News From Nowhere

Issue 10: March 16, 2012
Published in, by and for the Wyoming community
In this issue:
all the news fit for a pint
Photograph courtesy of Tim Chesnut
On Being Western
Bi-weekly ramblings by The Motley Fool
Maybe you came for the cheap education.
Maybe you washed up here when you ran out
of cash traveling cross-country. Maybe you’ve
been here your whole life. Regardless, you
probably ind westerners a hard-bitten, owly,
clannish lot. But you’re part of western culture
now, so let’s examine what that means.
There are some sureire ways to tip folks off
that you’re not from around here. If you leave
the gates open when they’re closed (or close
them out of politeness when they’re open),
you’re likely to get a tongue-lashing
for your troubles.
And never ask a rancher how many head of
cattle he or she has, or how many acres there
are on the ranch. If they want to tell you,
they’ll volunteer the information on their own.
Ask such questions and you’ll brand yourself
an outlander. And anyway, you’ll never get a
straight answer on acreage, because another
Western tendency is to count state and federal
lands that are leased for grazing (but owned
by the public) into the rancher’s private total.
Texans believe they’re westerners, but they
are not. Sure, they wear cowboy boots and
hats, but they never rode anything but a pickup truck in their life. But the real giveaway is
the way they talk. Texans are all about braggadocio and self-gloriication, egotistical blowhards who can’t wait to toot their own horn.
And these oil and gas execs that slither around
Cheyenne during the legislature in their
snakeskin boots all shined to a mirror relection—you can be sure that those boots never
saw a stirrup or kicked a pile of shit. These
impostors are known in western parlance as
continued on page 1
Pure Pigment Pastel Artists,
Gail Watford &
Vanda Edington
Show  March 24 th to April 14 th, 2012
Demonstration Saturday March 24 th, 2 to 4 PM
Meet the artists and get hands on experiencewith pastel.
Laramie Plains Civic Center , Suite 271
710 Garfield St.

Laramie, Wyoming
Phone 307.742.6574
www.gailwatford.com
vandaedington.blogspot.com
So you wanna be a Derby
Dame or Ref?
The Naughty Pines Derby Dames is looking for new skaters and referees to join
our ranks!
Join us to talk with our coach and skaters about roller derby, hear why we love
it, and learn how you can get involved!
Stay after and watch our practice, if you
like!
What: NPDD Quarterly Recruitment
Meeting
When: Monday, March 12 at 6 p.m.
Where: South Gym, Laramie Plains Civic
Center
Contact: Molly B’Damned: mollybdamned@gmail.com
If you can’t make this Monday, come on
Sunday the 18th or Monday the 26th
(same time, same place). It’ll be your last
chance to join for the next few months!
Miscarriage
By Jason
A man whose crimes would make a singer croon
And sad as sky on nights without a moon,
He came to her that Mississippi night
So drunk and weeping, primed to love or ight.
When Randy spoke, his lips would tremble sick,
A pain would quake his mind, and moving quick.
Her lonely summer whimpered, heart then sighed,
As she then felt no love for him inside.
It wasn’t that he touched her,
thought of someone else,
And it wasn’t even him, or even she herself.
But pain, you see, at bringing forth his child.
A day would come, her belly thumped, she smiled
And wished to leave her life and take the girl.
This is not her story—this is just the world.
All of It
By Grace Rollingwheel
One morning
After many mornings of your life
You wake and I wake early in February-Notice the crystal stars sparking in the inky dawn.
Dante was right looking up.
The pink and peach and gold of the sun’s world
Blooms on the horizon,
And your heart swells understanding
nothing and everything.
In this moment of Nature’s morning
You feel, I feel, something—
You have worked for, I have worked for
Waited for,
Years in the becoming—
We see this morning
We know this morning
How to love the world as Dante loved Beatrice.
We see
We know
How to live
P.S. TELL A FRIEND!
In this moment
In every moment.
Submissions@NewsfromNowhere.info
Page: 2
3 Months to Live: an avenging allegory
by Kevin Wrobetz
A Call to Arms for Artists
News From Nowhere plans to publish a directory for right-brain stuff, but we need your help! We would
like this directory to be a one-stop shop for anyone wishing to book a band for a gig, a photographer for
pictures of that special little poodle, or a painter for commission work. This directory will be absolutely
free and gratis to any artist or musician who would like to take advantage of it.
If you are a graphic artist, a sculptor, a con artist, a trick shot artist, a photographer, a performance
artist; whether you work in 2-D, 3-D, 4-D or some Zen macro singularity dimension that only cats can
see; if you are a musician playing any instrument from a list too long to mention here. . . Then, if you
are prepared to drink the Kool-Aid with us and get your name out there, please take advantage of this
offer. E-mail your contact information, a brief description of what you do (paint, take photos, sculpt,
play and sing, etc.) and, if you’d like, where you have shown your work or performed in the past to editor@newsfromnowhere.info. We plan to update this directory periodically, so take advantage now to get
maximum public exposure!
Preserving your precious moments at affordable prices!
Wedding, engagement, pin-up & portrait photography.
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Prefer snail mail? Mail any material to PO Box 103, Laramie WY 82073
In Response to
“Of Feminists and Chivalry”
by Laura Reinhold
After reading “Of Feminists and Chivalry” in the
fourth issue of News from Nowhere (Feb. 3, 2012),
I felt compelled to respond since, on various occasions, I myself have been accused of being the
“hard-edged” feminist whom the author, a Mr. “Motley Fool,” refers to in his column. To recapitulate,
in “Of Feminists and Chivalry,” Mr. Fool recalls a
discussion he once had with a self-proclaimed feminist who allegedly found it offensive when men held doors
open for her because, “women
aren’t weaklings, and they can
open the door for themselves.”
Mr. Fool admits that he is a repeat offender of this and other
“chivalrous” behaviors, which,
he claims, “[put] women on a pedestal.” While Mr.
Fool afirms an alliance with feminists on certain
issues—e.g. reproductive rights, domestic violence
protection, access to affordable child care, etc.—he
has “always resisted the label” of “feminist” because
of what he views as a “hard-edged element to the
feminist movement that is quite aggressive in its
pursuit of women’s rights” to the point of “[trampling] on the rights of the opposite sex.” He goes
on to request a truce with feminists on behalf of
Wyoming’s chivalrous men, stating that feminists’
“‘battle of the sexes’ tone” has alienated these individuals who would otherwise be feminists’ greatest ally in what Mr. Fool understands to be the
movement’s predominant struggle—“protection of
women” against domestic violence. Where feminist
women—who “are seen as liberals” and therefore
“are not received as credible spokespersons”—have
failed to make political progress, chivalrous men
shall succeed by becoming “a messenger to whom
the ears of Wyoming actually will be open
and receptive.”
Now, most of us can probably agree that one of
the most laudable characteristics of a democracy
is the right of each individual to voice his or her
opinion on virtually any topic, even those of which
he may not possess an ounce of expertise but that
nevertheless affect him. I know only two or three
experts in the ield of economics, yet without exception all of my friends and acquaintances voice
their opinions of the current state of the economy,
how it got that way, what can be done to ix it and
who’s responsible for its failure or success at any
given time; and these are the opinions upon which
most people inform their votes. Like the economy,
feminism is a hot-button issue that elicits stronglyvoiced opinions from folks with varying degrees of
expertise. Feminism differs from many other political topics of our day because it tends to hit closer to
home for most individuals (it’s no coincidence that
an early feminist catch-phrase was “The personal
is political”). As evidenced by Mr. Fool’s anecdote of
a tow-truck driver who described his personal experience with domestic violence, abundant are the
prosaic encounters with issues that fall under the
broad umbrella of feminism or
women’s rights, whether as an
example of the need for continued social reform or as a feminism success-story. As a result of being such a “personal”
political issue, feminism is a
touchy topic of discussion—a
proverbial mine-ield of political incorrectness and
its resulting hostilities. I would like to praise Mr.
Fool for candidly approaching a sensitive topic that
tends to generate heated debate and, often, irreconcilable sentiments of conlict and is therefore
I feel that Mr. Fool’s
column relects a gross
misunderstanding of
contemporary Western
feminism.
Page: 4
continued on page 6
Upcoming Events from Studio WYO Presents:
WY MAP It
March 22nd: 7PM Itajuba (Brazilian Jazz)
@ The Gardens
April 19th: 7PM Catch Bees @ The Gardens
GIS, Graphics, and Photography
Motley Fool, continued from page 1
‘all hat and no cattle.’ Trying too hard to ‘get
your western on’ comes off as foppishness, and
westerners tend not to suffer fools easily. In
the West, to be called a ‘drugstore cowboy’ is to
suffer a withering insult.
A westerner will never tell you how great he
or she is; they’ll show you. If called upon to assess their own talents they will become uncomfortable and in the end will tend to undersell
their abilities.
Which brings us to one of the fundamental
traits of being western: It’s not who you are
that sets your value as an individual, it’s what
you can do. Are you capable? Useful? Do you
make a beeline for the hardest, dirtiest tasks?
Are you at your best in a crisis? These are
traits that are valued in the West. Nobody
cares about your family name or history. How
much money you have in your stock portfolio (I
was going to say ‘ bank account;’ how quaint) is
irrelevant because there are plenty of useless
trustafarians, rich fools who are only wealthy
because of the piles of dough Mommy and
Daddy set aside for them. Being western is all
about doing it on your own; it is the self-made
man or woman who is the paragon.
But there’s a subclass of Wyoming families
who would like to cut against this grain, bragging about being “a ifth-generation rancher”
(see “self-glorifying, egotistical blowhards”
above). The state legislature is full of these
types. The explanation for this paradox is
rooted in the 1870s and ‘80s, when fancy-pants
aristocrats from England bought massive land
holdings in Wyoming and set up their second
and third sons (of no consequence in the Old
World and cut out of the inheritance) as land
barons on the windblown prairies of the New.
Thus the sense of “entitlement” of many of
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these families can be traced back to the festering envy of scions of minor nobility who felt
kicked to the curb, whose titles meant little,
who looked for the next lower person to kick to
assuage their bruised (but still considerable)
egos. And they engaged in what was literally
class warfare by hiring mercenaries (of course,
too prissy to do their own dirty work) to clear
out the small independent ranchers trying to
scratch out a living in the same general areas.
The Johnson County Range War was the bestknown of these campaigns, and the land barons running amok were only brought to heel
when trainloads of blue-uniformed soldiers
showed up and proved that they were from the
government and were here to help.
I can hardly visit the subject of ifth-generation Wyomingites without calling attention to
the irony that some of Wyoming’s residents
who suffer the greatest discrimination at the
hands of “real westerners”—the Arapaho, the
continued at NewsfromNowhere.info
Page: 5
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Reinhold, continued from page 4
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frequently avoided in most individuals’ quotidian
discourse. I admire the author’s straightforward
and polite way of stating his somewhat unorthodox views on a subject that frightens most people
away, and he seems to have a fairly good grasp of
some of the biggest human rights challenges that
our beloved state faces. However, I feel that Mr.
Fool’s column relects a gross misunderstanding of
contemporary Western feminism. Mr. Fool’s simpliied conclusions and sweeping generalizations
fail to approximate an accurate illustration of the
feminist movement, most signiicantly of its development over recent years. Based on my experience,
I would hazard a guess that the views expressed
by Mr. Fool are representative of those held by the
general population; therefore, I appreciate that the
author has given me the opportunity to attempt to
publicly dispel some of the myths and assumptions
about feminism and its practitioners.
Like any political or philosophical movement, feminism is complex, varied, constantly morphing and
adapting, and cannot be neatly characterized by
those who have dedicated their whole academic careers to studying it, much less by a layperson who
thinks himself or herself an expert simply because
he or she has a particular set of experiences based
on the possession of one kind of genitalia or another. The movement has gone through various phases—sometimes referred to as “waves”—that relected certain political and social needs of a particular
time period, not to mention various divisions that
have occurred when a consensus on what should be
the focus of feminism couldn’t be reached. While it
is beyond the scope of this article to talk about any
of the categories in depth or, indeed, even mention
them all, that the feminist movement can be classiied in subdivisions such as cultural feminism,
material feminism, paciist feminism, social feminism, radical feminism and ecofeminism, just to
Page: 6
name a few, illustrates its complexity and variety.
Mr. Fool’s claim that the “most vocal” representation of feminism in “public conversation on gender
issues” contains a “hard-edged element”—one that
“tramples the rights of the opposite sex” in its “aggressive […] pursuit of women’s rights”—is simply
unfounded. To be fair, there have been certain feminist voices throughout history seeking to reverse
the effects of centuries of oppression by degrading
and belittling men; but only by turning a deaf ear
towards the majority of public feminist discourse
could one believe that these extreme examples represent the loudest voice of the movement. It’s possible that this negative, stereotypical view of all
feminists as “feminazis” inds its origins in popular
culture portrayals (such as in the opening scene of
the 1999 movie Boondock Saints), which paint all
those who subscribe to feminist ideals as old, unattractive, miserably bitter, “butch” lesbians who go
out of their way to enact vengeance upon everyone
with a penis. We must not forget that this same ratings-hungry machine made all Laramie inhabitants
look like bigoted, cousin-loving, uneducated rednecks in the wake of the Matthew Shepard tragedy.
So, if feminism isn’t about “trampling on the rights
of men” or “attempting to empower women to degrade and belittle men,” what is the movement
about and what are its implications in our modern society? To offer, at least in some small way,
a response to this question I refer to the words of
contemporary feminist, author and social activist,
bell hooks: “Feminism is not simply a struggle to
end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that
women have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that
permeates Western culture on various levels—sex,
race, class to name a few—and a commitment to
reorganizing U.S. society so that self-development
can take precedence over imperialism, economic
continued on page 7
Not Your Average Americana Jamboree
By Jamy Cabre
All right, all you fans of bluegrass/folk Americana (like the Pine Hill Haints): get ready. Larry and His Flask
are coming to town to usurp that hallowed spot in your hearts formerly illed by your last favorite band. And
they will not be gentle.
Currently on tour with Lucero (who will be playing in FoCo the 29th and Denver on the 30th and 31st—but I
bet you already knew that), the dudes will be playing in The Parlor on March 27th, with local favorite jug band
(sans jug) Rat Trapper kicking off the night at 9pm.
The Flask started as a hard-partying punk band before exploding into the current six-man powerhouse of
guitars, mandolin, upright bass, trombone, trumpet, harmonica and drums. I have watched all the live footage available on YouTube and I cannot more aptly put this band’s energy across better than this passage from
their webpage: “a blurry blend of lightning fast string-band picking, gorgeous nods to old-school country, and
sublime multi-part harmonies, all presented through a prism of punk chaos. The boys have grown and changed,
yes, but their shows are still gloriously physical displays of live music’s sheer power. In other words, keep your
eyes peeled, or risk taking the heavy end of Jesse Marshall’s lailing, stand-up bass right between the eyes.”
This is going to be a ridiculously cheap and fun way to spend a Tuesday night, lexing out the windows of
Buckhorn and making dust pour down from the ceiling!
MAKING SOMEONE’S DAY, EVERY DAY!
Consignments: Sat., Mon., Tues.
Open Monday-Saturday, 10-6
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Reinhold, continued from page 6
expansion and material desires.” This eloquently
worded deinition exposes the feminist movement’s
updated vision of a utopian society where artiicial
divisions and their accompanying arbitrary assignment of hierarchical value evaporate. I say “updated vision” because the early Western women’s
liberation movement was analogous to allowing
women to act more masculine by abandoning the
traditionally feminine realm of the home and participating in activities that previously had belonged
exclusively to men (e.g. own property, vote, receive
an education etc). The elimination of any form of
systematic categorical oppression permits us to value everyone equally, thus allowing true individual
freedom to exist. How this “tramples on the rights
of men” is something I fail to see, and something for
which Mr. Fool’s column fails to provide evidence.
In the ideal society envisioned by bell hooks, feminists could not hope to “trample” on men’s rights
because there would be no categorization of the
male individual into a gendered group that could
be subjugated.
If, in the pursuit of its idealistic vision, the feminist movement is seen as antagonistic towards
males, perhaps it is because after centuries of virtually unchallenged universal dominion over what
Simone de Beauvoir calls “the second sex,” men
have been effectively conditioned to feel entitled to
the power they, as a group, exercise over women
and other subjugated members of society. In order
for women to receive more freedom and rights, men
must relinquish the control they took for granted
and lose some of the beneits they reaped from the
power disparity, such as free domestic labor.
Now, to return to the issue of men holding doors
for women, I see absolutely no problem with this
gesture. Rather, I would feel quite offended if anyone—man, woman or child—let a door slam in face
as he or she walked through it directly ahead of
me, and I know I’m not alone in this sentiment. In
continued on page 7
Page: 7
Reinhold, continued from page 7
Wyoming, where a sense of traditional courtesy still
prevails, most people hold doors for whoever is behind them.
While the act of holding a door is not in and of
itself offensive, Mr. Fool’s explanation of why feminists shouldn’t criticize this behavior I found rather
disturbing, and that his interlocutor in the article
didn’t point out the faults in this explanation leads
me to have serious doubts that she is the feminist
she claims to be. Mr. Fool writes that “the same
men who hold doors open for women typically open
doors for children and the elderly of either sex too”
(emphasis mine). This explanation demonstrates
that the author does, indeed, hold doors open for
women because he views them as weaker members
of society, the same way children and the elderly
are. Amused, I had to ask myself as I read this
poorly reasoned explanation if Mr. Fool opens doors
for other subaltern members of society as well—for
example, ethnic minorities, gays and the disabled—
and I felt a twinge of sympathy for all the white,
healthy, middle-aged men that get doors slammed
in their faces by the author because he doesn’t view
them as helpless enough to be deserving
of common courtesy.
Mr. Fool’s perception of women as weak and powerless is also evident in his conclusion that feminists need to stop the “polarization” that “results”
from their “‘battle of the sexes’ tone” and start to
“recruit” chivalrous men such as himself as “credible spokespersons […] to whom the ears of Wyoming will actually be open and receptive.” Besides
the obvious fallacy of the implication that feminists
are responsible for gender polarization in our society, Mr. Fool’s admonition that feminists should recruit chivalrous men to speak on their behalf rather
than condemn them is nothing short of patronizing,
condescending and antagonistic. Contemporary
feminist and literary critic Gayatri Spivak poses
the question, “Can the subaltern speak?,” to which
Mr. Fool responds with a resounding “no, and neither can they open doors.”
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Interested in distributing News From Nowhere? Email us at info@newsfromnowhere.info!
Page: 8
Page: 9
Turn
this
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mother
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SIDEWAYS
Save the Date!
4th Local Food Gathering
Saturday, April 14th from 12-5pm at Whiting School (24th and Sheridan).
Sessions in four tracks: local food production, current issues in local food, home production, and cooking. Keynote on Farm to School.
Also, drop off your soil sample and we’ll arrange for it to be tested. The LFG is $5 at the door ($3 for seniors and free for students).
Register now for a special soils workshop on testing soil, reading test results, and building healthy soil from 10-11am. The cost is $10
and includes entry to the Local Food Gathering. Register at http://soilworkshop.eventbrite.com/
Program details will be at http://laramielocalfood.webs.com/
We at NFN pride ourselves on being so proletarian that we pretend not to think about money,
focusing instead on bringing to you, our reader, the best in “news”, writing and art that the community has to offer and on interesting experiments with issile material and human reproductive
behavior. That said, we want to keep NFN free on the streets so there will never be a cover price.
We also want to keep our advertising rates dirt cheap to our select cadre of the hippest and coolest businesses in town. Nevertheless the monkey must be fed, especially since we have tripled
our print run since the irst issue to keep up with demand here and in Cheyenne. So here is our
shameless appeal. If you enjoy your weekly dose of NFN, do your karma a favor and help us grow
this beast. You can do that by pitching in at the folding party...held at secret locations throughout
the Lower East Side of Wyoming, or by donating directly to the cause by sending cash, checks,
bearer bonds or gold dust to Box 103, Our Fair City, 82073. Forget about getting a totebag or
coffee cup for your gift, about all we can offer you is that warm, fuzzy feeling in your tummy that
comes from conirming the old saw that “It Takes a Village to Raise a Ruckus.”
see you nowhere
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Photograph courtesy of Robert Kirkwood
Motley Fool, continued from 11
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Page: 11