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Saturday, July 15, 2006

Why, Why, Why Wyoming?

This is my first ever blog by request. My boy Doc wants to know what's wrong with Wyoming and I'm glad he asked.

You see, there might be somebody out there considering moving to Wyoming. There are probably people considering moving to Lebanon, as well, but I have no specific knowledge to save these people from themselves. All of you emigrating to Lebanon are on your own, but if you are considering Wyoming, pay attention. This information might just save your life.

I went to school in Casper once. I guess I went several times, but I really only made the decision once. Living in the American West, I appreciate how many small towns there are with small schools, places where the cost of matriculation is an 80-mile trip to the nearest Taco Bell. Casper has its own Taco Bell. It is a reasonably attractive little hamlet, at 50,000 people the largest city in Wyoming.

Now, your first indication that something is wrong with the state of Wyoming is that its biggest town is 50,000 people (and when I was there it was 40,000). Wyoming has the lowest population density in the continental United States. What this really means is that there are more places that nobody wants to live in Wyoming than anyplace else in the country.

I made the decision to go to school in Casper in the spring. It seemed like a nice little town with lots of green stuff - grass, trees, shrubs. I had recently returned from Antarctica and had a great affinity for grass at the time. I have since returned to taking it for granted. As it happens, there are green things in Casper for only two weeks out of the year. When I showed up for class in August, everything was dead. Everything remained dead until the following spring, then shortly died again. Wyoming has no cycle of life, per se. It is a cycle of death.

In addition to everything being dead, I could not help but notice when I arrived for my first class that it was 98 degrees and the wind was blowing 40 miles per hour. For those of you accustomed to the metric system...that's a god awful lot of wind. Something not everyone understands is that plants keep the ground where it is. So if you were somewhere that, say, couldn't grow plants where the wind blew all the time, you would find the wind a little grittier than normal. It's like living in a sand blaster.

When I was in school in Casper, it had nine movie screens including the dollar movies downtown where I saw House Party III by myself. There are a couple of African-American people in Casper, but they knew better or perhaps had seen it the night before, leaving only me. The Remains of the Day played in Casper for three days - Tuesday through Thursday. Mrs. Doubtfire, on the other hand, played on two screens for almost three months. And we had to drive to Denver to see Schindler's List.

If you would like to take a moment to review the conditions discussed to this point, that would be fine. Great. Now that you are back, imagine who might want to live in these conditions and imagine what the conditions might do to the human psyche. People in Wyoming aren't like you and me. At least they aren't like me.

To begin with, they are crazy. I know this is a horrible, irresponsible generalization, the sort of xenophobic idiocy that keeps us isolated from our fellow man, but it's also true. The people of Wyoming have already chosen to be isolated from their fellow man, so I've lost nothing.

For another thing, they're just not friendly. They don't like you, don't want to know you, they are here to be away from people like you (you know, people with two arms and a head).

Much like Texas, nobody leaves Wyoming. It's like the tar pits. The difference between Wyoming and Texas is that everyone in Texas loves Texas. They think Texas is the greatest thing in the world - Colorado is a close second but that doesn't mean they would ever move there. Everyone under the age of 30 hates Wyoming. Just hates it. They will never leave, but they will talk about it. Unfortunately, they are like tigers in the zoo. They may look like other tigers, but underneath it all they aren't prepared to survive anyplace but the zoo.

There are nice towns in Wyoming, towns like Lander and Pinedale. They suffer from the same conditions besetting the rest of the state, but are reasonably attractive and have reasonably friendly residents. Laramie is a college town, a locale cosmopolitan enough in its own specific ways. You can get a decent beer at a bar that does not play country music. That's probably it, but it is something to be grateful for.

But there are also towns like Shoshone and Wamsutter, towns that do not appear to have any residents that may or may not have indoor plumbing, where the wind blows harder and there are fewer plants.

Wyoming sucks. Please do not waste my time and energy extolling the virtues of Yellowstone - nobody lives there and neither will you. And yes, Jackson is nice in that unpleasant Aspen way, but if you accept all of the empirical evidence, you have to come to the conclusion that it is not actually in Wyoming (a surveying mistake, I'm sure). If you as a human were to move to Wyoming you would regret it and then you would be powerless to leave.

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