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<title>Today In Relationships: Sunday, May 18, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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Today In Relationships: Sunday, May 18, 2025

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Special education students at Cody Middle School turned a school project into a unique community resource now available at the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce.

The students spent two months using a variety of academic subjects to create a Cody playground guide. The one-page handout breaks down every playground in the community by what they have for kids to enjoy.

Theresa Fitti, the life skills special education teacher at Cody Middle School, said the student-led project was intended to give kids an outside-the-box experience to enhance their personal and academic skills.  

The unexpected opportunity to get their playground guide to the Cody chamber gave her students a chance to “learn without realizing they were learning.”

“They were doing a lot of skills that they don't enjoy doing and having fun with it,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “This was something they wanted to do, and seeing them learn and take ownership of their work was the most rewarding part for me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What And Where"}]

Fitti’s special education class consisted of three students who were “trialing” a new way of teaching a resource class. 

The idea for a playground guide came from Fitti’s own experience as a parent in Cody.

“I met up with my friends and their kids at a playground one day, and realized there were no swings there,” she said. “So we started asking ourselves, ‘Which parks in town have swings? How many parks do we have?’ We realized this was an issue, and I brought it to my students.”

Fitti had already finished a similar Cody-based project with her students that focused on reading, math, English, and functional community skills. When she presented this playground problem to her students, they embraced the idea of pursuing it as their next project.

“They were ready to jump right into it, because they had really a fun time with the first unit,” she said. “It was a very student-led process while bouncing ideas off of teachers and the other staff in the room to come up with solutions.”

Their solution would require a lot of thought and effort, which would, unknowingly, encourage students to push against their own boundaries and limitations and have fun in the process.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"All Work For Play"}]

First, the class made a list of important playground features that kids and families would care about. They soon assembled a list of nearly 50 playground features, which they realized was too many to focus on.

“The students decided they wanted to focus on what they thought was important to kids,” Fitti said. “We talked about the difference between opinion and fact, they determined this was an opinion, and discussed how we can get a lot of opinions.”

The class then developed surveys that were distributed to Cody’s kindergarteners, second graders, and fifth graders. 

The surveys had the different-aged students rank their favorite playground features while Fitti’s students compiled the data.

“We made bar graphs from that information, touching on some math skills along the way,” Fitti said. “From that, we were able to determine the top six features that kids in our area want to see in playgrounds.”

After surveying and interviewing over 200 students, Fitti’s class had a list of six core playground features: playground systems, zipline and track riders, swings, baby swings, rock walls, and monkey bars.

Three additional features – bathrooms, basketball hoops, and open fields - were also added.

To verify which playground has which features, Fitti’s class visited Cody’s 13 parks. According to Fitti, it was important that her students use their own observations to complete checklists based on their surveys.

“We found an online resource on the different parks, but when we looked at each park, not every feature was listed, and some of the information was outdated,” she said. “That’s why they decided that they needed to do their own observations.”

Finally, the class decided to create an informational checklist listing every park in Cody and the nine core playground features. Each park got a checkmark for the features it had, based on the feedback Fitti’s class received from Cody’s kids.

“We made a list of action verbs of everything these kids did,” she said. “They drafted emails. They designed spreadsheets. 

"They did a lot of different things that tied into our state standards and the power standards the school’s working on across all grade levels. They did really well.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Play More, Worry Less"}]

While the goal of the student-led class project was always to produce something useful, Fitti didn’t contemplate how useful it was until the last week of the school year.  

“We were thinking about what we could do with it,” she said. “At first, we were thinking of posting it on community bulletin boards and asking restaurant and business owners if we could hang it there. One of the classroom staff members suggested we get our guide to the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce.”

Fitti met with Jennifer Thona, executive director of the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce. Thoma “loved their project so much” that she asked Fitti for copies to give out to chamber visitors.

When Fitti presented the idea to her class, they were “impressed and super excited.” They immediately agreed to get their playground guide to the chamber.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. Fitti decided to turn the new partnership into another opportunity to put her students “on the spot” for their benefit.

“I got them in the school vehicle and told them we’re going to the chamber,” she said. “It was a last-minute opportunity for them to work on their public speaking.”

Most people panic when it comes to public speaking, let alone when it’s extemporaneous and on the spot. Nevertheless, Fitti believed they could and should, and her students proved her faith was well-founded.

“We talked about communication and presentation skills, eye contact, standing up, and sharing your ideas clearly, and they rose to the occasion,” she said. “It was a last-minute thing, and I was proud of my students for that. They did really well.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Their Product"}]

The Cody playground guide is now available to locals and tourists at the Cody Country Chamber of Commerce. Thoma plans to include the handout in the stack of maps and other resources they hand out to tour groups.

“The kids are super excited that other people are going to see their work and find it useful,” Fitti said.

For Fitti, the playground guide was a vindication of the project-based learning unit she’s been trialing at Cody Middle School. 

She hopes it will serve as a model that other schools and programs can adopt to improve the educational experience for special-ed students.

“We're still working on academics and on functional skills, but putting them into a fun, student-led format,” she said. “I spent this year seeing if I could do a full class period of it for the full school year. I'm still playing around with what other projects we can do to keep expanding this and what other students we can reach.”

Fitti admits that her still-developing model works best for smaller classes. The educational implementation of the playground guide was designed to meet the individual needs of each student, allowing each student to take ownership of different aspects that addressed skills they needed to work on.

Still, the end goal was to create something useful. Now, Fitti and the entire Cody community can benefit from her students' hard work.

“I’m a parent who had these questions about parks and playgrounds,” she said. “I imagine a lot of other parents, in town and just visiting, have similar questions. Now, they have this resource available to them.”

That resource was created through the initiative, enthusiasm, and hard work of her special-ed students, and she couldn’t be prouder of them.

“I had an idea of where I wanted this project to go, and sometimes it went a slightly different way because that's what they wanted,” she said. “This is their product, and seeing them take ownership of that has been amazing.”

Cody special ed Mix Collage 14 Jun 2026 07 55 AM 3625 6 14 26

<title>Special Education Students in Cody Create Guide To Every Playground In Community | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Special education students at Cody Middle School turned a school project into a unique community resource now available at the Cody Chamber of Commerce. The students spent two months using a variety of academic subjects to create a Cody playground guide.

Special Education Students in Cody Create Guide To Every Playground In Community

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

Forget about e-bikes, ATVs and other wheeled vehicles. 

The latest powered outdoor trend is people strapping on devices called powered exoskeletons and becoming faster, stronger cyborg versions of themselves.

Battery-powered knee and hip-assistance devices have been around for a while. 

But some reviewers say products like one called the Vastnaut One 4x4 have taken things to a new level by supplying additional support and power to the hips and knees simultaneously.

The company claims that its contraption can boost the wearer’s climbing power by 30%.

Its rechargeable batteries last 4.5 hours, enough to cover about 12.5 miles, according to Vastnaut.

Prices for the devices run from about $1,000 to $2,000.

Seasoned hiker John Housel told Cowboy State Daily that at age 73, he’s had to slow down somewhat, but he’s not sure he’s ready to strap on a set of robot leg boosters.

“I’m a great believer in self-locomotion,” he said. "I would be hesitant about exploring that (using an exoskeleton) much further.

“I can see if I got to the point where I was wearing out before I got to the top of one of my favorite local mountains, I might look into that,” he added.

Even so, he can see drawbacks, such as the batteries wearing out or the contraption getting damaged.

“What if I fell on my descent? The falling might bend a joint on that apparatus, and I’d have to get back down on my own,” he said.

Housel added that it could be better to accept the natural limitations that come with age.

“If I get to the point where I just can’t go somewhere, maybe I’ll just not go to that place anymore,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shrinking The Land"}]

Housel said that exoskeletons could add to a trend that outdoor enthusiasts call “shrinking the land.”

In other words, the more means there are available to traverse territory more quickly, the “smaller” the land gets and the fewer places there will be where one can go to find utter solitude.

Housel said that over the years, he’s seen some of that happen as technology has improved ATVs and e-bikes.

 over whether they blur the lines between human-powered and motorized backcountry transportation.  

However, he’s skeptical that exoskeletons will have that much of an impact, at least not anytime soon.

The prices could be a barrier for many people, Housel said.

“I don’t think they’re going to be that popular. I think the pricing will be a factor,” he said.

He added that people might be hesitant to spend $1,000 to $2,000 on products that might be found primarily online, and not yet in retail stores.

“I think anybody who would be interested in that would want a demonstration” before spending the money, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Mr. Gadget’"}]

The makers of Vastnaut and similar devices claim that they can increase users’ weight-carrying capacity.

That could be a selling point for people like northeast Wyoming resident Owen Miller. 

He frequently hunts deep in the backcountry, in places where killing an elk means facing a long trek out with heavy packs full of meat.

“This looks like a product for ‘Mr. Gadget,’” he told Cowboy State Daily.

“I can definitely see that there’s people that would use this, and it could be compared to the e-bike where you’re biking, but you’re not really biking,” he said. "(This is) like assisted biking, but this is assisted hiking/walking."

Miller said he favors simplicity in the backcountry. So, he’s skeptical about the possible complications of exoskeletons, such as limitations on battery life.

He noted that it might be good for “somebody with a leg injury, or even a back injury.”

Miller said he doesn’t think he’ll buy an exoskeleton anytime soon.

“In my opinion, everything can have its place and be useful for the right person. But as long as I’m healthy, I personally wouldn’t use it just to use it,” he said.

 Avid backcountry elk hunter Bruce Cooper of Bondurant also said he can see the usefulness of exoskeletons for those with injuries or mobility challenges.

He noted that his wife has had two knee surgeries.

“This would help her maybe keep pace with me and have less fatigue,” Cooper said.

“I personally would not have a use for it when hunting. I tend to go distances that would burn the battery, and through heavy timber. I would then have to carry it back when the battery is dead,” he said 

Where exoskeletons might shine in Wyoming is among people hiking for fun in the front country, Cooper said.

“I think it could be beneficial for those who are walking more on (established) paths and trails, and who may benefit from the knee support and need for assistance in walking or hiking,” he said.

Exoskeleton 2 6 14 26

<title>Powered Exoskeletons Could Turn Wyoming Hikers, Hunters Into Backcountry Cyborgs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Forget about e-bikes, ATVs and other wheeled vehicles. The latest powered outdoor trend is people strapping on powered exoskeletons and becoming faster, stronger cyborg versions of themselves. One company says it can boost climbing power by 30%.

Powered Exoskeletons Could Turn Wyoming Hikers, Hunters Into Backcountry Cyborgs

[{"type":"text","text":"American artist Edward T. Grigware is renowned for his murals. "}]

By the time he died in Cody in 1960, his work was featured in banks, hospitals, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) chapels from Chicago to Los Angeles and as far as Hawaii.

Grigware’s most celebrated Wyoming mural depicting the history of the LDS church is on display in the Historic Cody Mural and Museum. 

It’s an excellent example of the painter’s commitment to realism in an age when the trendiest art was increasingly abstract.

However, there’s one painting in Grigware’s portfolio that’s full of realism — but a lot cheekier than anything else he ever did.

“Bottoms Up,” his 1940s painting of four curvaceous cowgirls wearing nothing by chaps from the waist down showing their bare bottoms, is Grigware’s only nude.

“It certainly made going into the lounge at the Holiday Inn worthwhile,” said Mack Frost, digital technician at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. “It was quite the topic of conversation.”

The painting is no longer hanging in the Holiday Inn and hasn’t been seen in years, which now has turned the conversation to whatever happened to “Bottoms Up?"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Accomplished Artist"}]

Grigware was already an accomplished artist when he moved to Cody in 1936. 

He got his education at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and his work had been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was wooed out to Wyoming by Mary Allen Jester, one of the founders of the Buffalo Bill Museum, now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Initially skeptical of living in Wyoming, Grigware quickly came to love the state's landscapes and lived the rest of his life in Cody. 

During that time, he was commissioned to do several murals in Cody and elsewhere.

“He did murals at the Cody Masonic Temple, the old Cody hospital, and the Cody Mural Chapel,” Frost said. “He wasn't a combat artist, but he replicated many of the naval battles that occurred during World War II.”

Grigware spent most of the 1940s working on commissions from the U.S. Navy, which were used for posters and other promotional material. 

In the late 1940s, the LDS Church commissioned him to paint a 360-degree mural depicting the church’s history in the 36-foot-wide, 18-foot-tall rotunda of its then-new Cody chapel. The finished mural was unveiled in 1951. 

, Grigware spent a year researching the church’s history, as he was not a member, and painted the mural on pure Irish linen, “the choicest of artists’ canvas,” which was hard to come by at the time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It's pretty fantastic,” Frost said."}]

It was around this time as well in the mid-to-late 1940s that Grigware finished an entirely different kind of commission.

[{"type":"text","text":"His work went from sacred to what some would consider sacrilegious."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Getting To The Bottom Of It"}]

The story of how “Bottoms Up” came to be is tricky to piece together. There are several accounts of dubious origin sharing those details.

, “Bottoms Up” was commissioned by “a wealthy Denver-area oilman.” He wanted Grigware to create an alluring painting of a Cody woman who was allegedly his mistress.

Cody historian Bob Richard could verify some of that information, while acknowledging there’s more fiction than fact in most accounts.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Several stories about that painting abound,” he said."}]

One thing he could confirm was that the model for “Bottoms Up” was, indeed, a Cody woman.

Dorothy “Dot” Morris managed the Lazy Bar H Ranch, now the Bill Cody Ranch, between Cody and Yellowstone National Park with her husband, Leonard.

“She was very beautiful and partied a lot with Leonard and other Cody families,” Richard said. “When Leonard took guests to fish for mackinaw, Dot was always there.”

Richard said Morris probably connected with Grigware through the Frontier School of Western Art, a short-lived complex of log cabin studios that drew Grigware and other artists to Cody between 1936 and 1941.

Technically, there’s only one cowgirl in “Bottoms Up.” All four women were modeled by Morris, posed and painted by Grigware four different times.

The final painting is of four cowgirls on a wooden fence, fully clothed in Western attire except for their bare derrieres.

The cowgirls are basking in the warm sun with the familiar silhouette of Heart Mountain in the distance.

The original painting had a pine pole frame made by another legendary Cody artist, Thomas Molesworth. It was delivered to its patron, who hung it in his home in Denver.

“I think the painting was done in the mid-1940s, after the end of the war,” Richard said. “But, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think Dot was anyone’s mistress.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bottoms Back"}]

“Bottoms Up” was eventually acquired by Quintin Blair, a renowned Cody businessman who brought the painting back to where it was created.

Blair served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, so it’s possible some of the battles Blair fought were painted by Grigware.

Blair went on to own several drug stores in Cody, managed the Pahaska Tepee Resort and Buffalo Bill Village, and established Quin Blair Enterprises, now Blair Hotels, which built the Holiday Inns in Cody, Laramie, and Riverton.

Blair was also a patron of the arts. There was no better example of that than his family home.

The Quintin Blair House, Wyoming’s only building by Frank Lloyd Wright, was built for the Blair family. 

Before his death in 2013, Blair was the only living person to have continuously resided in a home designed and built by the famous architect.

Blair was also friends with Grigware and the Denver patron who commissioned “Bottoms Up.” When the patron died, his wife sold the painting to Blair.

According to legend, Blair acquired the painting for $1, with some caveats. The patron's wife wanted the painting publicly displayed in Cody as a slight to “the model,” meaning Morris.

In that story, Morris and her husband moved to San Diego, California, in the 1960s, out of embarrassment that Morris’s bare bottom had returned to Cody.

[{"type":"text","text":"Richard has a much simpler explanation for the move."}]

“Dot and Leonard moved away for no other reason than Leonard retired and sold the ranch,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fact And Fiction"}]

Since the history of “Bottoms Up” is so intertwined with the Blair family, it's the best source of factual information on the painting.

Ted Blair is the CEO of Blair Hotels and Quintin Blair’s son. Like Richard, he’s amazed by the number of stories circulating around “Bottoms Up.”

“Most of what people have heard about it is made-up,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable.”

Blair confirmed the core history. “Bottoms Up” was painted by Grigware in the 1940s, with Morris modeling, for a Denver patron whose wife hated it.

“It hung behind red velvet curtains in the bar of their home,” he said. “When he'd have friends over, he'd open the curtains up. When there was nobody there, the curtains were closed, because his wife hated the painting.”

Quintin Blair bought the painting from the man’s widow, but there were no caveats with the purchase.

“Thomas Molesworth's son called my father and said, ‘Remember that nude of Grigware’s? It's for sale.’ My father got a hold of it, and that's how it ended up in Cody again,” he said.

Blair confirmed that his father didn’t acquire and display the painting out of obligation or spite.

“He knew Grigware, he knew the painting, and thought it was fun,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hanging Out"}]

When Blair opened Cody’s Holiday Inn in 1972, “Bottoms Up” was prominently placed in the hotel’s bar, the Daisy Bell Saloon. 

It would later be known as the Bottoms Up Lounge, where the painting was the centerpiece for decades.

Thousands of people dropped by to appreciate the painting, for various reasons. Even Holiday Inn capitalized on it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were selling posters of it at one point,” Richard said."}]

The painting made its way onto T-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards, and posters, eagerly acquired by fans of Grigware’s unique piece.

Frost was one of many Cody residents who regularly saw “Bottoms Up” when it hung in the Bottoms Up Lounge. He likened it to the famous pinup girls painted by Alberto Vargas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was very Vargasesque,” he said."}]

It’s a notable departure in Grigware’s extensive body of work. According to a blog post about the history of “Bottoms Up” from August 2009, Grigware accepted the commission as his one and only “tasteful nude.”

“It’s the only nude he ever did, as far as I’m aware,” Blair said.

However, tasteful or not, “Bottoms Up” was eventually deemed too distasteful for the public.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Much On Display"}]

When Cody’s Holiday Inn completed its most recent renovation, “Bottoms Up” was gone.

“It was in the lounge until a couple of years ago,” Frost said. “I don't know why they took it down. Maybe the Blairs decided that it was no longer relevant, maybe somebody complained about it.”

Richard thought the unique painting was removed at the request of Holiday Inn. Most chain-branded hotels have specific guidelines regarding what artwork can be displayed. 

Quintin Blair was, allegedly, granted a dispensation to display “Bottoms Up” because of its provenance and association with Grigware.

“I think their management decided it was unacceptable, so it was taken down,” he said.

Ted Blair was happy to set the record straight. The painting was taken down because it would have been too visible.

“When we turned the lounge into an open area of the dining room, children would have been able to see it,” he said. “That’s when and why we pulled it down. That’s the decision I made.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heirloom Or Museum Piece?"}]

As for its current whereabouts, Ted Blair confirmed that “Bottoms Up” still exists.

“I have it where nobody will know where it's at,” he said. “There’s a lot more to it than people realize."

Blair also has photos of Morris, who seemed to be even more free-spirited than her painted bottom in quadruplicate would suggest.

“There was a photography club in Cody that did nude photos of women (around that time), so I have photos, including nude photos, of the lady,” he said.

Many people, then and now, would say such a unique painting should be in a museum, such as the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. 

While he admittedly hadn’t considered the option, Blair doesn’t think “Bottoms Up” would have a home among the Whitneys’ collection.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don't see any nudes or Grigwares in there,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Art Actualized?"}]

Many of Grigware’s murals and other paintings can be seen in buildings, chapels, and museum collections today. Several, but not all, of his Cody murals are intact.

“Bottoms Up” has largely disappeared from public discussion. Even if its story contains more fact than fiction, the quirky painting is a notable work by one of the great American masters.

There’s one other story that abounds around the story of “Bottoms Up.” Morris was the only cowgirl depicted in the painting, but several people claim they’ve seen a mark-for-mark photograph recreating the painting with four bare-bottomed cowgirls.

“I saw a photographic rendition of that picture once, and I'm not sure who did it,” Frost said. “We certainly do not have that picture in the museum’s collection.”

Someone who called themself “Tippy” claimed to be one of those cowgirls. 

, she claimed the photo was taken by a Cody photographer in the summer of 1976.

“I had the privilege of working for Quin Blair as an entertainer at the famous Chuckwagon and Sarsaparilla Saloon,” she wrote. “After a great performance one night … the female members of the group made arrangements with an Old West photographer to oblige them out in the pasture (and) leaned over the fence overlooking the cowherd to take their picture in a remake of the original oil painting.”

Tippy said the women “mustered up the courage to slap that leather over their bare bottoms” with the assistance of several cocktails.

“They were shot at sunrise with a belly full of Tequila sunrises,” she wrote.

Whatever happened to the racy painting titled “Bottoms Up" that hung for decades in the Cody Holiday Inn hotel? "The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable,” said its owner, adding it’s “where nobody will know where it's at.”

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