Stateside with Rosalea Barker: Wyoming

In 3D! Dick, Dandies and Democracy! Taking last things first—after all, WY comes last in any alphabetical list of US states—women’s suffrage came early to the 44th. Even before it attained statehood on March 27, 1890, Wyoming Territory had enacted women’s suffrage. According to the state government’s official website:

“In 1869, Wyoming's territorial legislature became the first government in the world to grant ‘female suffrage’ by enacting a bill granting Wyoming women the right to vote. The act was signed into law on December 10 of that year by Governor A.J. Campbell.

“Less than three months after the signing of that act, on February 17, 1870, the ‘Mother of Women Suffrage in Wyoming’-Ester Hobart Morris of South Pass City-became the first woman ever to be appointed a justice of the peace. Laramie was also the site for the first equal suffrage vote cast in the nation by a woman-Mrs. Louisa Swain on September 6, 1870.”

A somewhat more controversial act signed into law inserted a State Code into Wyoming’s Constitution. It is taken verbatim from the book Cowboy Ethics, and is summarized as follows on the Secretary of State’s website:

i) Live each day with courage;

(ii) Take pride in your work;

(iii) Always finish what you start;

(iv) Do what has to be done;

(v) Be tough, but fair;

(vi) When you make a promise, keep it;

(vii) Ride for the brand;

(viii) Talk less, say more;

(ix) Remember that some things are not for sale;

(x) Know where to draw the line.

The subtitle of Cowboy Ethics is What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West, and it was written by Jim Owen, whose Wall Street career spanned 40 years, until he became disillusioned with it in 2004.

So much for Cowboys; what about the Cowgirls? Well, there’s always the Cheyenne Dandies, a team of trick riders who appear at events featuring Wyoming’s official sport—the rodeo—and in the Cheyenne Frontier Days Parade. Arlene Kensinger, who was inducted into the Miss Rodeo America Hall of Fame (where even cowgirls get their dues) in 2004, was instrumental in the formation of the Cheyenne Dandies. You can watch a 2008 ditty about the Dandies on YouTube. (Don’t bother if you’re a doggie; it is seemingly of no interest to you.)

Cheyenne Frontier Days “began as a simple one-day celebration in September of 1897 when a group of volunteers from the Cheyenne business community thought it would be fun and profitable to stage a western celebration. Today, more than 2,500 volunteers work around the calendar to produce an event that borders on two weeks long and includes parades, pancake breakfasts, world-class concerts, chili and chuckwagon cookoffs, carnival, exhibits, Indian Village, military open houses and performances by the United States Air Force Thunderbirds and, of course the event that started it all-nine Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) rodeos.”

(OK, so anyone would think this was written at the Lazy B Ranch—I’m just cuttin’ and pastin’ for all I’m worth.)

But what about the third—and direst—D? Dick Cheney represented Wyoming in the US Congress from 1978, being re-elected five times. Wyoming, with a population of only half-a-million, has only one US Rep. But Cheney first went to Washington in 1968 as an aide to William Steiger from Wisconsin, and worked as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld when President Ford appointed Rumsfeld White House Secretary General in 1974—a post that Cheney himself eventually filled when Ford nominated Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

Although he was born in Nebraska, Cheney was raised in Wyoming and still lives there. In February, 2006, gun-totin’ Cheney shot a hunting companion at a South Texas ranch. Harry Whittington, who was 78 years old at the time, almost died from a heart attack caused by a birdshot pellet lodged near his heart. All of which is old news except that a couple of weeks ago Whittington was reported as saying that he had no comment to make on whether Cheney had ever apologized to him for the incident.

It was such a startling revelation that the normally bland DC correspondent on my local TV news station prefaced it with the words “Get this!”

--PEACE—

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

© Scoop Media