These rapidly shorter days can cause a man of my vintage to complain about some things that have been a bother for a while.
For example, how does one ever get used to the sun going down at 4:30 p.m.? And soon it will go down even earlier. Three weeks ago, when it was going down at 5 p.m. it was a nuisance but this is something that is hard to get used to.
Football Has Been Crazy
Football is a big deal to me. My two favorite teams are the Wyoming Cowboys and the Denver Broncos. A couple of weeks ago, we had the crazy experience of seeing the Cowboys game kick off at 10 p.m. in Hawaii. Then we watched the Broncos play at 7:30 a.m. the next morning in London. Was that strange or what?
My friend Sally Ann Shurmur was raising heck on Facebook for the Cowboys having their Homecoming football game starting at almost 8 p.m. She is a long-time fan but that was too late at night for her. Hard not to agree with her but we do understand that everybody is now in the hands of the TV game scheduler.
She loves going to homecoming but was not going to go to a game in Laramie that late at night.
UW fans are enjoying the weekly Cowboy State Daily column by Dave Walsh. He is a fountain of knowledge. He talks about old games that most of us had forgotten about. Kudos to Jimmy Orr for coming up with the idea of getting Dave to contribute these incredible columns. Keep them coming, Dave – you were there! So glad you are sharing these gems.
Sally Ann was also complaining about a crazy bounce pass play that Colorado State did to Wyoming some years ago, helping the Sheep to win the game and spoil a great season by the Cowboys. Now that is a story I would like to hear Dave elaborate on. It involved a “bounce lateral” play that the CSU players had practiced all week. It worked perfectly and, well, we will have to wait to hear the rest of the story.
Now About Those Books
Off the subject of football, I have spent my life defending the First Amendment. And that includes being against banning books of any kind.
But whoa. Have you seen the books that are in some of these school libraries? Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland wrote a series of amazing stories which included a big disclaimer and depictions of what types of sex acts were featured. Yeah, I’m an old fogey, but this crosses a line.
It was appropriate to see this become a campaign topic for some of the school board elections around the state. These books are out of line.
The BIG Red Trickle
Speaking of elections, we were hoping for a big red wave. Instead, it ended up a trickle. The country is split down the middle and continues to be so. There are often too few undecided voters to swing an election in these polarized times.
You could see where a voter would look at a Democrat like John Fetterman in Pennsylvania and say: Who in their right mind would vote for this guy?”
Folks on the other side would look at Georgia’s race and say: “Who in their right might would vote for Herschel Walker?”
The answer is that with polarizing as bad as it is, voters would vote for a cabbage if it was portrayed as being on their correct side.
It makes me long for a time when people would vote split tickets.
Some 50 years ago, Wyoming had a Democrat U. S. senator in Gale McGee and a Democrat U. S. representative in Teno Roncalio. Then citizens voted in a Democrat as governor, Ed Herschler, who served for three terms. It was an exciting time in the state and folks had to work across the aisle to get anything done in the Legislature.
Not sure the Democrats from that era would even recognize the crowd waving that banner today. Perhaps the Republicans would not, either.
How To Lose Two Billion Bucks
In the world of money, how does a person lose $2 billion in a day? Former famous Wyoming resident Kanye West claims he lost that much in one day after Adidas fired him and cancelled their big shoe deal.
Kanye had made anti-Jewish statements and bragged that he could get away with it – well, he did not. He was also photographed wearing a “White Lives Matter,” T-shirt, which probably did not endear him to the African-American community, in the wake of racial tensions.
He still owns most of his properties in the Cody area. Maybe he will retire there and sulk and try to figure out what just happened to him?
Perhaps he will enjoy these shorter days and longer nights as much as the rest of us.
