Evans he 28th Annual Chili Cook Off charitable event is on October 26th at the CAM-PLEX Central Pavilion. The event benefits the Council of Community Services and the Y.E.S. House.

Much fun is planned for you! Come and try a numerous variety of red and green chili, guacamole and special salsas! The “Live To Dance” dancers will take you on a journey at 3:30pm. A live Band “Good Times” and Dustin Evans will entertain you from 6:30 to 10:30pm. The day will be filled with lots of games, trick or treats, door prizes, pumpkin carving, kids costume contest and more. Are you a chili lover? Then this is your place to be.

Country music singer/ song writer/musician, Dustin Evans has sported a long list of singing engagements during his young lifetime. The son of Cowboy Music artist, Kyle Evans, has opened for such music greats as Big and Rich, Lee Brice, Neal McCoy, Chris LeDoux, Dwight Yoakam, Montgomery Gentry, Blackhawk, Sawyer Brown,

Martina McBride, Joe Diffie, Aaron Tippin, Lonestar, Trace Adkins, Tracy Byrd, Travis Tritt, Lee Ann Womack, Clay Walker, Toby Keith and many more. Evans is a former member of the Western Underground Band which was famous in its own rights. Evans and the Good Times have shared the stage with other music greats to include Alan Jackson, Faith Hill and Kenny Chesney. The Western Underground Band was Chris LeDoux’s band

HealthSource

until his passing in 2005.

Good Times Ned LeDoux is the band’s drummer and the son of the late Chris LeDoux. Rounding out the team of artists is vocalist Gary Snow on lead guitar and vocalist Tim Deats on keyboards and the harmonica.

Doors open to the public at 2pm. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children ages 10 and under. For more information contact Kay Praska at 689-3538 or Arnie Davis at 680-9599.

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PUBLIC NOTICE

The Wyoming Public Service Commission (Commission) hereby gives notice that Qwest Corporation d/b/a CenturyLink QC, have filed for authority to enter into a Relative Use Factor Amendment to its Interconnection Agreement with Level 3 Communications, LLC, and requests Commission approval pursuant to the provisions of 47 U.S.C. § 252(e)(1) of the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Under 47 U.S.C. § 252(e)(2)(A)(i) and (ii), the Commission may reject a negotiated agreement, or any part of such agreement, if it finds (a) that the agreement, or any portion of it, discriminates against a telecommunications carrier not a party to the agreement, or (b) that the implementation of such an agreement, or portion of the agreement, is not consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity.

The amendment is on file with the Commission at its offices in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and may be inspected by any interested person during regular business hours.

If you wish to provide the Commission with a statement or other comment regarding this amendment, please do so in writing on or before November 4, 2013.

Thereafter, the Commission will further review the amendment and any statements filed with respect thereto, and will decide its acceptability under the above criteria.

If you need additional information in this matter, please contact the Commission at (307) 777-7427, or write to them at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82002. Communications impaired persons may also contact the Commission by accessing Wyoming Relay at 711. Please mention Docket No. 700001565-TK-13 or Docket No. 70043-29-TK-13 when you call or write.

Find the Solution on Page 18

PUBLIC NOTICE

The Wyoming Public Service Commission (Commission) has given Wyoming Gas Company (Wyoming Gas) authority to pass on to its customers a wholesale natural gas cost increase of $0.714 per CCF, effective for usage on and after October 1, 2013. Wyoming Gas stated the increase is attributable to a projected wholesale gas cost increase of $0.0502 per CCF and an increase in the Commodity Balancing Account (CBA) surcharge of $0.0212 per CCF. The Commission’s approval is subject to notice, protest, possible hearing, refund, change, further investigation and further order of the Commission.

The average residential customer using 76 CCF per month may expect a monthly gas bill increase of $5.43 or about 9% before taxes. Actual bills will vary with usage.

You may review Wyoming Gas’s application at the Commission’s office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, or in Wyoming Gas’s Worland offices during regular business hours.

Anyone desiring to file a statement, protest, public comment, intervention petition or request for a public hearing must file with the Commission in writing on or before November 1, 2013. The petitions and requests shall set forth the grounds of the proposed intervention or request for hearing, and the position and interest of the petitioner in this proceeding.

If you wish to intervene in this matter or request a public hearing that you will attend, or want to make a statement, protest or public comment, and you require reasonable accommodation for a disability, call the Commission at (307) 7777427 or write the Wyoming Public Service Commission, 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82002, to make arrangements. Communications impaired persons may also contact the Commission through Wyoming Relay by dialing 711. Please mention Docket No. 30009-55-GP-13 in your communications.

PUBLIC NOTICE

The Wyoming Public Service Commission (Commission) hereby gives notice that Qwest Corporation d/b/a CenturyLink QC has filed a petition requesting Commission approval to replace its Performance Assurance Plan pursuant to the provisions of 47 U.S.C. § 252(e)(1) of the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Under 47 U.S.C. § 252(e)(2)(A)(i) and (ii), the Commission may reject a negotiated agreement, or any part of such agreement, if it finds (a) that the agreement, or any portion of it, discriminates against a telecommunications carrier not a party to the agreement, or (b) that the implementation of such an agreement, or portion of the agreement, is not consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity.

The replacement Performance Assurance Plan is on file with the Commission at its offices in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and may be inspected by any interested person during regular business hours.

If you wish to provide the Commission with a statement or other comment regarding this amendment, please do so in writing on or before October 31, 2013.

Thereafter, the Commission will further review the amendment and any statements filed with respect thereto, and will decide its acceptability under the above criteria.

If you need additional information in this matter, please contact the Commission at (307) 777-7427, or write to them at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82002. Communications impaired persons may also contact the Commission by accessing Wyoming Relay at 711. Please mention Docket No. 700001564-TA-13 when you call or write.

8

Public Pulse

Campbell County Observer

October 11 - 18, 2013

Al Simpson: Fed Shutdown Doesn’t Touch Real Fiscal Problems

By Gregory Nickerson - wyofile.com he partial shutdown of the federal government that began October 1st is a shortsighted dispute that doesn’t help resolve America’s most pressing fiscal issues, according to Alan Simpson, the outspoken former GOP Senator from Wyoming who has played a key role in bi-partisan talks to reform America’s fiscal policy.

Simpson discussed the federal debt and other issues while at the University of Wyoming campus earlier this week.

“What’s the purpose of anything like a sequester, or whatever is going on now, if you don’t deal with the stuff that’s eating a hole through the fabric of America?”

Simpson said. “How can you get up in arms about it when it doesn’t touch anything like social security reform, insolvency, and healthcare?”

At present, the total national debt stands at roughly $16.75 trillion.

Spelled out, it stood at $16,749,580,893,266.72 on October 2nd.

The government reduced the annual operating deficit from $1.09 trillion in 2012 to about $670 billion in 2013.

That reduction in the budget gap came through a decline in spending and a rise in tax collections as the economy recovered, according to a report by the New York Times.

However, a wave of baby boomers retiring in in the next few years, along with the expanded insurance benefits in the Affordable Care Act will increase Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security expenditures and drive yearly deficits back up according to the Congressional Budget Office. If projections hold, Medicare will be insolvent by 2020, while Social Security will run out of cash by 2033.

“When you’re not dealing with the big stuff, what is the drama?” Simpson said of the shutdown. “They’ll close Yellowstone National Park, the Washington Monument, and the Smithsonian and make it hurt a little and irritate people, and never get to the root of the cause at all, which is the fact that this country is spending itself into oblivion and made promises it can’t possibly keep.”

Rundown on the shutdown The shutdown occurred because of a failure between the House and the Senate to agree on a continuing resolution (CR) that will fund the government for the next six weeks, through mid-November. The continuing resolution is a symptom of Congress operating without passing an appropriations bill by the end of the fiscal year, which ended on September 30th.

“It’s the biggest government in the world with no budget for five years,” Simpson said. “It’s a zoo and the animals are galumphing around in there, and we keep pitching hay in to keep them alive.”

Two weeks ago, the GOP majority in the House of Representatives passed a funding bill that stripped the Affordable Care Act — also referred to as “Obamacare” — of its funding. When the measure made it to the Democrat-controlled Senate, amendments restored the funding to the ACA. The House responded by passing more versions of the bill that defunded or delayed Obamacare and changed various other policies relating to contraception, the medical device tax, and healthcare subsidies for congressional staffers.

In Simpson’s opinion, the House effort to defund the Affordable Care Act won’t succeed while the president who claims it as his biggest accomplishment remains in office. “He’s going to laugh if that came to his desk. He’ll veto it and the veto will be upheld,” Simpson said.

The Office of Management Budget sent this letter

on September 30th to order the partial shutdown of the federal government. (OMB — click to enlarge) The Office of Management Budget sent this letter on September 30th to order the partial shutdown of the federal government. (OMB — click to enlarge) The Senate’s refusal to accept the House proposals resulted in a gridlock that forced Congress past the end-of-fiscal-year deadline for reaching an agreement.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were furloughed as the government’s new fiscal year began on October 1st, and they won’t return to work until Congress resolves the dispute.

After two days of the shutdown, House GOP members still appeared unwilling to remove their amendments relating to the Affordable Care Act and meet Senate demands to pass a “clean” continuing resolution on government spending. President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) have said they will not negotiate on any aspects of the Affordable Care Act until the shutdown is lifted.

Despite the shutdown, the Affordable Care Act healthinsurance exchanges went into effect on October 1st as planned, because their funding does not come from the normal congressional appropriations process. The exchanges are paid for out of “mandatory spending” (meaning Medicare/Medicaid, social security, and debt interest payments) that make up more than twothirds of government outlays each year.

The shutdown only affects “discretionary” spending for the military, education, Department of Interior, and many other programs that make up the daily operations of American bureaucracy. Taken together, all those programs form about one-third of annual federal spending.

The long-term impact of the Affordable Care Act on the national debt is uncertain, though a 2010 study by the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would provide “a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010-2019 period.” For the ten years after 2020, it could achieve a deficit reduction of $1.5 trillion.

Whether that would lead to a reduction in that national debt would depend on the nation’s cumulative fiscal policy. (For an explanation of yearly deficits and the national debt, click here.)

The shutdown has impacted the lives of Wyoming residents employed by the federal government.

In Yellowstone National Park, rangers did not report to work and visitors were turned away at the gates.

Federal government-funded employees at the University of Wyoming were also furloughed and instructed not to report for work. In Cheyenne, F.E. Warren Air Force Base employees went on furlough. Those needing to reach a Forest Service or BLM employee in Wyoming might be out of luck for the duration of the shutdown.

Some federal employees deemed “essential” will continue working under the partial shutdown.

Federal workers will not receive pay during the furlough, making payment of personal bills a potential cash-flow challenge.

Once the government goes back on line, back pay will be awarded to the federal employees who continued working through the shutdown.

As previously reported

by WyoFile, Wyoming had 13,626 federal workers in 2012. The top categories included: • 5,481 federal retirees • 2,590 in the Department of Interior (BLM, National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Affairs etc.)

• 1,329 in Veterans Affairs • 1,266 for USDA (includes

Forest service) • 1,200 at the Department of Defense • 1,200 at the Postal Service Debt panel in Laramie On the day of the shutdown, Simpson was at a debt-education event at the University of Wyoming, where he participated in a panel discussion organized

by The Can Kicks Back, a non-partisan group working to mobilize the millennial generation to push back on Washington policies that increase the national debt.

The group says its name references Congress’s habit of “kicking the can down the road” on resolving the debt, which they believe shifts the consequences of today’s fiscal policies onto the backs of younger generations.

To counteract the debt, the group says it’s time for the can to kick back.

Ann Simpson and Al Simpson stand with members of The Can Kicks Back Generational Equity Tour (l to r: Frankie Dakin, Rachel Vierling, Stevie Jacobsen, Tyler Gibson, Nick Troiano). The AmeriCan mascot stands in the foreground. (WyoFile/ Gregory Nickerson — click to enlarge) Ann Simpson and Al Simpson stand with members of The Can Kicks Back Generational Equity Tour (l to r: Frankie Dakin, Rachel Vierling, Stevie Jacobsen, Tyler Gibson, Nick Troiano).

The AmeriCAN mascot is in the foreground. (WyoFile/ Gregory Nickerson — click to enlarge) That’s a message Simpson agrees with. “The young people will be left in the lurch. That’s why it’s so important what they are doing, and I deeply admire them and what they are doing,” he said.

Simpson is perhaps the most well-known supporter of The Can Kicks Back (TKCB). Last fall he appeared in a TKCB video dancing “Gangnam style,” a wildly popular dance craze created by a South Korean rapper. Simpson’s TKCB video subsequently went viral and attracted over 200,000 views and 5,000 new members to the group.

TKCB is the young adult counterpart to The Campaign to Fix the Debt, an organization co-founded by Alan Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles following the release of The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform report, commonly know as the SimpsonBowles plan.

The plan’s proposals to reduce benefits for Social Security and Medicare/ Medicaid have made Simpson an enemy of the highly organized and well-funded lobbying groups working to protect benefits for senior citizens. During the panel discussion, Simpson noted that American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) has 34 million members who each pay $16 a year in annual dues. By contrast, The Can Kicks Back, which has about 20,000 members, most of them born between 1980 and 1995.

“It’s a lonely course when they are out fighting the AARP, the Society for the Preservation of Social Security, the Gray Panthers and the silver-haired legislators who are organized to the hilt and don’t care about their grandchildren at all.

If they did they’d be doing something, and they’re not.

It’s sad, sad and disgusting,” Simpson said.

The bigger shutdown The shutdown over the six-week continuing resolution isn’t likely to last long.

The last such event lasted 28 days at the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996.

Simpson and other panel members at the Tuesday event said the bigger worry will come when America’s creditors around the world lose faith in America’s ability to pay its debt.

“The day will come when

Al Simpson speaks during an event hosted by The Can Kicks Back at the University of Wyoming on October 1, 2013, the day of the partial government shutdown. He was joined by UW economist Anne Alexander and political scientist Andrew Garner. our creditors say we are a little dysfunctional,” said TKCB event panelist Anne Alexander, an economist and the director of International Programs at the University of Wyoming.

She referenced a crisis of Thailand’s Baht currency, in which a single trader in an Asian market lost confidence in the Baht and incited a runaway sell-off of the currency that cut the value of Thai money in half in just five months.

“Someday if we don’t mind our store, someone could say that about us and that is a frightening prospect,” Alexander said. “All it takes is a psychological change of mind in one trader in one place that becomes epidemic.”

Simpson said of congress operating without a budget, “It’s a zoo and the animals are galumphing around in there and we’re pitching hay in to keep them alive.” (WyoFile/Gregory Nickerson — click to enlarge) Simpson said of congress operating without a budget, “It’s a zoo and the animals are galumphing around in there and we’re pitching hay in to keep them alive.” (WyoFile/Gregory Nickerson — click to enlarge) Simpson noted that America’s lack of a policy for addressing the debt puts the country at risk. “We don’t have any plan and no budget. Think of the way the world thinks of us, and they way they’ll punish us when they start to want their money,” he said.

Even with such dangers afoot, the panelists agreed that addressing the debt through the political process is a challenging prospect because it requires putting together a coalition of moderates who would support cutting spending and increasing taxes. At present, America’s two political parties are sharply divided on issues of taxation and spending, leaving little room

for such a coalition to grow.

The division between the parties also discourages fiscally moderate candidates from running for office, since they are open to attacks from the right and the left if they advocate for raising revenue and cutting funding. The same vulnerability to attacks from special interest groups makes candidates across the country afraid to embrace every policy in the 67-page SimpsonBowles plan.

“In all those 67 pages, they can pull something out and clobber you,” Simpson said.

So far, the debt issue hasn’t come into play in Wyoming’s 2014 GOP Senate primary race between Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) and challenger Liz Cheney.

Debt limit showdown Later this month, Congress will encounter another fiscal hurdle over the question of whether to raise the debt limit. Currently the debt stands at about $18 trillion, and it can’t go any higher unless Congress acts. Simpson anticipates a major fight over raising the debt limit, because some will construe it as an argument over whether to increase spending and add to the debt, a perspective he discounts.

“This isn’t a vote on spending. This has already

been spent,” he said. “You have blown that much, and now you have to pay it, or raise the debt limit to pay it.”

Not raising the debt limit would likely cause America’s creditors to come knocking, asking for their money back, which Simpson says could do major economic damage.

“If they don’t extend the debt limit then this country will be in default, and when you are a country which is the reserve currency of the world, and you don’t pay your bills, you’re in a situation where world markets could be seriously effected.”

He said the resulting crisis would make the recent fiscal chaos in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland seem simple by comparison.

The growth of the debt can’t be arrested by a simple vote not to raise the debt limit. Instead, it requires structural changes to America’s fiscal policy. Simpson thought even modest legislative progress on reducing the debt could have a positive impact.

“We don’t have to have perfection,” Simpson said.

“We need to have a document signed by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and the House that says, ‘Here is our plan to get America back on track to fiscal sanity,’ and the markets of the world would stop messing with us.”

Weekly Trivia Question President Martin Van Buren has been credited with being the origin of what common slang word, used around the world today?

Look on Page 19 for the answer

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Public Pulse

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Citizens Speak Out - Stop Common Core Submitted by Amy Edmonds - Wyoming Liberty Group Comments to the State Board of Education embers of the Board, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you regarding the Common Core State Standards.

I would like to start my remarks today by talking about what is wonderful about education in Wyoming. Our state is blessed with a lot of superb resources and we would all be remiss if we didn’t address those first.

1. Wyoming has caring, dedicated parents.

2. Wyoming has committed, well-educated, experienced teachers.

3. Wyoming has strong communities.

4. Wyoming has strong traditions of local control over education in our communities, which make children feel safe and rooted.

5. We have the skills and expertise in our own state to develop excellence in our educational system, from setting standards to developing curriculum. Our local education systems have principles that reflect our unique culture and heritage and that equip our children for the future.

6. We have an elected citizen legislature, elected local school boards, as well as yourselves, a board appointed by our elected governor. Folks who are willing to serve their state in a voluntarily, often working long, exhausting hours with very little reward.

7. And finally, we are blessed with large amounts of mineral wealth. Wealth that has kept Wyoming consistently in the top 10 slot (often in the top first or second slot) of per pupil funding. We have the ability to fund education generously here.

Here is a vision for your consideration: let us use the abundant resources we clearly have here at hand to build Wyoming practices that truly address the needs of our Wyoming children at home. Goals that exceed commonality and result in excellence — practices based on tried- and- true methods that invite the skills necessary to sustain our Wyoming culture, that ground children in the culture they experience in their homes and communities and in the studies most relevant to their childhood, while simultaneously equipping them for their bright future. Concern for sustaining what is best about our way of life over generations is shared by the parents, grandparents, and taxpayers who have joined us today. Their study of the issue has led them to conclude that Common Core Standards will not invite the skills necessary to sustain what we treasure in our way of life here in Wyoming.

But let us take a closer look at the history of standards and the Common Core Standards themselves. The Board will be familiar with this, so I will be brief.

Standards have been used in education

over the past 20 years. They have been a part of the national education debate since the early ‘90s when the standards-setting movement first took hold during President Bill Clinton’s administration. Since that time and with the passage of Goals 2000 under President Clinton and then No Child Left Behind under President George W. Bush, states have been pushing themselves to comply with federal edicts regarding standard setting and standard testing.

Certainly Wyoming, like other states, has had standard setting as a part of our educational basket for a very long time. Some time spent at the Wyoming law library reveals that Wyoming has had very broad and general standard making authority in our statutes since the turn of the previous century. But as we look back over the history of education we will find that standards were not and have never been the foundation of excellence in education. The personality and character of our teachers, our parents, our children and our communities plays a far more vital role in ensuring excellence in education locally than has standards.

Indeed, there is no good data to support the significance of national, uniform standards, or even the significance of the standards themselves on academic excellence. When we compare high and low scoring countries internationally we find no data that links high test scores to a highly centralized education system. Countries with both high and low test scores have uniform standards and centralized education systems.

Alfie Kohn, a former teacher and educational writer and researcher said it best when he wrote a piece in the New York Times discussing the Common Core Standards: “It may be convenient – particularly for companies that produce curriculum and tests – to have all 4th graders learn the same thing, but that benefit is more than out weighted by the degree of control required to make communities and individual teachers get with the program even if they’d rather create lessons and assessments suited to their students.” Kohn, like many others educators, has seen the negative effects of uniformity requirements in standards-based programs over the past 2 two decades.

Certainly this “silver-bullet” in grand education experiments has seen its strongest unveiling before the Common Core Standards, with No Child Left Behind, a piece of federal legislation that emphasized the need for states to set their own standards and test for those standards under the hypothesis that this would raise test scores. So, what has happened in the past decade since No Child Left Behind was signed into law? Test scores remained flat, as they have for the previous

decade.

National test scores reveal no significant rise in the past decade. Indeed most states, like Wyoming, have clamored to receive the waiver, offered by President Obama in September 2011, to get out from under the punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind.

The promised gains from No Child Left Behind have not been fulfilled. States have not seen test scores rise significantly under this piece of federal legislation which centers on standard setting and high stakes testing.

Rather the only significant rise that can be tracked to this movement has been the phenomenal rise in education spending, which nearly doubled in the past decade, Wyoming included.

Once burned, twice wary. Have we seen this movie before? The people of Wyoming and those elsewhere are reaching for the “pause” button and taking time to reconsider the Common Core Standards and subsequent high-stakes assessments now that the standards themselves have been fully “unpacked” and parents are seeing a radically new curriculum emerge. Examples of these pauses can be seen in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Florida.

Certainly proponents of the Common Core have presented their viewpoint to this Board; we would be most happy to address those points in detail should the Board request that of us. But today let us examine some of the thoughts of the people who have taken time to join us for this presentation.

It bothers us that we are encouraged to be frightened about “competitiveness in the global economy.” America is still the most creative country in the world. And what happened to the pursuit of happiness? Doesn’t that have something to do with creativity,

kindness, art and music, and even productivity?

As Kohn says so eloquently, “Finally, what’s the ultimate goal here? It’s not to nourish curiosity, help kids to fall in love with reading, encourage critical questioning, or support a democratic society. Rather, the mantra is “competitiveness in a global economy” — that is, aiding American corporations and triumphing over people who live in other countries.

The biggest fans of standardizing education are those who look at our children and see only future employees. Anyone who finds that vision disturbing should resist a proposal for national standards that embodies it.”

It bothers us that we are promised college and career readiness as the ultimate educational goal, as though this is the highest outcome we wish for our children; to make someone a great worker. When children are trained to be fully functioning citizens they are ready to contribute to society in every facet, work included. Who are we serving when we look at our children and think only to train them to be workers?

It bothers us that once again we are seeing more promises made with no proof to back them up – I refer you back to my comments on the history and decade- long outcome of No Child Left Behind.

To quote the well-known and well-respected education historian and education policy analyst Dr. Dianne Ravitch:, “Maybe the standards will be great. Maybe they will be a disaster. Maybe they will improve achievement. Maybe they will widen the achievement gaps between haves and have-nots. Maybe they will cause the children who now struggle to give up altogether. Would the Federal Drug Administration approve the use of a drug with Continued on Page 11

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Campbell County Observer

Public Pulse

October 11 - 18, 2013

Citizens Speak Out - Stop Common Core... Continued from Page 10 no trials, no concern for possible harm or unintended consequences?”

In other words, we don’t know. We are experimenting on our kids and we don’t know if the promises made by the authors and sellers of these standards will actually be able to deliver. It would seem that the loudest voices hawking the Common Core Standards have been accepted as the ones with all the answers. And the myriad of educators and parents who have been too afraid or not loud enough have been virtually ignored or vilified into silence.

Prior to the standards movement and the push to make standards nationally uniform and linked to accountability testing, standards were applied as a general and broad guiding light for teachers and local districts rather than a harsh, authoritarian interrogation light demanding conformity and uniformity.

Since the standards were first adopted in 2010 our districts have been converting their old curricula over to Common Core aligned curricula. For many parents this change has been startling, and can leave no one in doubt that these standards have had a very large impact on curriculum development.

Like a creeping vine, these new standards have begun to twist and tighten themselves around local curricula, narrowing the amount of real control our local communities and our parents have over the education of their children. And without a doubt, as our high stakes testing comes online under the new Wyoming Accountability Act, we will see even more prescriptive teaching to master these high- stakes tests with less and less ability by the local districts to make changes on the ground.

Wanting standards that guide teachers to create excellence in their classrooms is a worthy goal, and Wyoming can achieve it without rushing to sign onto the latest shiny new educational toy.

There is a lot of wisdom in the saying, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

The past two decades of the standards movement has shown us that focusing on setting standards and testing standards has not garnered the results promised. Instead it has created more and more government spending and more and more federal and state government meddling in local education to the detriment of our local schools, our parents and our children.

Finally, I would like to talk briefly about the experiences of our local families and teachers under the Common Core as well as make some brief comments on the national debate over these standards and then give a few policy suggestions.

While I cannot possibly articulate all of the many stories of both the people behind me and those all over the state who could not attend this meeting, I am going to do my best to bring you just a few, because it is important for you, the State Board to Education, to hear what happens outside these walls, the walls of the Department of Education and the walls of local administrators.

Many teachers throughout the state have been in contact to tell their stories. With the only exception being a teacher, Christy Hooley, who is present with us here today, other teachers have been afraid to come forward and talk about what is happening in their classrooms. And parents are speaking directly to teachers as well. Many parents have called to discuss what happened when they spoke to their child’s teacher about the Common Core.

One such parent, a former math teacher, relayed an all too familiar story of meetings with their child’s teacher to talk about the changes in the child’s homework. When the parent asked the teacher where the new curriculum came from, the teacher replied that it was from the new Common Core aligned curriculum – in other words curriculum based on the Common Core Standards. When the parent asked the teacher what they might think of the curriculum – teacher to teacher, the response was telling. The teacher was visibly upset and repeated to the parent several times, “I have to keep my paycheck.”

The teacher never shared a professional opinion on what they were teaching in the classroom, clearly too afraid of repercussions.

Think about that for a moment. This Wyoming teacher who is professionally trained to teach our children, who spends every day with them, who, after parents, has the most to do with that child’s potential educational outcomes, is afraid to speak out about these Standards because of a fear of losing their job. That is stunning. And we have been hearing this story repeated all over the state.

Parents of children between the ages of kindergarten and third grade have said their children are coming home frustrated and crying. One mother said her daughter, who was excited thru through the entire summer to start kindergarten, is now crying each night – not wanting to go to school.

The lack of communication regarding the adoption of these standards and all other subsequent desires for communication has also been a common theme. Parent after parent after parent has told me they had no idea these changes had occurred.

One parent went so far as to research Dept. of Education press releases sent out during the three year “open comment period” and found that not one single press release, according to all of the newspapers in her area, which she called individually, had made it into their local paper. She also checked with her local school board members and found that nothing was sent home in students’ backpacks to inform parents of these potential changes. The district did acknowledge this as a mistake on their part,

but the damage is already done. And now, a culture of conformity seems to have settled over this state, discouraging real discourse on this very controversial topic.

Reports have come back to me that district employees are being ordered to not speak about the Common Core. They expect to demand parents point out what part of the standards themselves they do not like, hoping – one can only speculate – to intimidate parents, who are not experts, into silence.

This kind of narrow edict shuts down open and honest dialogue between parents and educators and clearly shows that education administrators from the top down are not willing to directly address parents’ concerns.

Holding on so tightly to theses standards has lead many at the top unwilling to engage in open dialogue with parents. There are many, many more stories to share, but my time simply does not allow it.

I will move to the national controversy around these standards, which are important to this discussion because these controversies speak to the validity of the standards themselves.

Included in your packet is a paper entitled “The Crisis in Early Education – A ResearchBased Case for More Play and Less Pressure” put out by the Alliance for Childhood, a group of early childhood educators and physicians. This group also released a “Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the Common Core Standards Initiative,” – that is in your packet – a document signed by more than 500 early childhood professionals, including pediatricians, developmental psychologists, and researchers, many of whom are the most prominent members of their fields in this country, as well as featuring the signatures of three past presidents of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, all of whom oppose the standards grades K-3 as being developmentally inappropriate for these children.

Something parents in Wyoming are beginning to report to their school boards that kindergarten students are coming home frustrated and crying frequently at night, a sure sign of stress which this group warned the writers of the Common Core standards could happen, a warning that fell on deaf ears. The statement also voices strong concerns regarding the potential for these standards to lead to “drill and grill” teaching in the classroom, as well as resulting in more and more standardized testing for children at younger and younger ages, both of which this group of professionals opposes.

Also in your packet is the testimony of Dr. Sandra Stotsky regarding her experience serving on the National Validation Committee, a group of experts put together to verify the standards themselves as being legitimately “college and career ready standards.”

Dr. Stotsky, the only English Language Arts content expert on the Validation Committee, refused to sign off on these standards, along with four other committee members, including Dr. James Milgram, Stanford Math professor and the only Math content expert on the Committee.

To quote Dr. Stotsky regarding the standards:, “Common Core’s K-12 standards, it is regularly claimed, emerged from a stateled process in which experts and educators were well represented. But the people who wrote the standards did not represent the relevant stakeholders. Nor were they qualified to draft standards intended to “transform instruction for every child.” And the Validation Committee that was created to put the seal of approval on the drafters’ work was useless if not misleading, both in its membership and in the procedures they had to follow.”

I encourage you to take the time to read Dr. Stotsky’s testimony regarding her time on the National Validation Committee.

You will also find in your packet comments

by Dr. Milgram and a document created by the grassroots organization called Wyoming Citizens Opposing the Common Core, which refutes a timeline recently created by the Wyoming Department of Education.

To say there is widespread universal agreement about these standards is simply not true and denies the reality of the chaos these standards have created in the public education system all over this country.

We need to stop vilifying national experts, teachers and parents who have been speaking out about the defects of these standards all over the country and in Wyoming. When we set limits on what people can and cannot discuss everyone in our free society loses.

Wyoming has so many blessings. I listed just some of them at the beginning of my talk. Caring parents, dedicated teachers and an abundance of natural resources. We need to bring these resources together and develop a set of standards that will bring true excellence to our state without dictating conformity to our local communities. No more paying lip service to the idea of local control.

The Common Core State Standards are not the best standards in this country, they are simply the “it” standards of the moment.

Our recommendations to you, members of the State Board of Education, would be to: 1. Stop the implementation of the Common Core Standards in English Language Arts and Math immediately.

2. Bring together Wyoming’s best and brightest in a panel, including equal numbers of parents and education professionals, to take a look at alternatives to the Common Core Standards.

3. Take a look at revising how you publicize your standards review process to include more avenues for direct parent contact, such as notices going home in students’ backpacks.

4. In your role under the Wyoming Accountability Act requiring your involvement in

the implementation of a statewide accountability system, convene panels of parents and teachers from around the state to assess the potential effects of high stakes testing on students and the educational system.

5. Develop ideas to improve communication with parents around the state such as having individual board members host informal coffees in your community at times when parents are available to attend.

I hope you will take some time to think about these ideas and be willing and receptive to meet with and speak to parents who reach out to you about their concerns over the Common Core. Without this open dialogue, you leave parents alone, with no place to go.

In conclusion, we cannot afford to continue down this path of adopting every new “it” idea proposed as the “silver-bullet” in educational improvement. Wyoming’s citizens, our communities and our mineral wealth all afford us with incredible opportunities to create a system that is world class. We simply need the courage and the vision to do it ourselves.

The history of federal involvement in education has not proven to be a factor in actually improving education; quite to the contrary. And while proponents of the Common Core would like to have it both ways – that the Common Core is a state-led and not federally pushed initiative, their arguments for the standards prove this statement to be contrary. The standards, they say, are needed nationally so that all children are learning the same things at the same time no matter where they are in this country. In other words, they would have us believe this was a state-led initiative to enforce a national set of standard on all states, uniformly, thereby eliminating states’ sovereign authority over public education.

Proponents also want it both ways in that they say these standards can be changed at any time – and yet, I refer back to my previous point, namely that the initiative itself, according to them, calls for all children to

learn the same thing at the same time no matter where they are in the United States.

Wouldn’t states changing the standards in any significant way take us right back to No Child Left Behind where states set their own individual standards?

Proponents also want it both ways in saying that the standards are not curriculum as though standards sit in a vacuum. And yet they promise us the moon with these standards – saying that children will be college and career ready and competitive in the global economy. That’s an awful lot to hope for in a set of standards that will, according to some, have no effect on what is taught dayto- day in the classroom.

When we look at the history of education in this country, we see that money has not made it better. More and more federal control has not made it better. And the latest and greatest in education ideas has not made it better.

Let’s believe in our founding principles again, principles that understand that it is the personality and character of our teachers, our parents, our children and our communities that plays the vital role in ensuring excellence in education.

Let’s believe in Wyoming’s ability to create excellence in education locally and stop this experiment in standards for education, as if doing something a second time will get us different results.

Let’s believe in our abilities to do what is right by our children. They are capable of meeting higher standards and being held accountable for accomplishing learning tasks without lowering the bar, handing over our authority and calling it rigor.

And let’s believe in our parents and our teachers to care the most for their children, in the classroom and at home, instead of devising new ways to remove parental authority and silence good teachers.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to me today.

Letters to the Editor No Imperial Presidency

Dear Editor, This past week House Republicans worked with several of our colleagues across the aisle to pass individual funding bills to relieve some of the pain caused by the partial government shutdown. These bills would provide funds to reopen our national parks and museums, pay our National Guard and Reserve, and ensure the VA can process benefits earned by our nation’s veterans. Unfortunately for all of us, Senate Democrats continue to obstruct efforts to fund the government. This is madness.

Since the Senate absolutely refuses to defund or delay Obamacare, I fight for one thing: equality under Obamacare. Members of Congress should be treated the same under the law as those they represent, the American people. It is unbelievable that Senate Democrats would deny funding for VA benefits processing, national parks, and the Guard and Reserve as part of their fight to keep their special Obamacare subsidy.

What’s even more unbelievable is that President Obama is exempt from Obamacare.

It is time for the Congressional Democrats and President Obama to come to the table and talk with us. An agreement can be reached, but we have to work together and negotiate. President Obama cannot have whatever he wants whenever he wants it.

This is not an imperial presidency.

Please stay in touch as I continue to fight to re-open the government and make everyone equal under Obamacare, especially those who wrote it.

Sincerely, Representative Cynthia Lummis

Government Employees Only Receiving a Paid Vacation

Dear Editor: Why should the legislature be paid after they shut the government down? Maybe if they were docked pay for each day the government was shut down, without being able to get any of it back, they might move things along a bit faster. Why can’t government employees work without pay...since they will be paid for the time? This is like an extra paid vacation.

Just wondering, Nikki Grandsen Obama’s Pyrrhic victory No thoughtful American could possibly be a fan of the railroaded Obamacare bill, crafted like Frankenstein’s monster by thenHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi in her quivering moment of glory. Launched against her countrymen in the dead of night and wrapped in the haughty regalia of self-proclaimed ignorance (and with the compassion of a nest of cobras), Mrs. Pelosi and her accomplices stuffed a societal death sentence down the collective American throat.

History will indeed record this act as the signature of a president who succeeded in transforming America from the “evil” empire he imagined it to be into something else. But President Obama is taking us from the exemplar of freedom throughout the world to a sniveling nanny state in which there are no superlatives on true morality and no urge for individual achievement. How profoundly sad that we have allowed this to happen on our watch. Mr. Obama and his confederates have succeeded in plowing us toward the most Pyrrhic of victories. It will be his crowning achievement.

The Democrats, riding to the baying hounds of perpetual dependency, are re-

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joicing once again. “How simple it is to roll the weak-kneed Republican establishment!” they think. Indeed, the old guard is inept and has lost both its understanding of the central themes of our republic and its will to join the battle for American survival.

There are a few Patrick Henrys out there.

Other would-be patriots are in hiding, rationalizing. They never would have stood firm at Bunker Hill. What are “we, the people” to do? The answer is simple: Ignore the mainstream press, which is nothing more today than a facto agent of the administration, and we must live within our means.

Those brave and vocal folks on the Hill today know that even with all the Obama deferrals and exemptions and chicanery designed to produce seeming benefits in order to inveigle high-ups, Obamacare will crash and burn.

KEITH W. REISS

It’s Time For An Intervention

Dear Editor, The American public has lost patience with Washington. The question is, now what?

Congress is unable to do its job. It displays neither competence nor responsibility, lurching from crisis to crisis. Too many of its members reject the notion that accommodation and time-honored procedures allow them to fulfill their responsibilities to the American people. They use their legislative skill to engage in brinksmanship rather than address the country’s fundamental problems. Economic growth? Creating jobs? Putting the federal budget on a sustainable path? Don’t look to Congress.

We do not have to continue down this road, but we do have to tackle a core problem: the political center in Congress has weakened to the point of ineffectiveness, if not nearirrelevance. Part of the answer lies with the electorate: more people have to turn out to vote. The more people who vote, the better the chances to strengthen the political center — that is, moderates and pragmatists. A healthier Congress rests on expanding efforts to convince people to vote, and beating back the barriers to voting.

The second solution lies with Congress.

Contemplating a government shutdown, one congressman recently explained his stance by saying, “All that really matters is what my district wants.” This is not an uncommon view, but it’s distressingly limited. Our system depends on members who believe it’s also their responsibility to lead and inform voters, who are willing to weigh the national interest as well as parochial concerns and who have confidence in our system to resolve political differences.

In other words, we need members of Congress devoted to making the system work, legislators who realize that those who line up on the other side of them feel just as passionately about their positions, respect those differences, and are committed to finding common ground.

We change laws and solve our most difficult issues in this country not by bringing government to a halt, but by fighting out the issues before the voters in an election.

At the end of the day, we have to move the country forward — and we need to elect members of Congress who are willing and able to do that.

Lee H. Hamilton Editors Note: Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Public Pulse Wyoming Liberty Index

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

2013 General Session, 62nd Legislature The 2013 Wyoming House Index

elcome to the 2013 Wyoming Liberty Index.

The Bills

The 2013 Wyoming Liberty Index rates all final bills in the House and Senate from the 2013 General Session, 62st Legislature, on whether they support or inhibit liberty.

Legislators voted on 258 bills in the House and 241 bills in the Senate. Out of this total, the Liberty Index showed that 64 liberty-supporting bills passed and 67 failed. Additionally, 63 liberty-inhibiting bills passed while 117 failed.

Some good liberty bills that passed include: • HB 85. This cuts back municipal jurisdiction (e.g. zoning) outside the town limits. Extraterritoriality means that homeowners outside the township are regulated by a city council for whom they do not vote.

• HB 78, which brings the Department of Transportation and Game and Fish to submit to the legislature’s budget review process.

The most liberty supporting bills that failed include: • HB 103, HB 104, and HB 105, firearms protection bills.

All three passed the House and died in the Senate. The fate of HB 105 is particularly shameful. The Senate Education Committee couldn’t even muster the spine to move to report out the bill with a “Do Not Pass” recommendation.

• HB 189, which would have repealed Wyoming’s compliance with Real ID. The most liberty inhibiting bills that passed include: • SF 104, which gutted the office of Superintendent of Education, and moved most of its responsibilities to a newly minted “education czar”, making the Department of Education a wholly owned subsidiary of the Governor.

• HB 69, the fuel tax increase, which we can expect to kill some 500 jobs.

The most liberty inhibiting bills that failed include: • HB 204, which would have allowed collecting DNA data from felony arrestees, not convicts.

• SF 122, a medicaid expansion bill.

• HB 27, which would have allowed tribal law enforcement to enforce state traffic laws.

It’s usually a good idea to get rid of obsolete legislation.

HB 7, “Sanitary facilities for motion picture operators”, removes an archaism that would be amusing if the cost of compliance weren’t noticeable. Down with legislative micromanagement!

There is detailed information on each bill. The information includes comments from the raters on why they rated the bills as they did.

The Legislators

In addition, the voting pattern of each legislator was automatically calculated and given a liberty score. The higher the score, the better the legislator’s agreement with the raters. A high score simply reflects a high level of aye votes on liberty-supporting bills and nay votes on libertyinhibiting bills. Scores are only indicators of ordering, and arithmetic manipulations are meaningless. The percentage is simply out of the range from highest score (100%) to lowest (0%). Because the two houses vote on different bills, scores in the two houses are not comparable.

The Top Dozen liberty-supporting members in the House were (in order) Representatives Kendell Kroeker, David Miller, Marti Halverson, Stephen Watt, Allen Jaggi, Tom Reeder, Kathy Davison, Robert McKim, Bunky Loucks, Lynn Hutchings, Garry Piiparinen, and Hans Hunt. Following on his success last year, Rep. Kroeker wins the title of “Most Liberty-Friendly Member of the House for 2013”, and by a wide margin.

The House Needs Improvement Club consists of those members who most consistently voted to limit freedom.

They are (in order) Representatives David Blevins, John Patton, David Zwonitzer, Dan Zwonitzer, Ruth Petroff, Ken Esquibel, Rosie Berger, John Freeman, James Byrd, W. Patrick Goggles, Cathy Connolly, and Mary Throne. Rep. Throne has earned the title of “Most Liberty-Hostile Member of the House for 2013”.

The top performing House Democrat is Stan Blake, ranked 33rd. Freshman Lee Filer ranked 48th. These are the lone Democrats to avoid the “Needs Improvement Club”.

The Top Half-Dozen liberty-supporting members in the Senate were (in order) Senators Cale Case, Drew Perkins, Ogden Driskill, “Dr. No”, Larry Hicks, and Dan Dockstader. Once again, and for as long as we have been rating the Senate, Senator Cale Case has come out on top; he earns the title of the “Most Liberty-Friendly Member of the Senate for 2013” by a substantial margin. Kudos yet again to Senator Case!

The Senate Needs Improvement Club are those members who most consistently voted to limit freedom. They are (in order) Senators Bill Landen, Henry H.R. “Hank” Coe, Chris Rothfuss, Floyd Esquibel, Bernadine Craft, and Michael Von Flatern. Michael Von Flatern has earned the title of “Most Liberty-Hostile Member of the Senate for 2013”.

Among Senate Democrats, former “Most Liberty-Hostile Member” John Hastert did best, ranking at 22.

This year, more legislators ranked ahead of “Dr. No” than last year. Those who did can take an additional bow.

There is detailed information on each legislator.

Excused, Absent and Conflicts

We now provide Excused, Absent and Conflict totals for each member on the Results tab of the spreadsheet.

These are totals of third reading votes for which the member was excused, absent or had a conflict, not days.

The House, with 255 excused votes, far outstrips the Senate, with 57, even factoring in the larger size of the House. Leading the House are Rosie Berger, with 55 excused absences, and Gerald Gay, with 46.

Being a leader in this field is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since a failure to vote is often equivalent to a no vote, these absences may have improved these legislators’ scores. Perhaps more legislators should book cruises to the Antarctic during session.

This table shows the weighted liberty score and weighted liberty percentage for each representative.

NAME

PAR

DIST DISTRICT LOCATION

Kendell Kroeker David Miller Marti Halverson Stephen Watt Allen Jaggi Tom Reeder Kathy Davison Robert McKim Bunky Loucks Lynn Hutchings Garry Piiparinen Hans Hunt Mark Baker Nathan Winters Gerald Gay Mark Semlek Sue Wallis Mike Greear Jerry Paxton Sue Wilson Thomas Lubnau Tom Walters “Dr. No” Michael Madden Keith Gingery Kathy Coleman Dan Kirkbride Thomas Lockhart Glenn Moniz John Eklund Donald Burkhart, Jr Eric Barlow Stan Blake Albert Sommers Norine Kasperik Lloyd Larsen Richard Cannady Matt Teeters Bob Nicholas David Northrup Gregg Blikre Rita Campbell Elaine Harvey Samuel Krone Tim Stubson Steve Harshman Matthias Greene Lee Filer Kermit Brown David Blevins John Patton David Zwonitzer Dan Zwonitzer Ruth Petroff Ken Esquibel Rosie Berger John Freeman James Byrd W. Patrick Goggles Cathy Connolly Mary Throne

R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R

35 55 22 17 19 58 18 21 59 42 49 2 48 28 36 1 52 27 47 7 31 38

Natrona Fremont Lincoln/Sublette/Teton Sweetwater Uinta Natrona Lincoln/Sweetwater/Uinta Lincoln Natrona Laramie Uinta Niobrara/Weston/Goshen Sweetwater Big Horn/Hot Springs/Fremont/Park Natrona Crook/Weston Campbell Big Horn/Washakie Carbon/Albany/Sweetwater Laramie Campbell Natrona

R R R R R R R R R D R R R R R R R R R R R R R R D R R R R R R D R D D D D D

40 23 30 4 57 46 10 15 3 39 20 32 54 6 5 8 50 53 34 26 24 56 37 45 12 14 25 29 9 43 16 41 51 60 44 33 13 11

Johnson/Sheridan Teton Sheridan Platte/Converse Natrona Albany Laramie/Goshen Carbon Campbell/Converse Sweetwater Sublette Campbell Fremont Converse Goshen Laramie Park Campbell Fremont Big Horn/Park Park Natrona Natrona Albany Laramie Albany Park Sheridan Laramie Laramie Teton Laramie Sheridan Sweetwater Laramie Fremont Albany Laramie

WEIGHTED SCORE 106.5 74 65.5 64.5 63 57.5 57.5 54 54 53.5 53.5 51.5 48 41.5 38.5 38 33.5 19 18 17 13.5 13 11.5 10.5 10.5 5.5 3.5 2.5 0.5 -1.5 -2 -3.5 -4 -5.5 -6 -7 -8.5 -8.5 -9 -9.5 -10 -11.5 -11.5 -12 -12.5 -14 -14.5 -15.5 -15.5 -15.5 -19.5 -19.5 -21 -22.5 -22.5 -23.5 -24.5 -25.5 -26 -39 -45

WEIGHTED WEIGHTED PERCENT RANK 100% 1 79% 2 73% 3 72% 4 71% 5 68% 6 68% 6 65% 8 65% 8 65% 10 65% 10 64% 12 61% 13 57% 14 55% 15 55% 16 52% 17 42% 18 42% 19 41% 20 39% 21 38% 22 37% 23 37% 24 37% 24 33% 26 32% 27 31% 28 30% 29 29% 30 28% 31 27% 32 27% 33 26% 34 26% 35 25% 36 24% 37 24% 37 24% 39 23% 40 23% 41 22% 42 22% 42 22% 44 21% 45 20% 46 20% 47 19% 48 19% 48 19% 48 17% 51 17% 51 16% 53 15% 54 15% 54 14% 56 14% 57 13% 58 13% 59 4% 60 0% 61

The 2013 Wyoming Senate Index

This table shows the weighted liberty score and weighted liberty percentage for each senator.

NAME

PAR DIST DISTRICT LOCATION

Cale Case Drew Perkins Ogden Driskill “Dr. No” Larry Hicks Dan Dockstader Curt Meier John Hines Stan Cooper Paul Barnard John Schiffer Bruce Burns R. Ray Peterson Eli Bebout Phil Nicholas Leslie Nutting Tony Ross Leland Christensen Fred Emerich Gerald Geis

R R R

25 29 1

R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R

11 16 3 23 14 15 22 21 19 26 10 7 4 17 5 20

James Lee Anderson John Hastert Charles Scott Jim Anderson (SD02) Wayne Johnson Bill Landen Henry H.R. “Hank” Coe Chris Rothfuss Floyd Esquibel Bernadine Craft Michael Von Flatern

R D R R R R R D D D R

28 13 30 2 6 27 18 9 8 12 24

Elks Lodge BINGO

WEIGHTED SCORE Fremont 93 Natrona 29 Crook/Campbell/Weston 22.5 18 Albany/Carbon/Sweetwater 16 Lincoln/Sublette/Teton 16 Goshen/Niobrara/Weston 12 Campbell/Converse 6.5 Lincoln/Sublette/Sweetwater/Uinta 6 Uinta 4 Sheridan/Johnson 3 Sheridan -1.5 Big Horn/Park -2.5 Fremont -3 Albany -3.5 Laramie -5 Laramie -6 Teton -11.5 Laramie -14 Big Horn/Fremont/ -15 Hot Springs/Park/Washakie Natrona -16 Sweetwater -18 Natrona -20.5 Converse/Platte -21 Laramie/Goshen -23 Natrona -27.5 Park -31 Albany -31 Laramie -32 Sweetwater -35.5 Campbell -46.5

WEIGHTED WEIGHTED PERCENT RANK 100% 1 54% 2 49% 3 46% 4 45% 5 45% 5 42% 7 38% 8 38% 9 36% 10 35% 11 32% 12 32% 13 31% 14 31% 15 30% 16 29% 17 25% 18 23% 19 23% 20 22% 20% 19% 18% 17% 14% 11% 11% 10% 8% 0%

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 29 30 31

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12

Public Pulse

Campbell County Observer

October 11 - 18, 2013

Regardless of Vote, Congress is Sickening...

“The faults of our great country cannot be blamed on the elected officials of our country, but the individual citizen who does not get informed and involved.”

-Nicholas De Laat

By Nicholas DeLaat

Y

esterday, while listening to the Glenn Woods Show, a phone call came in from a South Dakota woman whose voice I recognized right away. She is a Gold Star mother and an avid listener to our show.

She was appalled after reading that the families of five soldiers killed last weekend in Afghanistan would not receive the death benefits promised, including the ride to the base where the remains of their sons, daughter, husbands, wife, mother, and fathers would come home to.

Welcome to the prioritized government shutdown.

First of all, if you don’t know what a Gold Star mother (father) is, it is a title given to those parents who lost a child in war. Christine Bestgen is one of those mothers. On the show, she discussed how it was for her, only two years ago; how the military provided transport, support, counselors, and funding to help her, and her family, through the initial mourning period.

Now, I am a veteran myself, and currently the Chaplain of the VFW Post 7756 in Gillette. My officer position with the local VFW is quite new, and I am currently learning my duties and how to perform them. One of those duties is helping veterans and veterans’ families in need. While hearing how appalled Mrs. Bestgen was, on learning that these five families would not receive the same care from their country as she did, I came up with an instant plan. I rushed into Glenn’s studio during a commercial break, telling him, “I think we should do something…now!” and outlined an initial plan.

Talking with Christine after the show, we outlined an agenda. If the government wasn’t willing to take care of the recently fallen vets’ families, then we will.

I repeat, welcome to the prioritized government shutdown.

I started to call T.A.P.S., the army chain of command, and private pilots.

We were planning a media charity blitz to raise whatever the expense was to get these families to their fallen. We were not going to rely on government, but just do it ourselves.

The next day however, the House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill that would assure that families of fallen soldiers are given the $100,000 “death gratuity” benefits they were promised, but not given, because of the government shutdown. The vote

was 425-0.

So, though we were willing, the government finally relieved some of the pressure out of their heads for once.

After reading about it this morning at home, I came to the office and it sunk in…these people make me sick!

I don’t care that it was voted on 4250, as none of these congressmen and women are idiots and it would be political disaster not to vote for this bill.

But why was it a bill? They are still funding the President’s golf course, $445 million to PBS, and overseas aid to foreign countries…but they never thought to fund the $100K to the families of our fallen soldiers? I know they love the spotlight, but they are nowhere near as deserving as these five soldiers who were killed in a time of war last weekend. Think about it, they were willing to pay Big Bird (again, to let it sink in…$445 MILLION) but not $500K to five families who sacrificed in the highest degree for our country.

And Mr. President, you are the Commander in Chief, and do not need those congressional do-do birds’ permission to send a military aircraft to pick up those families, and bring them to their loved ones one last time. That office you hold is not because of all the morons in this country that voted you in, but because of the few left in this country that have real honor, and died for it. You must have forgotten this, as instead of arguing a partisan line you should have had that military plane in the air.

Most people think me crazy when I say that we have lost our country, and we are heading into a crash. One instance and one short amount of time will not cause it, but millions of circumstances over a stretched amount of time will. Usually, in a downfall of an empire, you can relate all of these circumstances to “priorities at the time.” A golf course, PBS, and National Parks were the highest priority, while our fallen soldiers were not.

Our government has proven, time and time again, that it does not represent us anymore, but only represents its own interests. They are now getting close to the final straw.

Below, printed with the permission of Mrs. Bestgen, was the final facebook message that her son had to his mom via. Facebook. Obviously while serving, he also understood the class of our government.

July 1, 2011 at 10:33pm Is it odd that a young man... who grew up being taught rights and beliefs that founded this country.... doesnt really believe in the country hes fighting for.... that he doesnt believe in his government anymore... who has no faith in the justice system or the people he works for.... politicians... senators.... republicans or democrats.... that he believes his country cares more about itself than its people.... its soldiers..... and its continuation as a free country.... he believes the general public is afraid to stand up for its rights and its freedoms said country was founded on... that every man woman and child should have... without being afraid of their rights being infringed based on which party they vote for.... who looks back at photos of happiness and proudness and wonders if it all is a lie... if there is any real basis for his pride..... his love for his country... his thoughts about what he has grown up knowing.... he wonders if the people will make a good decision and try to turn the country around.... wonders if people really realize what is happening in the government.... what is happening in the world.... is this wrong? .... sincerely..... a soldier who loves his country and what it really meant to be a soldier....”

U.S. Government, you make me absolutely sick to even think of you, and on the road you are traveling.

You deserve to reap what you are sewing right now. In ancient Sparta, there were only two ways you could be buried with a gravestone; to be remembered throughout history. You could lose a son in battle, or die in battle. All others were forgotten, and buried without remembrance. Something I want to tell Congress and the President: “You are never going to be as important as our soldiers and sailors that fight for our country, and how you treated their deaths is an insult to every veteran, dead and alive.

Shame on you, regardless of your recent unanimous vote, as these soldiers are the Americans who deserve that gravestone…while you deserve only to be forgotten.”

Those killed Sunday include: Army CID Joseph Peters, Pfc. Cody Patterson, 24, of Philomath, Ore.; 1st Lt. Jennifer Moreno, 25, of San Diego; and Sgt. Patrick Hawkins, 25, of Carlisle, Pa.

Two Burned Up Well Pumps

By Holly Galloway - Campbell County Observer A couple from Gillette, Shirley and Gary Pettigrew, approached the city Council Tuesday night at the twice-monthly regularly scheduled meeting, for reimbursement on their water well. This past spring, their well pump burned out when the city was drawing heavily on the Union water source that the Pettigrew’s well receives its water from. According to Shirley, “the City was to let them know when they were going to use that water source.” But the City did not let them know, and

another pump burned out, but did not sand in.

According to the City, there was no heavy drawdown last spring when the Pettigrew’s second pump burned up.

Three years previously their pump was burned for the same reason, and the well was sanded in. The couple is asking the City to pay for the two new pumps and work that was done on their well. The State did an investigation and provided Pettigrew’s with a forty page report. Mayor

Tom Murphy asked if the City has received a copy of the State’s report. Mrs. Pettigrew replied that, “all of it was emailed from the State.”

Both the State and the City of Gillette have worked on this issue for some time,

Carter Napier commented.

Six options were given to the city from the state and another seventh option is still being written.

The couple uses this well for irrigation purposes and for drinking.

Featured Crime

Crime Stoppers needs your help in solving the theft of two snow machines. The snow machines were stored at Gillette Self Storage at 507 Commercial Dr in May 2013. The snow machines were discovered stolen on 10022013 at 1600 hours. The first machine is a 2008 Arctic Cat, M8, Black with Green/White trim valued at $6500. The second machine is a 2001 Yamaha Mountain Max, Purple with a Yellow skid plate, valued at $2000.

If you have information that can solve this or any other crime please call Crime Stoppers at 686-0400. You can remain anonymous and may earn up to $1,000 in reward.

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Public Pulse

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Bold Republic Weekly

Cindy Hill’s Document Dump

By Glenn Woods

ast week, on my radio show, I gave Cindy Hill an “atta-boy..

YOU GO GIRL!” Frankly, what she did took a lot of guts and guile. I like guts and guile.

It seems that after the Governor and the State Legislator had dammed Cindy Hill, and reduced her job to a position of minor power, then appointed an un-elected bureaucrat to her old job, and then told us that we were still voting for a Superintendent of Public Instruction (when we all knew that we’ve had our vote taken from us) they decided to prove that they had done the right thing by launching an investigation.

Hold there for a moment -- Isn’t the investigation supposed to come first?

Then, after proving that Cindy Hill had violated her oath of office or something, the House and Senate could then take action against her.

Believe it or not, our elected officials have no idea why we are so upset with them.

So during the course of this investigation, Cindy Hill received notices that certain state records and office e-mails would need to be turned over for review as part of the investigation.

I’ve seen the list of documents that were subpoenaed, and it is lengthy.

Sorting through everything that is on the list

would take a staff of employees months of work.

Then, who knows if after all that work, they would have found everything on the list to the satisfaction of those investigation Cindy. Hence, it would be easy to accuse her of holding back vital documents which could be used against her.

So, clever girl, Cindy Hill simply went into her files and dropped everything from her computers onto a driver and sent it over. EVERYTHING! Every file. Every e-mail. Every item that had ever been used and saved by her office, no matter if it was relevant to the investigation or not.

When the Speaker of the House, Tom Lubnau, opened the driver, he gasped at the size of it all.

Worse, there was no organization to any of it. It was simply a massive document dump.

So Mr. Lubnau, obviously annoyed, sent a hand-delivered letter to Cindy Hill.

As you might imagine, the letter was politely curt. At the end he offered Cindy “another opportunity” to resend the materials in an organized fashion. He made the offer as if he was doing her a favor.

At this point I have to ask Mr. Lubnau: WHY SHOULD SHE? To be frank, the purpose of this investigation is to do damage to Cindy Hill after the fact. Can anyone find

one solid reason why Cindy Hill should help them with this?

It is not Cindy Hill’s responsibility to help these people dig up something that they might use against her. If the investigators in this charade wish to pour through her files and emails of the past few years to try and dig up something, well, here are the files, and here are all the e-mails she has ever sent…. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT! Mr. Lubnau, I know that receiving these files in this way is annoying to you, but this is your investigation and you can dig through those files your own damned-self.

Nor, for that matter, is Cindy Hill required to help these people with this in-

vestigation. There is a little thing in the Constitution that says a person cannot be required to testify against themselves. In the spirit of that amendment, Cindy is not required to dig up evidence against herself.

Last Friday I was at the office of the Campbell County Observer, where we also now have the studios for my new syndicated radio show, heard in Gillette starting at 2pm on 103.1-fm. (Shameless Plug). The phone rang.

It was Cindy Hill. So, you better believe I spoke with her about this.

Cindy told me that she in no way wanted to get caught in the trap of not turning over every document requested and be accused of holding back and

hindering the investigation.

So she sent them EVERYTHING! Frankly, I told her, I don’t blame her.

As I write this, it’s Monday morning, and I invited Cindy Hill on my show today to talk about this. It should be an interesting interview.

As for the Speaker of the House; Mr. Lubnau: You can’t say that Cindy Hill did not comply. You have everything that you have asked for, and more. I’m sure it will take you and your staff a good long time to sort through all of those files and e-mails. Well, you asked for them. You’ve got them.

It is not Cindy Hill’s responsibility to do your job for you. Mr. Speaker, if you had sent me such a re-

quest, I would have done the same thing. So, say that you wished to investigate me. You have a court order? Fine. It should take you about six months or more to pour through it all.

What was that? No, Mr. Lubnau, I’m not going to help you dig for something that you think you might be able to use to prosecute me with. Nor am I required to.

You’re a lawyer, and a legislator. You know this.

SO - there are the filing cabinets with almost four years of government paperwork and correspondence in them. Good luck with that.

OH, and please turn the light out when you are done, if you don’t mind.

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State Employees Impacted by Federal Shutdown Recently, Governor Matt Mead wrote state employees whose positions are funded in whole or in part by the federal government. These employees are affected in some way by the federal shutdown which began Tuesday, October 1st.

The federal shutdown has required the State of Wyoming to place 233 federally funded employees on furlough, effective Monday, October 7. The furloughs affect employees with positions that are funded in whole or in part with federal funds that ceased to be available.

“It is not easy for me to write today,” Mead wrote. “I know there has been great uncertainty for you since the federal shutdown began on Tuesday. It is a troubling time, and while I cannot change the situation – only Congress and the President can do that – I do hope the situation is resolved soon.”

Wyoming employs 9,867 individuals and of those, 1600 positions are funded in whole or in part by federal funds. The 233 employees immediately impacted are paid with funds not available without a federal budget on October 1. The number of employees subject to furlough may grow if the federal shutdown continues past October 30.

The 233 individuals are employed by the Departments of Environmental Quality, Family Services, the Military, and Parks and Cultural Resources. The furlough impact on each employee will vary depending on the salary percentage of federal funds to other funds, including state general funds.

In a letter to the affected employees, Governor Mead noted that it is a difficult time, and the action was difficult to take. He and his staff explored all options, but found that state and federal law required the furloughs of employees. “The state cannot pay for all federally funded positions; however, the state is trying to take the best path forward,” Governor Mead wrote.

The Governor has authorized employees to use accrued annual leave, if they choose to do so. They are eligible for unemployment insurance.

A website has been established to provide information for affected employees, as well as others who may have questions related to the furloughs required by the federal budget situation. The website is https://sites. google.com/a/wyo.gov/state-of-wyoming-furlough-information/home (Please note: the web address must be copied as written, it is not available through a search.)

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Public Pulse

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Joe McCarthy Faces Charges in Suicide of Wyoming Senator Senator Alan K. Simpson to Address Mock Trial

enator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and two other former members of the United States Senate will go “on trial” in Washington, DC, for their alleged roles in the 1954 suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C. Hunt. Senators Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), Styles Bridges (R-New Hampshire) and Herman Welker (R-Idaho), all deceased, are “charged” with a criminal conspiracy to blackmail Hunt who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his senate office in 1954.

A mock trial of the three senators will be held at All Souls Church Unitarian on October 23rd beginning at 7:30 PM in the church sanctuary. All Souls Church Unitarian is located at 1500 Harvard Street NW @ 16th in Washington, DC. The “trial” is a readers’ theater presentation based on the research conducted

by Rodger McDaniel for his book Dying for the Sins of Joe McCarthy-The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt. Senator Alan K. Simpson (ret.-WY) will open the proceedings with an address to the mock court, jury, and audience.

Simpson served in the US Senate from 1979-1997.

Simpson’s father Milward L. Simpson, a U.S. Senator and 23rd Governor of Wyo-

ming was a close friend of Lester Hunt.

Simpson wrote the foreword to McDaniel’s book saying it offers “a level of empathy to Lester Hunt’s life story that he richly deserves. The result is this book that finally offers Lester Hunt’s remaining family some form of justice – though belated.”

The Mattachine Society of Washington, DC. is sponsoring the event.

Charles Francis, Mattachine Society President said, “What these men did to Lester Hunt was not just sharp-elbowed politics.

This is the true story of a long covered-up criminal conspiracy to blackmail a sitting U.S. Senator and take over the leadership of the United States Senate.

It is time for this conspiracy to go before a jury---even in a mock trial--- in Washington, D.C.” McDaniel’s book includes never-before published evidence of the conspiracy against Senator Hunt.

“This mock trial will leave no question a serious crime was committed. This was not an ordinary attempt to blackmail. This was an attack on our democracy and the US Senate itself. The goal of the perpetrators was not simply to force a colleague to resign. It was a political take-over of one of the most important and

revered institutions of our government. In some countries it would have rightly been called a “putsch.”

The author said, “In 1954 there was no investigation of the facts leading to Senator Hunt’s death. Although nearly six decades have passed, newly discovered evidence calls for a formal review of the matter by the US Department of Justice.”

Retired Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Michael Golden will preside over the trial.

Trevor Potter, the Washington attorney widely known for the creation of the Colbert Super PAC, will play the part of the prosecuting attorney.

Potter was general counsel for the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain. He was deputy general counsel for the 1988 presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush.

Mindy Daniels, a prominent Washington criminal defense lawyer and a former President of the Gay and Lesbian Activist Alliance (GLAA) of Washington, D.C. will serve as defense counsel for the three former Senators.

A jury of local citizens will hear the case and render a historic verdict. Robert Raben, former U.S. Assistant Attorney General and longtime counsel will play the

Jury Foreman to Congressman Barney Frank.

Verizon legislative affairs executive Ed Senn will play Senator Joe McCarthy.

The public is invited to attend free of charge. McDaniel’s book will be available for purchase.

Lester Hunt, a Democrat, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1948. He was twice elected governor and twice elected Secretary of State after serving in the Wyoming legislature. He took his own life on June 19, 1954, a year after his son and namesake was arrested in Lafayette Park for soliciting sex from an undercover policeman. The “defendants” McCarthy, Bridges, and Welker attempted to leverage young Hunt’s arrest into Senator Hunt’s resignation at a time when the shift of one seat would give control of the senate to the GOP. Senator Simpson wrote the foreword for McDaniel’s book, saying, “When Lester Hunt arrived in Washington in 1949, he witnessed the rising tide of McCarthyism. His was one of the few early voices to call it for what it was.” Speaking of the events leading to Senator Hunt’s suicide Simpson wrote, “What was done to Lester Hunt passed all boundaries of decency and exposed an evil side of politics most would always

seek to avoid.”

McDaniel said, “Holding the mock trial in Washington finally allows longhidden senate history to be revealed. Homophobia combined with the stigma of suicide to hide the facts surrounding Senator Hunt’s suicide for six decades.

The legacies of Senators Bridges, Welker and McCarthy are incomplete unless the shameful history of the scar they inflicted on the integrity of the United States Senate is told in the nation’s capitol where these events took place in

1953 and 1954.”

Senator Simpson said, “This book finally offers Lester Hunt’s remaining family some form of justice – though belated.” McDaniel acknowledged the encouragement and help he received from the 87 yearold Lester Hunt, Jr. while researching and writing the book. “The truth of what happened to Senator Hunt and his son Buddy Hunt could never have been told without the decency and integrity of Lester Hunt, Jr. and his determination that the truth finally be told.”

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Weed Wyoming Compassionate Use Act Submitted by James C. Lake - President Weed Wyoming Weed Wyoming, a Wyoming Nonprofit Corporation, is proud to announce that we will be filing and presenting to the people of Wyoming, an initiative for their consideration, aimed at bringing Medical Marijuana to the State of Wyoming on the 2016 ballot.

Although there is already an initiative in the pipeline for the 2016 ballot addressing marijuana law reform, it’s “ whole ball of wax “ approach has no chance, as it is our experience that there IS a lot of support for reform in our state, but the vast majority of that support is for MEDICAL reform and not recreational use.

Given the consequences of failure of such an initiative, we feel it necessary to offer the people of our state an initiative that we believe brings the much needed relief that the sick and disabled of our state badly need and actually has a good chance of succeeding.

1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the Wyoming Compassionate Use Act. 2. The purpose of this act is to protect seriously-ill patients and their caregivers from arrest and prosecution for possession of marijuana for medical purposes.

3. Seriously-ill patients and their caregivers will be exempt from Wyoming criminal laws relating to the possession, distribution and production of marijuana when used under the written recommendation of a physician licensed in the United States.

4. No physician shall be punished or denied any right or privilege for having recommended marijuana to a patient for medical purposes.

5. State registration of medical marijuana patients shall be prohibited. Possession of a written recommendation by a physician licensed in the United States stating that the patient may benefit from the use of marijuana in medical marijuana provides a full exemption from arrest, prosecution, search and seizure under criminal marijuana statutes.

6. Each patient with a written recommendation is presumed to have the right to possess up to 10 marijuana plants for their personal medical use and may keep the entire harvest in their residence, place of business, place of worship and/or growing location of the medical marijuana.

While traveling, patients are presumed to be permitted carry up to 10 ounces of marijuana for their personal medical use. Patients requiring larger amounts of marijuana to treat their medical condition may possess a larger quantity upon written recommendation from a Wyoming licensed physician specifying the number of plants and/or weight of marijuana necessary to treat their condition up to but no greater than 10 pounds and/or 50 plants. Patients without a written recommendation for a larger quantity may use medical necessity as an affirmative defense against possession and/or cultivation charges in court.

7. Patients may produce marijuana collectively. Collective cultivation organizations must be Wyoming not-for-profit corporations or unincorporated associations comprised solely of patients in possession of a valid written recommendation to use marijuana for medical purposes and may provide marijuana to patients with valid written recommendations in exchange for donations to cover the costs associated with the operation of a medical marijuana collective cultivation organization, including but not limited to labor, production, distribution and storage costs.

8. Patient identification cards and written doctor’s recommendations issued by other states and federal territories of the United States, Canada, European Union member countries and Israel are considered to be equivalent to a Wyoming written physicians recommendation.

9. Caregivers of seriously-ill patients may possess, obtain, transport and/or cultivate marijuana on behalf

of a medical marijuana patient by having their name listed as the caregiver of the seriously-ill patient in the written recommendation of the physician as the patient’s caregiver and/or a notarized letter from the patient designating them as their caregiver, attached to a copy of the patient’s written physician’s recommendation.

10. Patients may use marijuana for medical purposes in any location where tobacco smoking is permitted if the marijuana is being burned. If the marijuana is being used in a form that does not require burning and/or smoking such as vaporization or through marijuana infused food items it may be used anywhere within the State of Wyoming.

11. Patients and their caregivers may not be denied any right or privilege otherwise afforded to other citizens based on their usage of and/or caregiver status to a medical marijuana patient. In all areas of law, medical usage of marijuana under the written recommendation shall be considered equivalent to usage of a prescription medicine.

12. Wyoming state authorities are prohibited from cooperation with and/or assistance to federal authorities and/or out- of-state authorities in any investigation, prosecution and or arrest of a person in compliance with this act.

13. This act preempts any local, city and/or county law involving the medical usage of marijuana but municipalities and counties may increase presumed weight limits and plant counts beyond those of the state statutes under the order of the director of the local health department.

14. Should any part of this act be rendered or declared invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction of the State of Wyoming, such invalidation of such part or portion of this act should not invalidate the remaining portions thereof, and they shall remain in full force and effect.

15

DeFeat DeLaat Brought to you by

If You Can DeFeat DeLaat, you get a free Bumper Sticker To Prove It! The top pick of the week gets a free football signed by the 5th/6th grade Cardinals Team. If you pick them all and get the tie-breaker correct earn Free Tickets (2) to a Bronco’s game next year.

All entries are due by every Wednesday night at 5pm

Drop off or Mail entries to: “DeFeat DeLaat” @ The Campbell County Observer 1001 S. Douglas Hwy. B-6 • Gillette, WY 82716 NFL

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October 11 - 18, 2013

Comics

Campbell County Observer

Find the Solution on Page 18

For advertising space and prices go to www.CampbellCountyObserver.net or email us at CampbellCountyObserver@gmail.com 16

Campbell County Observer

October 11 - 18, 2013

#1 In Sports Equipment In N.E. Wyoming!

Cole Sports Report Provided by Cole Sports

Located on the corner of Gillette Ave and 4th

The End of an Era

By Tony Heidel f you drove by any of the parks in Gillette in the last couple months, you have probably seen a football practice at one time or another. This has become a common sight during August and September. The Campbell County Junior Football Association has set up two leagues to teach kids how to play tackle football.

One for 3rd and 4th grade, and the other league is for 5th and 6th graders. Using volunteer coaches and officials and firing up generators placed around the two fields for lights, it has that small town feel, with spectators marking the boundary lines to get a good look at their little athlete.

You can make a good case that this early start in the education of football may help lead to future success at the high school level. The man behind it all for 13 years has been Brian Macy.

This season was Brian’s last for running the program.

The 2013 season came to a conclusion on October 6th with the Green Bay Packers winning the final game. The CCJFA board commemorated Mr. Macy’s 13 years of service in providing most of Gillette’s football players with a positive experience in teamwork, fun, and sportsmanship.

The future of the program is in good hands, with a board in place and a new president. Robbie Lang Jr. will take over the CCJFA program and start a new era.

Photo by Amanda Mosler

Megan Belus in the breakaway competition.

College Rodeo: Lamar CO Submitted by Jessica Cates he rodeo team made its longest trip of the season last weekend to Lamar, Colorado.

The Men’s team struggled a bit, but still placed 4th and remain 1st in the region. Jade Blackwell led the team with a win in saddle bronc riding and Brady Wakefield and Seth Anderson placed 2nd in the team roping. Also getting points was Devan Reilly in the bareback riding and Blake Williams in the tie down roping.

The Women’s team placed 2nd at the rodeo and are now second in the overall regional standings. The team was led by Megan Belus. She won the All Around, goat tying and placed 2nd in the breakaway roping.

Taylor Engessor won the long go in the barrel racing and Kristi Steffes placed 3rd in the average. Next weekend we head to Cheyenne for the last rodeo of the fall season.

Thank you for all of your support.

Central Rocky Mountain Regional Standings

MEN: 1.

Gillette College 2190 2.

Casper College 2095 3.

Sheridan College 1755 4.

Eastern Wyoming College 1460 5.

University of Wyoming 1355 6.

Northeastern Junior College 930 7.

Otero 660 8.

Laramie County Community College 600 9.

Chadron State College 490 10. Central Wyoming Community College 405

WOMEN: 1.

Chadron State College 1145 2.

Gillette College 1105 3.

Eastern Wyoming College 580 4.

Central Wyoming Community College 290 5.

Northeastern Junior College 285 6.

Casper College 270 7.

Sheridan College 260 8.

Lamar Community College 190 9.

Laramie County Community College 165 10. University of Wyoming 140

Youth Hockey Ready to Drop the Puck

By Tony Heidel The fall season means football for most Americans.

Here in “Wild” country, it also means hockey. From the Campbell County Recreation Center’s Learn to Skate and their beginner’s hockey program, called Blades and Avalanche, to the traveling teams of the Gillette Wild. All the programs are currently underway. The Rec. Center offers more classes and sessions geared towards the younger kids during the winter. The traveling hockey has several age groups starting with the 10 and under group all the way up to the high school team.

New this year, will be a house-league for kids 10 years old and under. Those games will be played here, in Gillette, on Sundays. This league will be a less expensive alternative to traveling hockey. The president of the Gillette Hockey Association, Rick Eiland expressed that he hoped the house league catches on and can be done with older age groups in the future. Heading up the new league will be Tom Winkler, the head coach of the junior hockey team. GHA looked at starting a house league last year, but didn’t have enough interest to make it work. With the sport growing every year and strong youth programs, they should have plenty of room for another successful league.

What’s Going On in Sports?

Friday, October 11, 2013

-Camel Cross Country at Prairie View Golf Course for Cheyenne Invite 1 p.m.

-Camel Football (SO) at Rock Springs 2:30 p.m.

-Camel Football (V) at Rock Springs 6 p.m.

-Lady Camel Swimming at home For Gillette Pre-invite 3 p.m.

-Camel Volleyball at Cheyenne South 4 p.m. / 5:15 p.m. /6:30 p.m.

-Gillette WILD Hockey at home vs.

Helena 7:30p.m.

-Panthers Football at Tongue River 1 p.m.

-Panthers Volleyball at Tongue River 4 p.m. / 5 p.m. / 6 p.m.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

-Camel Football (JV) at Sheridan vs.

Billings West 1 p.m.

-Lady Camel Swimming at Home for Gillette Invite 8 a.m.

-Camel Volleyball at Laramie 10 a.m. /11 a.m. / 12 p.m.

-Eagles Cross Country at Cam-Plex Morgan McLeland Memorial 11 a.m.

-Eagles 9th Football A at Laramie 12 p.m.

-Eagles 8th Volleyball at CY 11 a.m.

-Eagles 8th Volleyball at Dean Morgan 1 p.m.

-Eagles 9th Volleyball at Kelly Walsh 10 a.m. / 11 a.m.

-Gillette WILD Hockey at home vs.

Helena 7:30p.m.

-Panthers Cross Country at Cam-Plex Morgan McLeland Memorial 11 a.m.

-Panthers Jr. High Football at home vs. Bighorn 10:30 a.m.

-Panthers Football (JV) at home vs.

Big Horn 1 p.m.

-Warrior Cross Country at Cam-Plex Morgan McLeland Memorial 11 a.m.

-Warrior 7th Football Gold at home vs.

Spearfish 10 a.m.

-Warrior (7-8 A) Volleyball at CY 10 a.m.

-Warrior (7-8 A) Volleyball at Dean Morgan 12 p.m.

Monday, October 14, 2013

-Panthers Jr. High Musical Dress Rehearsal 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

-Eagles 8th Volleyball at home vs.

Newcastle 5 p.m.

-Panthers Jr. High Football at Hulett 4:30 p.m.

-Panthers Jr. High Musical Dress Rehearsal 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

-Panther Jr. High Volleyball at Hulett 4 p.m. / 5 p.m.

-Warrior (7-8 B) Volleyball at home vs.

Upton 4 p.m. / 5 p.m.

-Warrior 8th Football B at Upton 4 p.m.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

-Eagles 7th Red Football at home vs.

Twin Spruce 4 p.m.

-Eagles 7th White Football at Twin Spruce 4 p.m.

-Warrior 7th Football Gold at Sage Valley Red 4 p.m.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

-Camel Football(SO) at home vs. Natrona 4 p.m.

-Lady Camel Swimming at Kelly Walsh Casper for Conference -Eagles 8th Football A vs. Twin Spruce at CCHS 4:30 p.m.

-Eagles 9th Football A vs. Twin Spruce at CCHS 7 p.m.

-Gillette WILD Hockey at home vs.

Billings 7:30 p.m.

-Panthers Cross Country at Hulett Conference Meet 1:30 p.m.

-Panthers Jr. High Musical Dress Rehearsal 5 p.m. – 8 p.m.

-Warrior Cross Country at Executive Golf Course for Rapid City Invite 3 p.m.

-Warrior 7th Football Blue at home vs.

Sage Valley White 4 p.m.

-Warrior 8th Football at CCHS vs.

Sage Valley 4 p.m.

-Warrior 9th Football at CCHS vs.

Sage Valley 7 p.m.

Friday, October 18, 2013

-Camel Cross Country at Regionals 2 p.m.

- Camel Football (V) HOMECOMING at home vs. Laramie 7 p.m.

-Lady Camel Swimming at Kelly Walsh Casper for Conference -Camel Volleyball at home vs. Cheyenne East 4 p.m. /5:15 p.m.

-Gillette WILD Hockey at Bozeman 7:30 p.m.

-Panther Jr. High Volleyball at Hulett for Districts 1 p.m.

-Panthers Football at home vs. Glenrock 7 p.m.

-Panthers Volleyball at home vs.

Moorcroft 3 p.m. / 4 p.m. / 5 p.m.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

-Camel Football (JV) at Rapid City Central 11 a.m.

-State Marching Band Competition Casper Events Center -Camel Volleyball at home vs. Cheyenne Central 10 a.m. / 11 a.m. / 12 p.m.

-Eagles 7th Volleyball at Twin Spruce for N.E. District Tourney 9 a.m.

-Eagles 8th Volleyball at Buffalo for N.E. District Tourney 9 a.m.

-Eagles 9th Volleyball at Central for 9th Conference Tourney 8 a.m.

-Gillette WILD Hockey at Bozeman 7:30 p.m.

-Warrior (7 A) Volleyball at Home for N.E. . District Tourney 9 a.m.

-Warrior (7 B) Volleyball at home for N.E. District Tourney 9 a.m.

-Warrior (8 A) Volleyball at Buffalo for N.E. District Tourney TBA -Warrior (8 B) Volleyball at Buffalo for N.E. District Tourney TBA -Warrior 9th Volleyball at Cheyenne Central for Geldien Conference 12 p.m. / 2 p.m. / 4 p.m.

17

“The difference between the old ballplayer and the new ballplayer is the jersey. The old ballplayer cared about the name on the front.

The new ballplayer cares about the name on the back.”

-Steve Garvey Provided By the

Harry Kimbrough Home Selling Team

RE/MAX Professionals 907 E. Boxelder Road Gillette, WY 82718 www.HarryKimbrough.com

"Supporting Campbell County Youth Since 1978"

307-682-4522 • proffice@vcn.com 310 S. Gillette Avenue www.powderriverofficesupply.com

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

#1 In Sports Equipment In N.E. Wyoming!

Cole Sports Report Provided by Cole Sports

Located on the corner of Gillette Ave and 4th Weekly Sports Trivia Question Who is the only athlete to score a NFL touchdown and hit a MLB home run in the same week?

Look on Page 19 for the answer ** Sponsor our Sports Quiz for $40 per week.

That’s 2 ads per week! **

Joke of the week From mediabistro.com

Bosses Say the Darnedest Things

Photo by Nick De Laat

Packers’ had another outstanding season.

Here are actual comments bosses made to employees during their salary reviews: “I’ve got great news. You managed to avoid a salary decrease.”

“No, we don’t promote family members first. It’s just coincidence.”

“Before you came to my department, you were such a shining star—full of new ideas and enthusiasm. What happened to you?”

“This is a salary review. Let’s not focus on the money.”

Classifieds Camping/Fishing Camper spot for rent $300 per month in Silver Hills 307680-8838 07’ Prowler 5th wheel.

2slides. 32ft with extras. Call 307-672-8766 1994 Southwind by Fleetwood 34 foot Class A Coach Rear Engine Turbo Diesel Cummins, 230 HP, Motor Home in good condition.

180,000 miles on original Cummins Diesel 33H Engine. Three captain’s chairs including driver.

Couch makes into a full bed. Full kitchen, stove with oven, microwave. Dining area. Propane or electric refrigerator/ freezer. Lots of storage. Rear bedroom with queen bed.

Bathroom with shower. Dish portable satellite TV setup and small flatscreen TV goes with it. Trailer receiver hitch.

Lost my husband in December and don’t have any use for it. Would like to sell fast.

Make me an offer. 307 682 4808. sue.wallis52@gmail. com http://wyoming.craigslist.org/rvs/3965643910. html Minnows, crawlers, leeches, fishing tackle, boating and camping supplies. Fully furnished cabin rentals, 50 Amp Full Hookup RV sites 5 minutes from Keyhole Reservoir in Pine Haven. Empire Guesthouse & RV Park 307756-3454. www.empireguesthouse.com

Miscellaneous Have you heard the Buzz lately?

Bring your catch by the Empire Guesthouse for photographs which may be published in this newspaper with our fishing reports. Along with that, the Guesthouse staff will be awarding monthly prizes for those that let us photograph them and their catch. It doesn’t have to be a trophy to enter and there will be special prizes for those 12 and under. Carp shooters are also welcome to enter.

Check with the Guesthouse for more details.

What are you looking at?

Others could be looking at your ad for only $0.25 per word per week. Go to www.campbellcountyobserver.net ACE will reduce your appetite and give you energy. The natural way to lose weight. www.facebook.com/AcePill 660-2974

Business Opportunities

Autos, Trucks and Vans

Looking for investor in local business. Call for Details.

307-257-2306.

‘76 Electra-Glide would consider trade on Pan or Knuck if ya know of anyone, ‘81 sent it to LA-S&S, 11.5to1 and dual-plugged to run regular-gas, had burn-out time at Hog-Jam! Ben 680.7464.

Exciting career available Now! No weekends, holidays, or nights. Unlimited income potential. 20% commission plus gas allowance selling print advertising. Call Anne Peterson (advertising manager) at (307) 299-4662 or email AnnePeterson@ CampbellCountyObserver. com Health problems? Try doTERRA certified pure essential oils. 307-680-0363. www. myvoffice.com/healingisbelieving

Homes for Sale 2010 Fairmont 16x80 mobile Home. 3 bed-2 bath. Central Air, 10x10 deck, 500gl propane tank, and all utilities.

Excellent condition. $30,000 OBO. Please call after 5pm.

605-209-7584.

Home For Sale By Owner.

Great Horse Property for sale, in Buffalo Wyoming.

11.5 acres with three bedroom, 3 bath home with 2 car attached garage, afull length covered redwood deck and walk out basement, irrigated pastures, bite corrals, Cleary Barn, and much more.Call 307-684-5844 after 5p.m. for appointment

For Rent 2 Bedroom Duplex, with one car garage, washer/dryer, no pets. $700rent/$700deposit.

307-689-0202 Office and Retail space for rent Marlins 685-4452 or 685-8100 For Rent Single Bedroom House in Silver Hills 307680-8838. C2-12-4h Room for Rent. Nice Room for Rent for one responsible person. $480.00 per month.

689-9358.

Solutions from this week

05’ GMC Duramax Extend Cab. 52,550 mi. Call 307672-8766 2008 Dodge Charger AWD Hemi, loaded Black $18,000 books for $22,500 Marlins 685-4452 or 685-8100.

2006 Dodge Mega Cab 4x4 Laramie 102,000 miles $16,000 307-689-7290 2002 Oldsmobile Aurora.

Black. Leather interior. Good condition. 87,400mi. Power everything. Front wheel drive. New tires. Call Charlene 307-660-7316.

1993 Chrysler LHS for sale or trade.

Needs tie-rod and alignment. Runs good. $1,500.00 OBO. Email KevlarGrease@gmail.com 1994 Plymouth Voyager for sale or trade. Runs/ looks great. 188,000 miles. $2,000.00 OBO. Email KevlarGrease@gmail.com 2004 Yukon Denali XL,6.0 Motor, Loaded $14,000 OBO 660-9351 2008 Hyundai Sonata LMTD, 40,000 mi. $13,500, Call 307-660-2532.

2000 Chevy Silverado 4x4 1/2 Ton Pickup. New tires, ext. cab, long bed. 148,000 mi. One owner. 307-6700858 or 303-250-4096 97’ Chevy Long Box Extended Cab. ¾ Ton, selling for Parts. $1,000 OBO. 307680-7431 1982 Chevy Ventura Van. 350 Engine, 400 Turbo newly rebuilt transmission. Interior in GREAT shape, has a working electric wet bar and built in cooler in back. Carb. needs re-jetted, other than that there are no problems.

Must see. Asking $3,500 or best offer. Price:$3,500obo.

Contact: 307-670-8980

To place a classified ad, email us at Classifieds@ CampbellCountyObserver.com Include name, phone, e-mail and physical address.

For more information go to www.campbellcountyobserver.net

18

Classifieds

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Child Care

Guns for Sale

Services

Wanted to Buy

Help Wanted

Child Care in Sleepy Hollow.

Room for 2 children. $20 per day per child. Call 307-2572306.

Before you buy, make a call to get a quote. We can order any gun you are looking at and just may be able to save you a ton of money. Call for a free quote. $15.00 FFL Transfer Fee on all internet purchases. Call Wyoming Mountaineers 299-2084 and mention this ad.

Homeowners and renters insurance for house, trailer, or apartments. Call Elizabeth Jones Agency 307-682-6520

I Buy Militaria. Swords, uniforms, bayonets, medals, guns/parts, field gear. 6827864

RV Winterization starting at $99.95 at YOUR house. Call Randy at 307-660-3091 (b340-tfnh)

Wanted: Old Batteries. Call 307-670-1675. D4-30-8P

PERSONAL ASSISTANCE NEEDED: We are looking for an Office Assistant. Duties include greeting clients, answering phones, and routing mail, data entry and retrieve,scheduling and calender maintenance,Ideal candidates will have proven customer service skills in an administrative setting and experience with Microsoft Office applications email resumes to akeelahanderson001@gmail.com IF INTERESTED

Licensed daycare now open.

Spots available full-time and before and after school.

Close to Rozet school and the post office.

Monday through Friday 6:30am to 6pm. Ages 3 and up. Call 307-299-1915 In a Pinch?? Back up Daycare service call 307-6807948

Apartments for Rent 1-5 bedroom units available for rent. Please contact Real Estate Systems of Gillette Inc at 307-682-0964 for all the updated details.

2 Bedroom apartment $650 per month, $650 security, $650 last months. Above Gillette Cheese House. No pets, no smoking, laundry facilities available 685-6449 Criminal background check and renters insurance Required Immaculate 1-2 bedroom apartments, fresh paint, and new flooring. (no pets). Call for move-in special starting at $595 307-686-6488 Apartment for Rent in WindRidge Appts. Water/Trash/ Washer/Dryer. Air and Heat.

3bs/2bth. Must qualify for low income housing. $740.00/ mo. Call 307-685-8066 Foothills View Apartments Hot Move In Special! Cool, Clean, Quiet Apartments.

A/C, 2 Bdrm. $695 1Bdrm. $595. Showing anytime Call 307-686-6488 C3-28-2v Apartments for rent. Foothills View Apartments. Clean and Quiet. One and Two bedroom units starting at $595.00. Call for showing andmove in special 307-6866488 (c3-42-3v) 2 bedroom apartment $675 per month, $675 security, $675 last months rent. Above Gillette Cheese House no pets, no smoking laundry \ facilities available 685-6449 Criminal Background check and renters insurance required.

Spacious & new, 1, 2, &3 bdrm affordable apartments available now! Call 6858066. Washer and dryer in every unit. Private sunny patio or balcony. Special move-in rate, 1 bdrm: $694, 2 bdrm: $777, 3 bdrm: $888.

Move in now and deduct $ 200 off first month while special lasts. Call Konnie or Celeste at Highland Properties 685-8066.

Toys (ATV’s Boats, Etc.) 1981 Harley Davidson FXBSturgis, 1st dual-belt drive to commemorate Hill-Climb @ Sturgis, Jack-Pine Gypsies rally started in ‘41, 50th anniversary model. 12K on straight-up original paint, new Moetzler’s driven-by beefed Shovel, 102hp at wheel. Perfect in every aspect, serious inquiries only, loan is $15K and value of over 25K. Ben 680.7464, 3-other older bikes and this has to go to the right person!

International Tractor 300 Utility For Sale. $2000 Artic Cat 4X4 2001For Sale. $2000 Call Bill 307 - 660 – 8563.

Chopper - Custom built frame, s&s engine, carb, etc.

80ci. Evolution engine. Wide glide front end. Low. Torn apart down to frame. Have all parts, could be built in two days with under $200.00.

Asking $5,500 or best offer.

Price:$5,500obo. Contact: 307-670-2733 2013 Custom Harley Hardtail Bobber all new $9,500. Marlins 685-4452 or 685-8100 2010 Polaris 550 eps with less than 100 miles, books for $8,000. make and offer.

Call Steve Terry at 307-2992992 16ft Sea Nymph Fishing Boat, 50 hp outboard Merc, trolling motor, just serviced at wyoming marine $2,500 O.B. O 307-299-4662 or307-6220825

Produce for Sale Fresh local “Free Range” eggs. All natural, no animal by-products. No antibiotics. $3/Doz. 257-9049

Gunsmithing Special of the week. Electrolysis Barrel Cleaning. Increase the accuracy of your firearm, get ready for hunting season or a summer of shooting fun.

Most cleanings complete overnight and your gun is ready the next day. Call Wyoming Mountaineers 2992084 and mention this ad.

With the current controversy of gun control you can expect changes. One of these changes will be permanently attached low capacity magazines. Make your current guns compliant to this regulation. Call for quotes on all your gunsmithing needs.

Call Wyoming Mountaineers (307)299-2084 to get yours today.

1903 Springfield. 30o6 Cal. U.S. Military. $700 obo. Call (307) 682-7864 Chinese Type 53 Carbines 7.62X54R. These guns have been fully restored and are excellent shooters. They are a shorter model of the Mossin Naugant making them easy to carry through the brush and trees. Large caliber with plenty of take down power for the largest and most dangerous game.

Ammo is still available and still very reasonably priced.

This gun comes with a fold down bayonet permanently attached. Adjustable sights on an elevation ramp rear sight makes this package very versatile. permanently attached floor plate magazine holds 5 rounds with one additional one in the chamber. Call Wyoming Mountaineers (307)299-2084 to get yours today.

Wyoming Mountaineers now offers easy payment plans on any in stock firearm. Your debit card is your line of credit. Purchase any firearm that is in stock making 4 payments weekly, biweekly, or monthly. Processing fee and payment plan fee apply. Call Wyoming Mountaineers for more details. Call Wyoming Mountaineers 299-2084 and mention this ad.

Get a piece of history. Mosin Nagant Russian M91/30 Surplus Rifle. Very good to Excellent condition 7.62X54 Caliber. These are a very accurate rifle shooting 4” groups at 1000 yards. Open sights are adjustable to yardage with a push of a button.

Great gun for hunting deer or elk very cheap ammo available for target practice.

Comes with military issue sling, sling pouches, bayonet, and cleaning tools. Call Wyoming Mountaineers 2992084 and mention this ad.

A friend of mine called the other day and tells me he has 2 friends that are looking for some AR-15’s do I have any?

I told him yes I do, They are M4 style scope ready models and priced at $695.00.

Great, he says, They will be right over. They never showed up so a few days later I asked him if his friends were still interested. He told me nope, they bought them online for $1500.00. So, here they come with UPS, I still made my $15.00 for the transfer but while they were there they looked at the rifles I had in stock and discovered they were the same models they ordered with the same features and they could have bought 2 from me for the same price they paid for one they ordered. Don’t let this happen to you, Any gun, Any models, Any features can be ordered or built for a lower cost. Call for a free quote.

Call Wyoming Mountaineers (307)299-2084 to get yours today.

Heavy Equipment/ Trailers 6x10 trailer. Great shape, fits your biggest Harley. $1,400 obo. 299-4967.

1981 Circle J 4-horse Horse Trailer. New floor, paint and wiring. $2500 OBO Call 307 - 680 – 2374 1981 Circle J 4-horse Horse Trailer. New floor, paint and wiring done in shop class 2 years ago. No rust only used once since redone. $2500 or OBO Call 307 - 680 – 2374

Spring Cleaning Special! Any purchase over $200 prior to 5-31-13 Will have the choice of: Free couch cleaning (up tp 8ft. long) or Free 1 year warranty on oil/water based spots. www.pineridgeclean. com 307-660-7856 find us on Facebook Want To Get in Shape?Like to have Fun? Learn The Graceful moves of American Oriental Belly Dancing! The 3rd Sunday of every month.

Call Leanna Tabatt 307-6808457 Looking to buy a new computer? Why waste the money? “Your Computer Store” has refurbished towers and laptops rebuilt right here in our store. Plenty of memory, disc space, and advice. Come by and see our inventory at “Your Computer Store,” where YOU come first! 802 E. Third St next to Ice Cream Land “Did you see this? Than it worked. Go to www.campbellcountyobserver.net to list your ad today!”

Powder River Mechanics.

We have the cheapest labor rates, but the best quality repairs in town. We offer full services on Foreign and domestic vehicles, ATV’s, Snowmobiles, motorcycles, jet ski’s, boats, and more.

Let us put you on a Preventative maintenance schedule so your vehicles run miles past your warranty. Call for an appointment. 307-6967713.

Avenue Mall - Over 30 vendors, come check us out!

217 Gillette Ave. Mon-Fri. 9AM to 7 PM, Sat. 9AM- 5 PM, Sun. 10 AM - 4 PM Computers have become like cars, and they need repaired. Want the best quality repair work in N.E. Wyoming? Bring your computer to “Your Computer Store.”

Quality work at a quality price. “Your Computer Store,” where YOU COME FIRST 802 E. Third street next to Ice Cream Land.

Auto insurance preferred and SR-22’s. Call Elizabeth Jones Agency 307-682-6520 Motorcycle and ATV insurance. Call Elizabeth Jones Agency 307-682-6520

Merchandise 1939 HA Selmer Trumpet $750 OBO. 687-1087 Large Underground Tank. 307-680-8838

Fuel

Large and Small Band Saws call for info. 307-680-8838 18v Dewalt tools - sawzall, hammer drill, one battery and one charger. $150 obo. call (307)299-1382 Exterior door with window, interior light fixtures, and computer supplies. E-mail Corsair115@yahoo.com “As the economy worsens, don’t rely on government... rely on us to sell or trade. $0.25 per word per week.

Stop in or go to www.

CampbellCountyObserver. net.

Refrigerator (white) Great condition $100 307-2995918 Blue Dual Reclining Sofa.

Good shape $100 Call 6802982. Can text photo if you like.

Spyder Semi-auto paint ball gun. cal..68 Special Edition.

Only used twice! New $300 For you $175 plus two canisters. Call 680-1302 If you are interested in purchasing Nutrient Rich Ranch Raised Beef grown locally, call 307-340-1108.

Great Jerky http://www.rberlinger.jerkydirect.com/ For sale: whirlpool refrigerator, brand new patio propane heater, still in box Cabela’s shower tent, large dining room dark blue/red rooster rug, 10” wet tile saw, treadmill. Call 682-6353.

Kojac series One, two and three dvd $65.00 $98 value 307 - 670 - 1887 Two place aluminum snowmobile trailer. $1,600. 307689-0202

WILL PAY CASH FOR CAMPERS. Call Scott (307) 680-0854.

Help Wanted *Immediate Openings!* Are you looking to join a fast paced, growing company?

Are you ready to earn the income you know you’re worth? Are you outgoing and enjoy meeting new people? Do you enjoy sales and have sales experience?

Do you enjoy leading and helping others to succeed?

If so, this is the career for you! We have openings that provide print, website, and radio advertising as well as marketing solutions to businesses. We focus primarily on smaller communities, providing personalized, in-depth information specific to each coverage area. It is our goal to ensure that every customer has a positive experience, from the initial sale to final publication. We are looking for a few highly motivated and passionate individuals that will provide exemplary customer service and sales expertise to keep our clients happy and keep our company growing! If interested, please email cover letter and resume to CampbellCountyObserver@gmail.com for an interview.

Personal Assistant needed to organize and help. Basic computer skills needed, must be good with organization. I am ready to pay $600.00 per week. Interested person should contact: deans995@ gmail.com Bl-32-2V Full Time Flooring Installers wanted. Must have experience. Bring resumes in to Carpet Express Direct on Hwy. 59 next to the Prime Rib Restaurant.

Home For Sale

By Owner

Great Horse Property for sale, in Buffalo Wyoming.

11.5 acres with three bedroom, 3 bath home with 2 car attached garage, afull length covered redwood deck and walk out basement, irrigated pastures, bite corrals, Cleary Barn, and much more.Call 307684-5844 after 5p.m. for appointment

Earn $$$ While You Shop!

We seek shoppers for well paying survey jobs.

You can earn money while shopping. Its a stress free part time job which wont disturb your present work; also if unemployed you can work it as a full time job. Interested applicants should refer all resumes/applications to our email: pabbot12@hotmail.com

Weekly Sports Trivia Answer Who is the only athlete to score a NFL touchdown and hit a MLB home run in the same week?

30 yr company is looking a motivated individual for an established delivery route in the N.E. Wyoming Area.

Overnight travel, weekly pay.

Commission based ($600$1,000) per week. Be your own Boss! Call Dan at 970461-2436 to apply Earn $$$ While You Shop!

We seek shoppers for well paying survey jobs. You can earn money while shopping.

Its a stress free part time job which wont disturb your present work; also if unemployed you can work it as a full time job. Interested applicants should refer all resumes/applications to our email: pabbot12@hotmail.com Personal Assistant needed to organize and help. Computer skills needed,job experience and good with organization.

We are ready to pay $570 per week interested person for more info contact: darenboot@gmail.com Rocky Mt Merchandising is looking for dependable, outgoing person to execute four in store demos in Sept showing the features and benefits of the Straight Talk Cell phone. Must commit to all four Saturdays from 10:00-4:00. Email Jackie@ rockymm.com or call 800723-9008 Looking for CDL to work in North Dakota full time. Call 307-670-3629.

Hiring Newspaper Journalist.

Government/Politics. Work at Home. Must be able to perform advanced research, and write unbias. Must be able to attend government meetings and conduct interviews professionally. Pays per article/Part Time. Please send Cover Letter, Resume, and Writing Sample to CampbellCountyObserver@ gmail.com.

Hiring Newspaper Sports Writer. Must be able to attend Campbell County Sports games at all levels and various sports. Can write in a bias/home team manner. Must also be able to take photographs of covered games, get information from coaches, and retrieve stats. Much of the work is performed Home. Pays per article/Part Time position.

Please send Cover Letter, Resume, and Writing Sample to CampbellCountyObserver@gmail.com.

Summer Job - Age 14 and up. Newspaper Subscription Sales. Pays $5.00 for every 6-month subscription sold and $10.00 for every year subscription sold. Perfect for summer money. Extra bonuses for 100 subscriptions sold (Pizza Party at Godfathers with friends/family) and more. Email the Campbell County Observer at CampbellCountyObserver@gmail. com State Wide Sales people.

Print Advertising Sales for new State-wide newspaper.

Call 307-299-4662

19

Deion Sanders in 1989

Deion Sanders is a beastly athlete. After having a successful career in Florida State, he also started a career both in Major League Baseball and the National Football League. He was very successful in both. In the 1989 season, he hit a home run and score a touchdown in the same week, becoming the only player to ever do that. He is also the only man to ever play in the Super Bowl and the MLBs World series. While he won two Super Bowls, he never won a World Series, though.

Weekly Trivia Answer

President Martin Van Buren has been credited with being the origin of what common slang word, used around the world today?

O.K. (Okay)

The abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, “our first men,” and used expressions like NG, “no go,” GT, “gone to Texas,” and SP, “small potatoes.”

Many of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, “oll wright,” and there was also KY, “know yuse,” KG, “know go,” and NS, “nuff said.”

Most of these acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity. But OK was an exception, no doubt because it came in so handy. It first found its way into print in Boston in March of 1839 and soon became widespread among the hipper element.

It didn’t really enter the language at large, however, until 1840. That’s when Democratic supporters of Martin Van Buren adopted it as the name of their political club, giving OK a double meaning.

(Van Buren, nicknamed “Old Kinderhook”, was a native of Kinderhook, New York.) OK became the war cry of Tammany hooligans in New York while beating up their opponents. It was mentioned in newspaper stories around the country.

Van Buren’s opponents tried to turn the phrase against him, saying that it had originated with Van Buren’s allegedly illiterate predecessor, Andrew Jackson, a story that has survived to this day. They also devoted considerable energy to coming up with unflattering interpretations, e.g., “Out of Kash, Out of Kredit, and Out of Klothes.” Newspaper editors and publicists around the country delighted in coming up with even sillier interpretations — Oll Killed, Orfully Konfused, Often Kontradicts, etc. — so that by the time the campaign was over the expression had taken firm root nationwide.

Contact Us to Enroll!

307-686-1392 510 Wall Street Ct • Gillette, WY www.hcsgillette.org

Our Roots

October 11 - 18, 2013

Campbell County Observer

Frederick Douglass

By Mike Borda uring the course of the eighteenth century in America, race relations underwent massive changes. The most significant of these was obviously the abolition of slavery, after which many former slaves stood up for their new rights and argued on behalf of equality.

However, even before the Emancipation Proclamation, there were those who stood up for what was right, and showed in their life’s work that anything was possible. One of these men was Frederick Douglass, who from his tormented beginnings proved that equality was indeed possible.

Frederick Douglass was actually born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, sometime around 1818 in a slave home in Maryland. While his mother was a slave, his father was a white man. Frederick was moved to a plantation at around seven years old, separated from his family. The next year he was moved again, this time to be a servant to a man in Baltimore.

Here he began learning the skills that would serve him the rest of his life. His owner’s wife began teaching Frederick the alphabet while he was there, and eventually he learned to read and write. This came in handy shortly after, as he moved to another plantation to work in the fields. There he began teaching other slaves to read, using the Bible as his aid. However, his success would not last long.

After learning of Frederick’s plans to escape his slavery, the plantation owner jailed a teenage Frederick.

Eventually, he was sent back to his previous owners in Baltimore, where in 1838 he finally realized his dream

of being free. By imitating a sailor, he escaped on a train and would never again be another man’s property.

He wound up first in New York City, at the home of an abolitionist, and later settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Here he married and changed his name to Frederick Douglass. Since he was now free, Douglass began turning his attention to preventing the horrible conditions he had just escaped. He began attending abolitionist meetings, and soon after started speaking himself on the topic.

Douglass also wrote much on slavery, penning three autobiographies.

In 1845, he left America and toured Ireland so as to avoid attracting too much attention to himself. Upon his return two years later, Douglass shifted his works and began also taking on not only abolition but women’s rights as well. He became a leader in this community as well, attending many events as the keynote speaker.

Douglass continued his work through the Civil War, even after the Emancipation Proclamation (which although freed slave in Confederate states, did not free slaves already held in Union states). He argued for African-American rights the rest of his life, never ceasing to fight for justice.

Frederick Douglass died on February 20, 1895. He was a man who experienced great hardships, and used those to strengthen his convictions for what was right. Never forgetting what his goal was, Douglass proved that no matter your beginnings, the notion of freedom for all is what America should stand on, and stand for.

Join us Sundays at 10:30 AM #3 Industrial Dr. Pine Haven Wy. 689-8326

Come Holy Spirit Empire Guesthouse, RV Park & General Store Pine Haven, Wyoming 82721 307-756-3454/307-670-0428 http://www.empireguesthouse.com/

Need to market Your Business?

Call or e-mail today!

Anne Peterson

advertising sales manager

annepeterson@campbellcountyobserver.com

(307) 299-4662

“If laws acting upon private interests can not always be avoided, they should be confined within the narrowest limits, and left wherever possible to the legislatures of the States.”

- Martin Van Buren Sponsored by:

Surplus Unlimited 801 Carlisle • 682-9451

Watering the Homestead

By Jeff Morrison e drive by one or two nearly every day. They have become so much a part of the western landscape that we hardly give them a thought. Although windmills are not unique to northeast Wyoming, it’s highly unlikely that settlement of our largely arid high plains would have been possible without them. They’ve been around far longer than Campbell County and a few that were new when the county was founded in 1911 are still doing the job they were created for today, one hundred years later.

The Homestead Act of 1862 provided “free” ownership of government land to anyone.

All you had to do was register a homestead with the land office, put a permanent dwelling on it, plus a few other “improvements”, and live there for five years; afterward it became yours, free and clear. It sounds simple but in actual practice it proved to be anything but – as hundreds of would-be dryland farmers found out the hard way. On the long list of hardships that had to be overcome for survival, at the very top was providing potable water for humans and livestock. In a land where the annual precipitation is low enough to qualify as a high desert, most of what little ground water exists is usually brackish and unfit for drinking, not to mention unreliable as a steady supply source. Homesteaders not lucky enough to file on land with a mountain-fed creek or artesian spring faced a nearly insurmountable obstacle from the start.

The need for water was not only a troubling issue for homesteaders, but steam powered locomotives also consumed large amounts of water. So much so that water tanks were placed about every fifteen miles or so along the railway tracks.

On the prairies were traversed by railroad tracks, a population explosion occurred all along the railway in the form of towns, creating a need for even more water.

Fortunately Daniel Halladay, an inventor from Connecticut, had already devised a solution to their water supply problems several decades earlier. Halladay is credited with inventing the first self-governing windmill,

with the primary application of pumping water in 1854. His design featured thin wooden blades arranged in sections that could swing back in high winds, reducing the surface area exposed to the wind and thus regulating the wheel speed to keep from over driving the water pump. A weather vane protruded to the front of the wind wheel and insured that the wheel always faced the wind.

By 1867, Halladay had a major competitor for the rural windmill market when the Reverend Leonard H. Wheeler and son introduced the Eclipse.

This design still utilized wooden blades, but rather than using folding sections to control wind speed, the Eclipse used a fixed wind wheel with two vanes. The large vane allowed the wheel to swing into the wind, just as the vane on the Halladay Standard. The second, smaller vane stuck out perpendicular to the large vane. Its purpose was to move the wheel off-center in high winds, and thus kept the wheel spinning at a controllable speed. A counter weight attached to the vane to then pull the wheel back into the wind when the wind velocity lowered.

Both the Halladay Standard and the Eclipse were common features of the western landscape by the time settlers began pouring into Northeast Wyoming. But few of either were erected in the Powder River Basin. In 1888, a new wind machine arrived on the scene and revolutionized the industry.

Using galvanized curved metal blades, based on a design by engineer Thomas O. Perry, the Aermotor windmill was introduced to a less than enthusiastic public. In their first year of production, only 45 mills were sold. Most consumers thought the thin metal would be too flimsy in the wind and much too costly to assemble. Four years later, the Aermotor had become the industry standard and dominant manufacturer of windmills in North America.

The Aermotor used a solid wheel design with fewer blades than its wooden counterparts.

The curved metal blades were so efficient that a set of reduction gears were required to keep the wheel speed down to an acceptable operating speed

for the pump. To control the wheel velocity in high winds, the vane was attached off-center, causing the wheel to turn away from the wind and thus regulate speed. In lower wind the wheel is turned into the wind by a counterbalancing tension spring. Mass production of the all-metal windmill proved to be more cost-efficient than wooden manufactured mills, and by 1904 the price of a 6’ mill was a mere $25.

Over the years, Aermotor continued to improve their windmill design. In 1915 the company introduced the model 502, which featured self-oiling gears. This reduced the amount of maintenance the mill required to an annual event rather than a weekly chore. In 1933 the 702 was introduced, featuring replaceable bearings, among other innovations. In 1941, Bell and Howell asked Aermotor to design the precision lens mounts needed for the Norden Bombsight, an extremely important invention

that helped turn the tide of the air campaign in World War II. Their windmills aren’t the only thing to pass the test of time.

The Aermotor Company itself, originally manufacturing their mills in Chicago Illinois, is still in business. As with many longterm successful companies, the Aermotor Company was bought, sold, and moved several times since 1888. Today, they’re headquartered in San Angelo Texas. Interestingly, the predominant manufacturer of agricultural windmills since the 1800s, Aermotor has not jumped into the growing windenergy industry. As the company explains on its web-site, “Water and electricity don’t mix.”

The new fangled metal windmill once scoffed at by its competitors was a god-send for Wyoming ranchers and farmers. It provided them with an affordable way to pump potable water from underground, using Wyoming’s most abundant

natural resource – the wind. A model of efficient and durable engineering, these windmills continue to provide agricultural water solutions to the present day and it has only been in the last few decades that electric water pumps have decreased the demand for windmills on the northern plains.

For many years there has been an argument among historians of the old west, as to whether firearms or barbed wire “won the west.” Although I find this argument to be pointless, since both inventions contributed to making the west “safe for civilization” in their own way, I would propose a third candidate into the ring. Without water it would not have been possible to sustain the large herds of sheep and cattle that were the first commercial industry of our area of the west; nor would the railroads have been successful in crossing the prairies without water. Perhaps it was a windmill that won the west.

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Elizabeth Jones Agency 1001 S. Douglas Hwy., Suite 184 Gillette, WY 82716 Office (307) 682-6520 Fax (307) 682-3536

Elizabeth (Betsy) Jones, Agent CPIW, DAE, LUTCF

www.farmersunioninsurance.com/ejones ejones@vcn.com