Pat Stuart
Newspaper Columns
Participatory Fakery
Collective mythmaking or participatory fakery–creating myths or believing in lies, everyone does it and it’s helping to split the country.
Book Banning
While book banning in general infringes on freedom of speech, there are exceptions, particularly where children are concerned. This column explores whether it does any good to ban any books when children have access to much worse content on social media.
Freedom and Responsibility
Freedom plus responsibility equals a civil society. Freedom minus responsibility equals anarchy.
Do We Deserve the Government We Get?
“People get the government they deserve.” My colleagues and I, moving from country to country, repeated that accepted truth without question. We said it again during every coup, in every civil war, on each occasion of insurgency and insurrection. I said it to my...
A Horse and Events Center
Pat Stuart Books and ColumnsA Horse and Events Center for Cody? Cody Enterprise 12 December 2020 Whatever happend to the push for a Cody Horse Events Center? Actually, the idea of adding this economic driver to Cody’s infrastructure has been around a long time. It’s...
The Importance of Unity
Pat Stuart Books and Columns The Importance of Unity by Pat Stuart Cody Enterprise, 1/19/21 Growing up in Cody, I understood that I’d been privileged in so many ways. The most important, I only now realize, was a sense of unity. “We didn’t have cliques,” one of my...
Adaptive Reuse – The Powell Library
Being in “no way adequate,” according to experts, with the town in an budget bind, Powell, WY, is hoping an “adaptive reuse” plan will work.
Our Psychic Break – Change
Pat Stuart Books and ColumnsOur Psychic Break - Change Cody Enterprise 6 January 2021 “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette allegedly (and incorrectly) said just before the French revolted and lopped off her head with a then new invention—the guillotine. ...
Are They Wyoming Republicans
Do Wyoming Republicans believe in key tenets of the traditional Republican Party? States rights, the constitution? They don’t act that way.
They Won’t Go Away
Pat Stuart Books and ColumnsMcCarthyism to Trumpyism Cody Enterprise 22 December 2020 McCarthyism: a campaign or practice that uses false allegations and investigations to accomplish an end. You don’t see that done successfully too often. Thank heavens! McCarthyism...
Lakshmi, the Library Dog
Lakshmi, a standard poodle, tolerated people, accepting as she matured that she had responsibilities and learning to do them well. These included listening to children trying to read as well as accompanying me in my travels. The children did improve and my journeys became more enjoyable. Until, all too soon, her life ended. RIP, Lakshmi love.
Liberal Airhead
Pat Stuart Newspaper ColumnsRecently Outed 'Liberal Airhead' Cody Enterprise, 10 November 2020 Authoritarian tendencies can be tested. More, according to an NPR interviewee, many Americans have taken such a test. It shows, he said, that 20% of us believe in an...
Art: A Great Economic Multiplier
Pat Stuart Newspaper Columns ART: A Great Economic Multiplier Cody Enterprise, 26 May 2020 The City of Cody drastically raised the Cody Art League’s rent not too long ago, coming close to pricing it out of the old museum building and out of existence. Obviously, none...
Voting. The Great American Experiment
Our democracy rests on the radical experiment of citizen’s voting, a privilege we all need to exercise if we’re to retain our freedoms.
My Property or Yours: Adverse Possession
Adverse possession is one way of losing your title to your property through inattention. It almost happened to me.
What We’ll Remember
When we look back on the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ll remember the final events first, memory being malleable and fickle.
Huffing and Puffing for Memory
A personal experiment to test the effects of exercise on memory. The results? Poor.
Home in Uncertain Times
Being forced to remain at home has its advantages like more outside activities and internet possibilities including TED-ED.
The Road to …
Try talking to relatives about death. A horse eyeing a rattlesnake is less skittish than they. But death is an inescapable reality we all must face.
Museums, History, and Doom
Powell, Wyoming’s Homesteader Museum spells out our past and marks the way to the future, providing the area with a valuable reflection of our identity and the health of our community.
What’s in a Name: Esports
Should colleges be supporting the computer gaming industry; ignoring the negative impact on our youth and giving legitimacy to the idea of gaming as sport.
There Ought to Be a Law
As the state’s lawmakers meet, they will add another 200 or so laws to the books. Should they?
Retooling
New job skills a necessity in your life? Visit your public library either physically or online for help learning new skills and retooling old ones.
Who Could Ask for More
Other cultures provide an opportunity to see social capital at work in ways that our libraries provide here.
On Citizenship and Consciences
The Bible tells us: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. With so much of that going on, it’s become extremely difficult to be good citizens.
What Really Makes Us Great
What makes us great? We do. We make ourselves and our community great through our care for ourselves and each other.
Saving the World
Counting on the debt-laden consumer to spend in order to save the economy is like asking me to save the world.
Two Trees
Pat Stuart Books and Columns Two Trees by Pat Stuart Powell Tribune, 27 August 2019 You know them. Or maybe you don’t. Where you turn if you’re taking visitors to the Japanese Relocation Center Museum. Those two big cottonwoods? For many years now, they’ve been a...
Mind Bugs in the Equality State
Pat Stuart Books and Columns Mind Bugs in the Equality State Powell Tribune, 29 June 2019 We’re the “Equality State,” a name evoked often this year as we look back on 150 years of women having the vote. Me, I love the name, the concept of equality and the challenges...
Heart Mountain: Blizzard of 1949
Seventy-six people perished in the Blizzard of 1949. It closed down life in the Heart Mountain camp, leaving us cold and miserable but alive.
Heart Mountain: To the End
A sense of community settled on the camp after the shared blizzard experience, and it became a community for its last two years.
Heart Mountain: Winter Comes
A description of life in the former WWII Japanese relocation center as recycled into a housing area for Bureau of Reclamation employees from a kid’s perspective, covering the months leading up to the great blizzard of 1949.
Heart Mountain – A Kid Paradise
The Bureau of Reclamation’s Shoshone Project gave the US its last homesteaders and a great example of recycled housing. Here is part of the story.
Travel – The New Normal
Whether via letting your fingers do the traveling through their control of your TV remote or doing it in person, travel is most rewarding when it includes meaningful interactions.
Sunday Driving
Sunday, after-church, family drives around the county, I suspect, was as much about checking out the neighbors as it was about recreation. It definitely was not for the faint of heart given the state of the roads and our mountainous terrain.
What Bang for the Buck
Wyoming’s sovereign wealth ranks among the 100 richest in the world. But who would know it with the legislature poor mouthing and thinking of adding new taxes.
Shutdown
Failure to either create a good budget or pass appropriations bills is just plain bad government.
Then and Now
Much has changed in Park County since its homesteading days, but it’s almost as difficult to make a living.
