Let's Talk Wyoming - Fall Sports Highlights, Reflections on September 11th, the Dynamics of Energy Prices, and Tribute to Bill Nye, the Humor Icon

Are you ready to ride for the brand and for Wyoming with me, Mark Hamilton? This week, we're immersing ourselves in the charm of Wyoming's fall weather, while we recap the adrenaline-filled Wyoming Cowboys' game against Texas Tech. We're also putting the spotlight on the undefeated Wyoming Cowgirls volleyball team and giving you updates on the high school sports scene. Buckle up because this is a journey you wouldn't want to miss.

But it's not all fun and games. We're also reflecting on the solemn events of September 11th and discussing the essential role of laws in our society. What could be the potential fallout of anarchy? We'll dive into that and more as we discuss the increasing energy prices in Wyoming and the potential impact of a rate hike by Pacific Power. With the governor appointing members of the Public Service Commission, what does this mean for us, and how does it affect the economic challenges that many families are currently facing? Stay tuned as we delve into these pressing issues.

Lastly, we're paying tribute to Bill Nye, the first editor of the Laramie Boomerang. Prepare to be inspired by Nye's journey from Wisconsin to Laramie, his remarkable work as a newspaper editor, and his unique brand of American humor. We’ll explore how Nye’s time in Laramie inspired his popular books, plays, and performances, and how his style of humor has left an indelible mark on American culture. We'll round off this episode with a reflection on the importance of humor in our lives and the enduring legacy of Bill Nye in Wyoming. It’s going to be a thought-provoking ride, so come along and let's explore Wyoming together.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be, of course, looking at our weather. We'll be taking a look at Wyoming Cowboys sports in the state, we'll have some energy news, we'll remember 9-Eleven and those that we lost and we'll have a story on Bill Nye, a Wyoming Humerus. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy the show. Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 11th day of September, it is definitely fall is in the air for everyone here in the state of Wyoming. We have started the best season we have. I think here in Wyoming is fall Pretty cool at night. We're getting down to in the high 40s and it feels good. The days are warming up gradually in the afternoon Nothing overbearing, but it just feels really good. Warms you back up. So we have started the progression, has went Waiting for that first frost, hoping that we can hold that off for a while. But again here in Wyoming we're in the fall season, our favorite season at all. Weather is pretty nice, looks good, getting periodic little rain, but right now beautiful weather is a forecast for Wyoming. Taking a look at Wyoming sports Took a week off last week that tied up and some other stuff, couldn't get the pot out but got some reports for the Wyoming Cowboys Of course.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Two weeks ago the Wyoming Cowboys and just an unbelievable game came away with a double overtime victory over Texas Tech, which was just so exciting and the crowd was just an unbelievable electric atmosphere at the war and it was on national TV, on CBS. Game was delayed by lightning. We pushed it back an hour before kickoff and the next day there was just so much talk Wyoming was in all the news and a game like that just has a lot of impact on our state, on the university. But again, hats off to the Cowboys. They came back this week and a little bit of concern that might have a little let down. They were taking on Portland State, which is an FCS school. They did come out on top of that game Little closer than I think everyone was hoping for 3117, but they did win that game.

Speaker 1: 3:04

This week they have to make the trip to all places, to Austin, texas. They have to take on the Texas Longhorns. This is a money maker for the program and for the university going down to Austin. Now Texas is in the Big 12. This is their last year in the Big 12. Along with the Oklahoma Sooners, they'll be moving on to the SEC next year.

Speaker 1: 3:28

This last weekend Texas went to Birmingham in Alabama and beat. The University of Alabama Did a convincing job of it too. So they're going to be a little bit hyped up, but they're probably going to have a little bit of a let down and look past the Cowboys. The one thing the Cowboys are going to have to face which we talk about teams having to come up to elevation to 7,220 foot Laramie Wyoming there for the games. Now we're going to have to go down to 800 feet elevation. But we're going to have to go down to 90 degree plus up to 100 degrees temperatures with probably 90% humidity, and it's going to be brutal for the Cowboys. I'm sure this week that they are making sure they get loaded up on a lot of fluid, but it's going to be an electric crowd. They always sell out there for the Longhorns. Those crazy Texas fans really like their Longhorns. So the Cowboys have their work cut out for them. This week they come in as they will be definitely the underdog, but you never know what can happen. The Cowboys are going to have to play their A game. Keep it close if they can. Texas is just loaded with offensive weapons. Their defense is just so improved in where it's been. So this is going to be an interesting one for the Cowboys, but an opportunity for them to go out and show their stuff.

Speaker 1: 4:55

One of their ex Cowboy players, a receiver I'm forgetting his name right now. I know his last name is Naylor, I'll think of it here in just a second. But he really had a good season two years ago for the Cowboys and then he transferred out, went to the University of Texas, signed there and then last year he tore his knee up before the season started and ended up having knee surgery. So he's on that Texas team. So a little backstory on some of the stuff. There's a lot of Texas players on the Wyoming team, so that'll be an opportunity for them to go home and maybe some family to come watch them play. So good luck to the Cowboys.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Also, the Wyoming Cowgirl volleyball team. They are playing outstanding volleyball so they'll play up in Cody. A few weeks ago when they played that scrimmage against Montana State. They are undefeated on the season. They have not lost a match yet. I'm really surprised me watching them earlier, but then I see now that Montana State is up near the top of the standings in the Big Sky Conference. So they were a pretty good opponent, really a match, because that did go five sets. But hats off to the Cowgirls as they continue on undefeated. Just keep that run up.

Speaker 1: 6:14

High school sports we've got started here in Wyoming. From the volleyball side there's this been a lot of volleyball tournaments. They play a lot of volleyball over a weekend. They're just starting to fine-tune their games. Football has had a couple of games now regular season games. Some of the schools are looking pretty dominant. I know in 3A Cody is looking really good. Powell has had some good results In 4A. Of course you always say Sheridan and who else. 2a is kind of up for grabs right now. We'll see how a couple of the teams go. This weekend the Thermopus Bobcats have to go down to Mountain View, down to the Bridger Valley, have an afternoon game against the Buffalo. Mountain View, buffalo's and Mountain View has always got a really good team, so that'll be a challenge for the Bobcats. The Bobcats did win their first game last weekend as they shut out Kimmer, the Rangers. So we're just kind of a little giddy here in the mop with the wind seeing how the season is going to go. So sports in Wyoming continues on.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Good things happening here in the state of Wyoming and other happenings around the state of Wyoming and around the country. We talk about things that are happening out there. A lot of things are going on in our lives right now Kind of the moment of my picking up Oliver Anthony from this new world and old soul in a new world and this is the stuff that just makes me kind of ponder what's going on. I don't know if you saw this in the news, but in California they want to pass a bill where you can't prosecute anybody that shoplifting. I know that we've lost our minds when we get to that point. There's some of the counties and some of the cities, I should say, where they have that. You see some of the videos of San Francisco. It's just total chaos. They've actually I don't know what's left of the city, but you see these people going into the stores and just loading stuff up, walking out the front door, and I guess I saw an article this morning where they said New York is having the same problem now and it's starting to go up on the east coast.

Speaker 1: 8:26

More places People are just going in and doing it. People. We can't have this kind of stuff. I don't want to understand what the thinking is. I don't know where these people are, I don't know what happened to them, but you just can't have anarchy where people just walking into stores what's that business supposed to do? How are they going to stay in business? They're gonna have to close their doors because you can't operate that way and suddenly there's nothing there for anybody, because nobody will actually open a business because of the climate there. So we have to do something. There has to be laws in our country. We are a country of laws, and if we don't have laws, we don't have a country. So I think that this is the defining moment where we're going to have to make a decision. In some of these places, I don't know what they're going to do Build a wall and turn it into the zoo? It already is. So that is one of them that is really hitting us right now here in the United States.

Speaker 1: 9:25

The other thing that's happening today, on the 11th of September, is the remembrance of 9-11. That day back in 2001,. Most people can probably still remember where they were and what they were doing that day. I know I had taken and walked back into our bedroom who lived up in Montana at the time, and we had a small little 13 inch TV back there and the news was on World Trade Center tower with the plane crashing into it, and you just couldn't believe it was happening. It didn't even seem real and everything just kind of stood still. That day was a long day for everyone in our country, whatever your beliefs are on that day. A lot of people have different versions of what happened, but I think the biggest thing we have to remember is the loss of life that we had that day. A lot of families, a lot of worlds were just turned upside down with all those losses, and I want to remember those people that were lost that day, reading from Psalms 23,.

Speaker 1: 10:31

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures and he leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His namesake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, and for you are with me your rod and your staff. They comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever Amen.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Taking a quick look here at Wyoming Energy News and all this energy news is really having an effect on our daily lives Right now. Oil prices are going back up. They're getting up here $90. The price of the pump is starting to go up into the mid $4 range. I've saw anywhere from $410 to $450. The diesel is getting up at an expense of $475. I don't see any end in sight right now. We've got some shortages and I just see prices starting to affect everything with all of our costs. If it didn't already affect us Then on top of that, here in the state of Wyoming there's been a lot of talk and a lot of news about the rated hike by Pacific Power on our current electric rates.

Speaker 1: 12:26

We're looking at around 28-29%. Part of that is it offsets some natural gas costs and then the other portion is offsets some renewables and such. There's been some public hearings. People have been out voicing some strong concerns about what this is going to do to our economy. I've seen some different articles. I just saw one from Harriet Hageman talking about this. Green energy is what's affecting these costs and having an impact on us all. The public service commission is set up to regulate these rates. I found out this week. I learned something every time. I guess you start seeing some of these issues.

Speaker 1: 13:08

The head of the public service commission was a Democratic candidate for governor in 2018. She was defeated, of course, by Mark Gordon, and now she's been appointed. Of course, the governor appoints the people on the public service commission. She was, I don't know, kind of a strange deal, but she was appointed to the public service commission. These people on there are appointed for a long period of time. I saw one of the commissioners is there until 2029 with his appointment. That goes back to. Should the governor be able to appoint these people to these positions or should that be an elected position? There are salaries in the what I saw was around 120,000, maybe a little bit more for the chairman and such but they regulate.

Speaker 1: 14:04

The public service commission is there to regulate the electrical power, natural gas costs, all of our energy costs. The utilities are set up to provide power for us and they're allowed to recover a percentage of their costs and rate of return. So I really don't see there's much hope I can see maybe the commission might push back a little bit, but I still think there's going to be a 25% plus rate increase. Just another blow that's going to hit us in our pocketbook when we get into, of course, the cold months up ahead with winter coming and those electric rates suddenly go up. That 25%. It's going to mean that much less it's going to go into everybody's pocket and it's going to go towards the electric bill. Don't have as much for food, all these other costs and looking at some of the issues across the country right now, there's a lot of debt out there. Credit card debt is at all times high, so it's not a real rosy time right now for a lot of families just trying to figure out how they're going to get ahead in the economy. But the energy prices are on the upswing and I really don't see much of anything going to turn it back where they are Again. That's a plus. On the opposite side, it's a plus where these high oil prices, natural gas, is starting to come back up from some of its highs about two years ago or a year and a half ago and the Wyoming state gets money back from taxes from these production. So that is more money in the coffers for the legislature to try to handle or mishandle, however you want to look at it, but right now a lot of things are happening out there that are going to have effect on us coming up into this winter of 2023 and 2024. Maybe a time to start looking at, maybe saving a few dollars and being prepared for what's ahead.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Today, in a history section, we're going to talk about Bill Nye, the frontier humorist. This is a story from Wyominghistoryorg by Charles E Rankin Few. Wyoming newspapers have names as arresting as Laramies. Go to the newspaper homepage on the web and you will find Laramie Boomerang, laramie's voice, since 1881. But the page provides little else about the paper's origins or those of its name. In fact, the newspaper and its name were established by a man who resided in the state less than seven years but was at one time considered Wyoming's most celebrated citizen and remains one of the state's most famous historical figures.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Bill Nye was formerly known as Edgar Wilson Nye, who was the first editor of the Laramie Boomerang. He named the paper for his mule as soon as Nye's son, frank, said something about the word Boomerang Nye's imagination, his mule, his mind, his newspaper, his first book and all bore his trademark. Indeed, the mule and the paper were in close association early on. Originally housed in a shoe store, the paper soon moved to the more expansive loft of a delivery stable. Its editor could be found by coming upstairs. Nye said or you could twist the tail of an iron gray mule and take the elevator. Nye's signature was humor. As he later said, I can write up things that never occurred with a mastery and a graphic can. But when he first arrived in Laramie from Wisconsin, his talents were neither well-developed or well-known. Although that soon changed, ideas rose from his mind like bubbles from champagne. Nye's son, frank, later observed. But Wisconsin was too conservative for Nye. It took Laramie to pop the cork.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Nye was born in 1850 in Maine, where his parents found farming difficult. The soil was rocky, nye later explained, and the farm so upright and steep they could be cultivated on both sides. Nye accompanied his family two years later to what would become Hudson, wisconsin, where he grew up. They led a rural, humble life. He enjoyed riding plays, instigating pranks and playing hooky from school, but a dislike farming. Instead he tried working as a miller and as a school teacher, successful at neither. He tried the law. Every boy who wore a big hat and got tired easily with a manual toil, he said, was set aside for the ministry of the law, but he never passed the bar. In Wisconsin he tried newspapering as well, but he could only find temporary work. Nonetheless, a freelance article he wrote for the Chicago Times led a family friend to recommend him to Cheyenne businessman, who in turn referred him to J H Hayford and Laramie, where Nye stepped off the train in late spring 1876 with 35 cents in his pocket.

Speaker 1: 19:06

During his first year in Laramie, nye took a position with J H Hayford's Laramie Sentinel, studied the law and passed the Wyoming Bar. He also was appointed Justice of the Peace and Notary Public for the 2nd Judicial District of Wyoming. When he married, his bride, clara Frances Smith, a petite music teacher, came west anticipating introduction to the Nye through family friends that were married within a year. Between the occasional law client and even more infrequent commission work, nye wrote short pieces for the various newspapers, which in turn led to a column for the Denver Tribune and National Exposure. When he hired Nye in 1876, hayford had been publishing a daily version of his Laramie Sentinel, a Democratic paper, for about a year.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Nye worked two years for Hayford, a straight-laced newspaper man with a medical degree who later became a judge. He gave me $12 a week to edit the paper and I said he said $12 was too much but if I would jerk the press occasionally and take care of his children he would try to stand it. Nye worked for the Sentinel two years. He said he might have stayed longer if I hadn't had a red-hot political campaign and measles among the children at the same time. You can't mix measles and politics, he said. So he collected his salary and quit. That's the way Nye chose to be remembered in his autobiography Bill Nye, his own life story in 1926, a book Frank Nye assembled long after his father's death.

Speaker 1: 20:42

But there was more to it. For one thing, the fun-loving Nye and the officious Hayford didn't see everything eye-to-eye. Hayford, who gave away his bride at Nye's wedding, would later chastise Nye for not being serious in his journalism. Evening suggested Nye rubbed the donkey off his coat of arms For another. Local Republicans smarting from the poor election results in November of 1880, wanting a daily newspaper, hayford was only publishing a weekly and that did not compete with the new Democratic Daily, the Daily Times. So they raised $3,000 to purchase a newspaper plant and paid Nye 150 a month to edit what would become the boomerang, a Republican sheet. They also gave Nye the county printing contracts, secured for him the Laramie Postmaster job to supplement his income and found space for them newspaper at the livery stable.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Nye came at the end of an already long-lying American funnyman. Together they had been developing an American-style humor since the Revolution and employing the humorous techniques of burlesque parody, puns, exaggerations and a climax and irony. Since the 1830s the line can be traced back to Ben Franklin, but in the 19th century it included such notables as Major Jack Downing, petroleum V Naspy, davey Crockett and Mark Twain. Nye became for a time the most successful of them all, although Twain remains far better known today. By the 1890s, thanks to the publication of more than 16 books, two plays and a national tour of stage performances, nye was the nation's best-known humorist and, at 30,000 a year, its highest paid.

Speaker 1: 22:26

Like other American humorists, nye deflated those who would be pretentious, vain or pompous, booster propaganda and wood readers and wold his readers with local color, which he did not find in paying quantity until he moved to Laramie. While I'm a historian, t A Larson notes Nye's best material came from his time in Laramie. His later. Humor, whether published in newspaper or books, rarely amuses, larson concluded. But in earlier happy days in the West, nye had been really funny. Indeed, material from his time in Laramie can still bring a smile.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Like Twain and most everyone else who went west, nye invested in mining prospects. As with Twain and most others, mining stocks never earned him a red cent, except as a fodder for one of his funniest tales, titled my Mind. When he sent a specimen to be evaluated, nye wrote, the assayer reported that he found gold nil, silver nil, railroad iron one ounce, pirates of property nine ounces and parasites of disappointment ninety ounces. The formation was a prehistoric and erroneous, said the assayer, who advised if I were you, I would sink a prospect shaft below the red brimstone pre-adomite slag, crosscut the malacite and intersect the schist. I think that would be a schist about as good as anything you could do. Please send specimens and two dollars. Well, nye said. I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 24:01

He was a humorist, a tall, spare man with what his illustrator, walt McDonald, termed a lounging gate, blue gray, myopic eyes and a sweet, wry smile, and best known for his exceptional bald head saturations and understated self depreciation. Nye made himself a butt of almost all of his humor. It's a lot funnier to call yourself names, he said, and besides, it's a lot healthier in Wyoming. By nature, laramie seemed to be an exaggeration At the time. Nye was there. Laramie's population numbered perhaps 2,500 souls. It had a booming economy based on heavy industries, including machine shops, steam mills and a steel mill rolling out rails for the Union Pacific railroad. Town also had a stockyard, a slaughterhouse, a glass blowing plant, a plaster mill and a brewery.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Lies between the Laramie and Snowy Mountains range, along the Laramie River, at almost 7,200 foot elevation. The city was founded less than a decade earlier, in 1868. It received less than 11 inches of moisture a year and could record temperatures at 50 degrees below zero. For Nye, laramie was a gold mine. He had, for example, wyoming's climate and he had Hayford for a straight man.

Speaker 1: 25:21

In classic boosterism, 19th century newspaper men could write unmitigated exaggerations. Hayford, for example, claimed Wyoming's weather to be a positive factor. He reduced Laramie's winter storms to topical breezes. The weather of Rocky Mountain Town presented as much attraction in the way of climate as Laramie City. Hayford enthused. Laramie City is the only one of all the towns in the region which is almost entirely exempt from hard winds. Blustery storms and howling winds spend their fury harmlessly in the mountains above us and in perpetual calm and sunshine. Bless the inhabitants below. Nye delighted in bursting such bubbles, describing the wind from one particular stormy rope. The sun was hidden by the clouds and also by flying fragments of felt-rough and detached portions of the rolling mill and machine shops.

Speaker 1: 26:14

Hayford and company boomed Wyoming's architectural absurdity with straight face. Hayward Hayford not only claimed that rain followed the plow but that the iron tracks of the railroad attracted as well. Nye checked his reasoning. I do not wish to discourage those who might wish to come to this place, he wrote, but the soil is quite coarse and agricultural-less. Before he can even begin with any prospective success, this one is formed through a stamp mill. Winter, he said, lingers in the lap of spring until it's occasioned a good deal of talk, although in Laramie, he admits, it does not snow much. We are above the snow line.

Speaker 1: 26:55

If Nye could never write things up that never occurred, so could JH Hayford. But Nye never asked his readers to buy it as truth. Self-departation was possible for Hayward, but it came naturally to Nye, who attributed his election as just as the peace in Laramie, to his ability to make people laugh, or it was the laugh on him. As he said, I was elected for the people of West are humor-loving people and entered into the thing with a great glee. And further I was called Judge Nye and frequently mentioned in the papers with great consideration. I was out of coal at the time.

Speaker 1: 27:32

Nye left Laramie in 1883, advised by doctors that he cannot live in such a high altitude, after being diagnosed a year earlier with spinal meningitis. Two of his books, bill Nye and the Boomerang and Forty Liars and Other Lies, were published before Nye left town, compiled mainly from Nye's newspaper work in Laramie. A third volume, bail Hay, which Nye is said to have clipped from the pages of the Boomerang office files just before he left, also drew from his Laramie newspaper work. Nye returned to Hudson, wisconsin, where he lived quietly and produced more material. He also began lecturing, which Laramie regarded as possibly the worst mistake he ever made, because his lecturing, ever lucrative, drove him beyond his physical endurance. After three years Nye moved briefly to New York City, then to Arden, north Carolina, where he lived the remainder of his life. Soon after leaving Laramie he was hired as a columnist for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. At the age he found great success with James Whitcomb Riley, the Hoosier poet, working together for four years, nye with his deadpan humor and Riley with his nostalgic poems, one evening in Newark, new Jersey, by none other than Mark Twain. Nye hated the electric circuit, however, and all but gave up three months before his death on February 22nd of 1896.

Speaker 1: 28:58

To literary critics, nye was said to be a realist, a trait hastened on him by his net time in Laramie. Nye saw genuineness and fortrightness in western life and he defended against the eastern pretensions. As Owen Gibson would later note in the annals of Wyoming, nye was a humorist, purely and simply. He possessed no poetic gift, no prophetic insight. He acknowledged no graver purpose, claimed no higher mission, and just to make people laugh. Gibson speculated whether that might be the reason Nye even then, in 1925, was not as well remembered as otherwise might be.

Speaker 1: 29:40

In February of 1896, however, nye's obituary ran in a score of newspapers across the nation. In another obituary, one written in 1926 by the beloved humorist Will Rogers from Montana's cowboy artist Charlie Russell, rogers said to Russell I bet you hadn't been up there three days till you had out your old pencil and was drawing something funny about some of the old punchers. I bet you Mark Twain and old Bill Nye and Whitcomb Riley and a whole bunch of those old gosshers was just waiting for you to pop in with all the latest ones. The latest ones were a distinctly American type of humor that Nye knew well. American humor, he said, crystallized by hunger and sorrow and tears, is not found elsewhere. As it is America, it is out of the question.

Speaker 1: 30:31

In England An Englishman cannot joke fun in himself. He cannot joke about empty flower barrels. We can, especially if doing it may swap the joke for another barrel of flower. We can never be a nation of snobs as long as we are willing to poke fun at ourselves. New people said it better. Very interesting story on Bill Nye, his life, and I guess we all need a little bit of humor in our lives and maybe we do need a little bit more of Bill Nye here in the state of Wyoming. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the west, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming. We ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming you.