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By Tim Mandese, Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming’s active coronavirus decreased by 301 over the weekend. 

The Wyoming Department of Health received reports of 1,210 recoveries among those with confirmed or probable cases. 

At the same time, the state reported 726 new laboratory-confirmed and 183 new probable cases, leaving Wyoming with 3,084 active cases on Monday.

Twelve counties had more than 100 active cases, with six having more than 200. Natrona County had 547; Freemont 341; Laramie 329; Sheridan 233; Campbell 201; Uinta 69; Goshen 168; Sweetwater 152; Carbon 150; Park 141; Albany 124; Lincoln 85; Teton 79; Washakie 78; Platte and Weston 43; Converse 40; Sublette 34; Crook 33; Big Horn 31; Johnson 28; Niobrara had 21, while Hot Springs reported the fewest active cases, with 14.

Active cases are determined by adding the total confirmed and probable coronavirus cases diagnosed since the illness first surfaced in Wyoming on March 12, 2020, subtracting the number of recoveries during the same period among patients with both confirmed and probable cases and taking into account the number of deaths attributed to the illness.

The new confirmed and probable cases brought to 101,083 the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus since the first case was detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Of those, 96,850 have recovered.

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By Tim Mandese, Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming’s active coronavirus increased by 85 on Thursday.

The Wyoming Department of Health said it received reports of 570 recoveries among those with confirmed or probable cases Thursday. 

At the same time, the state reported 536 new laboratory-confirmed and 119 new probable cases, leaving Wyoming with 3,547 active cases for Thursday.

Fourteen counties had more than 100 active cases, with seven having more than 200. 

Natrona County had 620; Freemont 351; Laramie 324; Sheridan 293; Campbell 251; Goshen 228; Carbon 172; Albany 159; Sweetwater and Uinta 158; Park 149; Washakie 121; Lincoln 108; Teton 81; Converse 73; Platte 60; Weston 43; Niobrara and Sublette 39; Crook 38; Johnson 32; Big Horn had 31; while Hot Springs reported the fewest active cases, with 19.

Active cases are determined by adding the total confirmed and probable coronavirus cases diagnosed since the illness first surfaced in Wyoming on March 12, 2020, subtracting the number of recoveries during the same period among patients with both confirmed and probable cases and taking into account the number of deaths attributed to the illness.

The new confirmed and probable cases brought to 99,662 the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus since the first case was detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Of those, 94,979 have recovered.

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By Tim Mandese, Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming’s active coronavirus case total increased by 398 on Wednesday. 

The Wyoming Department of Health received reports of 42 recoveries among those with confirmed or probable cases. 

At the same time, the state reported 305 new laboratory-confirmed and 135 new probable cases, leaving Wyoming with 3,462 active cases for Wednesday.

Fourteen counties had more than 100 active cases, while six had more than 200. 

Natrona County had 599; Freemont 345; Laramie 333; Sheridan 2267; Campbell 257; Goshen 189; Albany 166; Park 163; Sweetwater 152; Uinta 151; Carbon and Washakie 125; Lincoln 118; Converse 83; Teton 79; Platte 67; Weston 43; Crook 40; Sublette 38; Niobrara 37; Big Horn 36; Johnson had 30; while Hot Springs reported the fewest active cases, with 19.

Active cases are determined by adding the total confirmed and probable coronavirus cases diagnosed since the illness first surfaced in Wyoming on March 12, 2020, subtracting the number of recoveries during the same period among patients with both confirmed and probable cases and taking into account the number of deaths attributed to the illness.

The new confirmed and probable cases brought to 99,007 the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus since the first case was detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Of those, 94,409 have recovered.

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By Jonathan Lange, guest columnist

It was a book that introduced the term “catch-22” into America’s modern vocabulary. The 1961 novel by Joseph Heller satirized a bureaucratic loop that prevented a military man from requesting a psychological evaluation because, according to the “catch-22” rule, the very act of asking proved he didn’t need one. Merriam-Webster defines it as “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.”

Heller’s novel is touted by the American Library Association (ALA) among famous “banned books.” However, it was only temporarily banned in one Strongsville, Ohio library out of 116,867 total U.S. libraries. The real irony is that a “catch-22” is precisely what prevents an open and honest discussion of civic responsibility in libraries across America.

Banned Books Week is a propaganda campaign invented in 1982 by a collusion of the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, and the National Association of College Stores. Annually, on the last week of September, it provides a platform for libraries to treat parental concerns with contempt. Here’s how it works.

Step 1: Woke school administrators at the Burbank (CA) Unified School District removed three American classics (John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” and Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”) from a required reading lists in the high school English curriculum. Despite a million other books that are not on that list, this move provided the pretext for the ALA to tag the books as “censored.”

Step 2: The ALA’s “Office of Intellectual Freedom” (OIF) used the dubious claim to include two of them on their “Top 10 #BannedBooksList.” Despite its official-sounding name, the OIF list has zero science behind it. Rather, it is a fake ranking ginned up by activists who solicit complaints from “librarians and teachers” while ignoring the concerns of parents. The mere request to move a book from the children’s section to the adult section of the same library is counted as a censorial “challenge.”

Step 3: The same OIF carefully selects eight other books to round-out the “Top 10” list. Importantly, these serve the woke agenda and raise legitimate objections among parents. The objective is to shift the Overton Window by associating examples of woke orthodoxy with American classics. They are careful, however, to omit the most egregious violators of decency standards from the list.

While these most pornographic books are excluded from the ALA’s annual list, they are not excluded from the children’s section of your local library. Thus, the ALA annual list is designed to distract public attention from the worst books by steering attention to the merely bad.

Consider three books omitted from this year’s list. Anyone unable to see why parents should object to the open display of “Doing It,” “The V-Word,” and “This Book is Gay,” in the children’s section of a library has no business being around our children. Despite what progressive ideologues will tell you, this has nothing to do with “sexual identity” and everything to do with exposing children of both sexes to inappropriate sexual content.

Unless you read the above-named titles for yourself, you will likely not believe what unsuspecting children can encounter in your local library. These titles would be perfectly at home in the seediest “Adult Book Store.” Who, but the most jaded parents, would dream that a library might display them at the eye-level of your average seven-year-old?

That brings us to the real catch-22: The pornographic language and pictures found in the children’s section of America’s libraries is so over-the-top that examples cannot be printed in any respectable newspaper. This is the very definition of catch-22. The public needs to know the extent of the problem. But a full disclosure is “denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem.”

Thus, parental concerns are censored from the public by sheer decorum and decency. But that same decency is not restraining librarians from exposing even the youngest children to indecent content. By attractive, kid-friendly displays, they invite curious children to read what your local newspaper editor is ashamed to print. This is no exaggeration, “Doing It” was attractively featured in the children’s section of my local library in Kemmerer. More recently, the executive director of the Campbell County Public Library has come to national attention for refusing even to move the most obscene titles out of the children’s section.

So, what’s a citizen to do? First, educate yourself. Under the radar, virtually every county and school district library in America indecently exposes children to explicit content. Concerned citizens should search the card catalogue for books of a sexual or otherwise objectionable nature. Make sure to cover the libraries in your local school system as well. Work with other people in the community to share the workload.

Second, go to administrators and discuss your findings. Seek a solution that protects the community’s children above all. Sexually objectionable books should, at the very least, not be exhibited on the direct eye-level of kids wandering past book displays. Better yet, move them into the adult part of the library. Parents who actually want their children to read them can find them there.

Third, learn the library’s policies and whether they are being followed. If not, file a complaint. If the policy itself is inadequate, bring up the matter before the appropriate oversight board—either the school board or the library board. Schools and counties are not answerable to the American Library Association. They are answerable to the voters. Sadly, the ALA has abused the public trust and squandered any credibility it once enjoyed.

Finally, remember that not only parents have a duty to make public libraries safe for children. The entire community shares the duty to create safe spaces. Parents, grandparents and those with no other connection to the community’s children than a desire to see them thrive—all have a legitimate concern. Don’t be silenced because you don’t have a child in the school system. Don’t allow libraries to censor your concerns through bigotry or elitism.

Children need and deserve the protection of every member of the public. That’s why public libraries exist in the first place.

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By Tim Mandese, Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming’s total of active coronavirus cases increased by 396 on Wednesday. 

The Wyoming Department of Health received reports of 43 recoveries among those with confirmed or probable cases. 

At the same time, the state reported 300 new laboratory-confirmed and 139 new probable cases, leaving Wyoming with 3,565 active cases for Wednesday.

Twelve counties had more than 100 active cases, while eight had more than 200. 

Natrona County had 712; Campbell 324; Laramie 299; Fremont 275; Sheridan 232; Park and Uinta 213; Sweetwater 158; Goshen 155; Albany 135; Washakie 134; Lincoln 123; Converse 86; Sublette 77; Carbon 76; Big Horn 70; Platte 67; Teton 51; Weston 49; Johnson 40; Crook 38; Niobrara had 24, and Hot Springs reported the fewest active cases, with 14. 

Active cases are determined by adding the total confirmed and probable coronavirus cases diagnosed since the illness first surfaced in Wyoming on March 12, 2020, subtracting the number of recoveries during the same period among patients with both confirmed and probable cases and taking into account the number of deaths attributed to the illness.

The new confirmed and probable cases brought to 96,059 the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus since the first case was detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Of those, 91,414 have recovered.

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By Wendy Corr, Cowboy State Daily

For the last seven years, Darian Dudrick has been the voice of KODI-AM in northwest Wyoming.

On Tuesday, the 52-year-old talk show host died, leaving behind family, friends and coworkers after fighting for his life for the previous two weeks.

When I first met Darian, I had come back to radio after a seven-year absence. It was December of 2016, and for the previous two years he had been the man in the seat behind the microphone, after the retirement of longtime morning show host Tom Morrison. Darian had been a newspaper man, primarily as an editor, for 22 years, prior to his foray into radio.

As the KODI morning show hosts – he as the host of “Daybreak” and “Speak Your Piece,” and me as the news director and host of “Partyline” – we were the first two people in the building each day. By 5:30, I was printing out my news stories and he was prepping for his four-hour on-air shift. 

Twice an hour, he and I would banter before my news breaks, and I’d take over the KODI microphone for my half-hour talk show before he re-claimed the studio for “Speak Your Piece.”

Darian’s call-in show won numerous awards over the years from the Wyoming Association of Broadcasters, including “Best News Talk – Small Market” in 2016, 2018, 2020 and this year.

“Darian is fairly irreplaceable,” according to Susan Patrick, who with her husband Larry owns Legend Communications, the parent company for the Big Horn Radio Network in Cody. “I mean, he did his KODI Daybreak show, and he was very, very good at that. And that’s a little easier to fill.

“But ‘Speak Your Piece’ (a live daily call-in radio show) he sort of made his own,” she continued. “And he was a great interviewer, he had his slew of regulars, but also brought in new and interesting people. And he put his own spin on that, and took great pride in it, and that will be very hard to replace.”

The show sparked conversations that were carried around the state by news outlets like Cowboy State Daily – from comments about Kanye West’s contributions to Cody’s economy (“I am hopeful West continues to explore investment in our community,” Cody economic development director James Klessens said on Speak Your Piece in February) to retired U.S. Sen, Al Simpson blasting Iowa-based Gun Owners of America (GOA) while live on the air in April.

“They’ve been exposed as absolute nut cases,” Simpson said at the time.

Other regular guests that I watched come and go for “Speak Your Piece” were local legislators, economic development experts, school board members, historians, public health officials, and others who would comment on issues important to listeners in the Big Horn Basin.

His reputation as an interviewer allowed him other opportunities, as well, including as the moderator for the 2018 gubernatorial debate that was held in Cody at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

But he wasn’t all serious. 

During football season, Darian would be sporting his beloved Miami Dolphins jersey – and his listeners learned quite a bit of music trivia in the early morning hours of the Daybreak show.

Since Sept. 2, the last day Darian was behind a microphone with the KODI Morning Show, Andrew Rossi, the news director for the Big Horn Radio Network, has been filling in as the moderator on “Speak Your Piece” – but how the station moves forward is uncertain.

“We haven’t even begun to discuss it, because of course we were hoping that Darian would recover,” said Patrick. “But, you know, we may feel that we go in a totally different direction – we’ll just have to see. We are considering all options.”

Above all, Patrick noted, the community has lost a good man.

“His co-workers loved and cared for him,” she pointed out. “He’s a great family man and he loved his community. And, you know, part of why he succeeded and did so well with Speak Your Piece is because he truly believed that the issues that he was talking about on a daily basis were important, and he shone a light on them. From Larry and I, he will just be terribly missed.”

Darian leaves behind a wife, two children, a community to whom he endeared himself, and in which his life and his contributions will be remembered with fondness. He will be missed.

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By Jim Hicks, columnist

A couple of the regulars at the coffee meeting asked about the “one-lane” traffic on the east bound lane of I-90 where the road crosses US 16 next to Bighorn Tire.

Anyone driving under that bridge can quickly see the problem.  Earlier this summer something hit one of the steel spans hard enough to bend it out and actually move the structure a tad to the west.

It was a “hit and run” kind of event, because no one reported the accident which will probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair.

But those inexpensive TV surveillance cameras are on lot of buildings around the village and local Highway Patrolmen were able to identify the rig that did all that damage.

It turns out it was a large excavator being hauled on a flatbed semi-truck.  The driver apparently had neglected to “lower the boom” enough. A highway department employee told the Bench Sitters the guilty guy was “apologetic and cooperative.”  Imagine his insurance company is not too happy however.

By looking at several cameras, they were able to identify the truck, trailer (from Campbell County) and now the WYDOT engineering department is designing the project for some major repairs.

We know some of the local people who are sick with the Covid Virus. A few are very sick. They all have one thing in common – they decided not to get vaccinated for one reason or another. 

Some say they just “procrastinated” or thought they were in good health and it probably wouldn’t be any worse than the flu if they did catch it.

Guess it comes under the heading of “whoops.”

We hope they all recover without any lasting damage to their health.

Old Bad News claims he has proof Covid has been around for years. “I know a dozen locals who act and talk like they have serious brain damage and I’ll bet it was caused by this virus before they gave it a name.”

Meanwhile, back down at the feed store we are hearing complaints about how low the streams coming off the mountain are flowing.  Some that usually run at least a trickle into the fall have stopped completely. 

Pumping or hauling water for livestock is unusual, but apparently needed in a few places.  Anyone driving around the county has noticed a lot of dry reservoirs.

And when the California smoke cleared out for a couple of days we all noticed the last of the snow banks on the peaks have melted away . . . just grey granite showing now.

Wyoming Jack O’Brian used to tell dudes the creek was so low he had seen trout carrying canteens.

Local bow hunters are going to be happy with cooler weather which is supposed to roll into the area over the weekend, and we hear there is even a possibility of a little snow in the mountains for the “pointy-stick” elk hunters.

And a couple of the early morning coffee group confirmed these early season bow hunters sometimes answer each other’s bugle calls and end up hunting each other down.

Good way to get acquainted with fellow hunters.

Local football fans were all smiles this week after the Bison got past Green River 20-19, the UW Cowboys won another thriller with last minute scores and the Denver Broncos handled the New York Giants on the road.

A good start for the season. The only downer was Pittsburg beating Josh Allen and the Bills.

The oldest member of the Bench Sitters spends so much time telling us about how it used to be around here that the boys have named him “Back When.”  This week he told us the best bootleg beer in Buffalo during the prohibition was made and sold by a family named Lager who lived on Charles Street (now Lobban). He claims they had no problems with the law because they were among their best customers. 

We’ll keep you posted on things you didn’t really need to know again next week.

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By Tim Mandese, Cowboy State Daily. 

Wyoming’s active coronavirus case total decreased by 144 on Thursday from Wednesday. 

The Wyoming Department of Health received reports of 677 recoveries among those with confirmed or probable cases Thursday. 

At the same time, the state reported 348 new laboratory-confirmed and 185 new probable cases, leaving Wyoming with 4,024 active cases for Thursday. 

Thirteen counties have more than 100 active cases, with eight having more than 200. Natrona County continued to lead the state in active cases with 773; Laramie had 405; Campbell had 331; Fremont had 302; Sweetwater 297; Uinta 268; Sheridan 250; Park 202; Converse 154; Lincoln 145; Hot Springs 123; Teton 122; Albany 101; Carbon 96; Goshen 86; Washakie 68; Crook 62; Platte 50; Johnson 49; Big Horn 48; Weston 44; Sublette had 41, and Niobrara had 27.

Active cases are determined by adding the total confirmed and probable coronavirus cases diagnosed since the illness first surfaced in Wyoming on March 12, 2020, subtracting the number of recoveries during the same period among patients with both confirmed and probable cases and taking into account the number of deaths attributed to the illness.

 The new confirmed and probable cases brought to 79,830 the number of people diagnosed with coronavirus since the first case was detected in Wyoming in March 2020. Of those, 74,927 have recovered.

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By Ryan Lewallen, County 17

Campbell County Sheriff’s deputies will seek the arrest of a 57-year-old man who reportedly crashed into a gooseneck trailer on Little Powder River Road while intoxicated, Undersheriff Quentin Reynolds said Thursday.

Deputies were notified of the incident around 12:07 p.m. yesterday afternoon by a resident who called and reported seeing a 1998 Buick sedan leave the roadway and crash into the trailer, per Reynolds.

The resident reported that the driver of the vehicle was unconscious and bleeding.

When deputies arrived, the 57-year-old male was up and walking around, albeit with a large amount of blood gushing out of his head and face, Reynolds said.

While investigating the scene, he continued, deputies saw several empty beer cans in the vehicle. When asked, the male allegedly admitted to drinking two beers prior to driving.

He was transported to Campbell County Health for his injuries, where deputies were denied access to him while he received care, Reynolds said. Deputies sought and were granted a warrant to obtain a blood sample from the male before leaving him in the care of hospital staff.

He will be arrested upon his release for driving while intoxicated. He will also be cited for failing to maintain a single lane of travel, expired registration, no insurance, and no valid driver’s license, per Reynolds.

The crash on Little Powder River Road resulted in over $1,000 worth of damage both to the Buick and to the trailer.

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