Today’s topics are winter weather, a good
honor for one man and a bad one for another plus a discussion of a new way to
spend time in lodging.
In
Buffalo, Jim Hicks quotes a local columnist named Sagebrush Sven with the
following:
“One
very cold morning Nancy Schiffer of Kaycee had agreed to drive to Buffalo for
an early breakfast event. She was on the program and is the kind of
person who never fails to do her part.
“A suicidal antelope had crashed into the
front of her car, so Nancy’s only transportation was a four-wheel drive ranch
pickup she does not usually drive.
“She got it started in the 16-degree
weather and was pushing buttons to get the defrosters and heater going when the
sun roof suddenly opened. ‘I don’t know why they would put a sunroof in a
pickup!’ says Nancy. ‘Nobody ever uses it.’
“Try as she might, the roof would not
close. Nancy drove to Buffalo with the roof open.
“Who says Wyoming ranch gals can’t handle
a little adversity.”
Hicks,
the long-time former publisher of the Buffalo
Bulletin, was honored during a big soiree at the Boys and Girls Clubs of the
Big Horns recently in Buffalo. More than 300 people showed up at 6:30 a.m. to
celebrate all he has done for that part of Wyoming and for helping the clubs.
Governors
Mead, Freudenthal, and Sullivan showed up along with Sen. John Barrasso.
As
a publisher, Hicks had always supported the clubs and when financing was
threatened, he stepped up in his role as a County Commissioner to fight for
continued funding.
While Hicks had long supported the
efforts of Boys & Girls Club, he gained a new appreciation for the work of
the club in October 2009.
Hicks recalls: “At that time, the local
club was still starting out. They were doing a fundraising and Gov. Freudenthal
was the keynote speaker. I was so impressed that he would take the time to
support the Buffalo club. He obviously thought it was important, and that
motivated me to come and learn more.
“Freudenthal was talking about one young
man in particular who had every reason to be in trouble,” Hicks said. “But now here
he was going to college. That night, it became clear to me that this was a
program making a difference in the community, and it was catching some kids
that might go through the cracks otherwise. From then on, the Boys & Girls
Club was added to the list of organizations that I support.”
Youth organizations are a big deal in Wyoming.
Great things are happening all over the state with them.
In Dubois, though, the Boy Scouts of
America have taken away their association with one of the most famous
scoutmasters in Wyoming.
Silver Beaver honoree Joe Brandl is a
pioneer and a tremendous outdoorsman. He made all of Wyoming proud last year
when he competed on the Discovery Channel’s Naked
and Afraid and was superb, surviving all 21 days and keeping his partner
alive and safe.
Brandl’s prowess in the outdoors is
unsurpassed.
But he apparently has his own ideas of
how Scouts should learn to behave in the outdoors and thus got crossways with
authorities.
He plans to continue to work with youth
but doing it without being under his long-time banner of the Boy Scouts.
Meanwhile, switching subjects to tourism,
the international travel outfit AirBnB announced that Wyoming generated $1.1
million in lodging tax revenues from the 1,600 host sites in the Cowboy State
in the last year.
For a while AirBnb did not collect
lodging taxes, which gave it an advantage over conventional hotels and motels.
There were 56,000 visits to Wyoming AirBnB sites last year, which was a 130
percent increase over the previous year.
When I was on the Lander Planning
Commission, we occasionally would get some kind of request for a homeowner to
become an AirBnb site.
Neighbors would get upset over noise and
unusual traffic when a house zoned in the best residential area in town suddenly
became a bustling locale, much like a bed and breakfast, humming and buzzing
all day and all night long.
There are more than 50 places in the
Lander area, alone, that are on the AirBnB web site seeking visitors. These are
ordinary homeowners and citizens competing against traditional lodging
properties to rent space to travelers.
It was an eye-opener and typical of the
some of new trends popping up across America.
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