Halloween: make it fun and safe

Snow White took the apple from the stranger but Powell children should not.

With Halloween night on the horizon, children are bouncing off the walls with excitement. And why not? The pumpkin carving, the costumes, the spooky decorations and the loot at the end of a rousing night of trick-or-treating —candy.

While the kids are unable to contain themselves some parents are fretting about the fear of poisoned apples or, on the less scary side, a sugar-rush tummy ache.

"Some basic parental oversight will go a long way," said Powell Police Chief Tim Feathers.

The Nebraska Regional Poison Center (NRPC) offers several pieces of advice to parents seeking a spooky night of Halloween fun, ranging from nighttime precautions to how to deal with the fear of getting candy from strangers, as well as safe alternatives.

Halloween seems to be one of the only exceptions to kids not being let out of the house at night. Arming a child with a flashlight and some good traffic know-how are some of the best tools available. If a child is going trick-or-treating, they should be with an adult and a flashlight.

Feathers added parents should remind their older children of basic pedestrian safety. He emphasized the use of crosswalks and intersections instead of crossing mid-block. If children are old enough the go it alone or with friends, then it is advised they stay in their own neighborhood. But in a town the size of Powell a neighborhood isn't easily defined. In that instance the community has different organized events that can replace the door-to-door type of trick-or-treating.

Flashlights are the standard for night visibility since lanterns went out of fashion. There are hip light alternatives like glow sticks, but with anything hip, there are precautions. The NRPC warns that the liquid inside can cause burning and stinging if it comes into contact with eyes or the mouth. Parents are advised to keep glow sticks out of the hands of small children who might put them in their mouths.

Feathers said the level of patrol in town would be the same as usual.

"We will be placing emphasis on pedestrian safety," he said. "Drivers need to be aware and alert.”

Also if a child is wearing a mask, NRPC recommends that they allow for good visibility and breathing and should be removed when crossing streets. They also suggest that non-toxic face paint is a good alternative. Other aspects of the night cause concern namely the weather — this is Wyoming, after all. For that reason, costumes should be warm and well-fitting. Feathers added that costumes should be light in color or offer some sort of reflection.

Before sending the tikes to plunder the peasants, children should get in a full meal according to the NRPC this will help keep the paws off the candy until the treaters return home.

This also allows for more time to find those treats the kids should avoid. According to the poison center and most moms all treats should be inspected before snacking.
Homemade treats and unwrapped treats are a monstrous no. Other prizes can be given away as well lie pencils and party favor like items.

The alternatives to a night of trick-or-treating are endless. The NRPC suggests holding block parties. While those may be more popular in larger areas, Powell still has alternatives to offer.

High school students are invited to a dance at the Powell VFW, Southside elementary school offers a treat corral and local churches are hosting the Harvest at The Commons.
In addition to evening activities, downtown merchants will host trick-or-treating in the late afternoon.

Socialism in a capitalistic society

Is the federal government embracing socialism by bailing out ailing banks?

I am at bottom of the financial food chain pinching pennies while scratching my thinning pate. It certainly looks like socialism to me, no matter how unseemly my assumption seems.

Without voter assent, the federal government is spending my tax money to rescue banks and investors long on greed and short on foresight billions and billions and billions of dollars. That deserves and exclamation point, I exclaim: “Billions and billions and billions of dollars! Holy sh—, that’s a lot of smackers!”

President Bush tells us it is necessary to save our gaunt economy. Well, duh!

I have never written a hot check, taken a loan I couldn’t repay or maxed-out my credit cards, but I’m paying the darn tax piper just the same.

I’m just a poor working stiff. There is no golden parachute hanging in my closet, and no federal programs to buy me even a papier-mache parachute. My bail-out bucks are stashed in a modest savings account.

These days it’s pretty hard to pad my cash stash because I’m spending all my discretionary bread on grub.

I’m in the lap of luxury when I sup though. Soup, TV dinners and SpaghettiOs — Uh-Oh!

I know it wasn’t just overly avaricious financiers. Some Americans were over-extending their credit or swallowing hook, line and sinker, loan deals that they should have questioned right from the git-go.

The bailout kicked up the national debt to 11.3 trillion. That is a boat-load of zeros.

How long will it take the bourgeois to pay off a marker of that magnitude? I’ll be sporting a halo, plucking a harp or typing a story at that big newspaper in the sky long before that puppy will be paid off.

Two guys are jostling for the most powerful office in the land, perhaps the world.

Is it really, or are they just a couple of politicos jockeying for an egg-shaped office with a view? Are big businesses and powerful lobbyists that are throwing their weight around Washington, D.C. the true puppet masters? Whatever.

Come January it will probably be more of the same only with a pricier price tag and a new guy dissing the opposing party. The government will throw money at the problem, but won’t address it. Money is the problem, sure. But you can bet your sweet 1040-EZ that lack of government oversight is the essence of the dilemma.

Somebody needs to keep an eye on the wheeler-dealers that are playing fast and loose with our financial future.

Weigh in on National Forest drilling this week

The Shoshone National Forest is hosting a pair of public meetings tonight (Wednesday, Oct. 22) and tomorrow night in Cody and Clark, respectively. Up for discussion is a proposed natural gas well just inside the Forest's boundary near Clark.

Windsor Energy Group is looking to drill the new well just about a mile up the road from the rig that blewout in August of 2006, contaminating soil and groundwater.

The Cody meeting will be held tonight at 6 p.m. at the Big Horn Federal Bank on Stampede Avenue. Tomorrows night's will be held at 6:30 p.m. at the Clark Pioneer Recreation Center (That's Thursday, Oct. 23).

The Forest Service hosted a public field trip to the proposed site on Oct. 8 (pictured below).The relationship between some local residents and Windsor has been contentious at times in the blowout's aftermath.

There were a couple moments Oct. 23 that captured the friction.

For example, consider this exchange between Terry Ziehl of Iron Creek Energy (contracted to aid Windsor with the project), Clark Resource Council organizer Deb Thomas, and Clark resident Pam Murrell. Ziehl was explaining the how there are no guarantees that Windsor will find gas at the site.

“There’s only one man who knows that and He’s not here,” Ziehl said.

“He is here,” Thomas countered.

“And He’s not so happy,” finished Murrell.

There's no question that there are strong opinions and multiple stakeholders in the debate over oil production. Learn more and add your two cents at this week's meetings.

I'm not surprised when the wind blows

Speaking of campaign negativity, the following email arrived from Cynthia Lummis' campaign office today.

Title: DEM GOV ENDORSES DEM CANIDATE -- NO NEWS HERE

Cheyenne -- The following is a statement from Tucker Fagan, campaign manager for Lummis for Congress.

"So let me get this straight - the Democrat Governor of Wyoming, who endorsed and campaigned for Barack Obama in Wyoming and other states has decided to endorse the Democrat candidate for Congress in Wyoming. Is there anyone who honestly thinks he would have done anything different? I just wonder why Gov. Freudenthal would endorse Barack Obama months ago and it took him this long to endorse Gary Trauner - two weeks before the election. I mean, it's not like he was going to do anything differently, but is sure took him a long time to do it.

"This is only a surprise to those who are also surprised when the wind blows in Wyoming."

Given the back-and-forth between the Lummis and Trauner camps about negativity and the like, the tone of this email was indeed a surprise to this reader. Obviously, tensions are running high this close to the election, but it's an error for either side to forget about good judgement. It seems that Fagan may have hit the send button on this one a bit too quickly.

Yancy

Senate candidate Nick Carter's website hacked for Viagra

(UPDATE: 10/22 Carter's site has been fixed, sometime between yesterday and today.)

U.S. Senate candidate Nick Carter wants to improve U.S. health care, but contrary to appearances, providing universal access to $1 Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra isn't part of his plan.

According to Google search results, Nick Carter's campaign web site is entitled "1 cheap dollar viagra 100 mg viagra prices 1 cialis levitra sales."That's not a campaign strategy.

Apparently, a good while back, a hacker, hoping to boost their online Viainserted more than 1,200 lines of malicious coding in the landing page of Carter's website (nickforsenate.com/index.html), with the aim of boosting an online pharmaceutical operation.

Looking at Carter's web page in your browser, you might think I'm making this stuff up - and perhaps by the time you've read this, the Carter campaign will have removed the junk. (I told them about the problem on Saturday.) But as of this writing, the page contains more than 1,000 hidden links promoting male enhancement medications.

In fact, some 191,300 characters of the 196,700 that make up the webpage shouldn't be there.

The malicious coding isn't visible when you view the page in your web browser because it's been coded to be hidden from view. That's why no one - Carter campaign and their website provider, Blue Utopia included - noticed when it happened. The code was placed on the page at least a month or so ago. Who knows how many site visitors were scared off by the screwy descriptions.

The technique is nothing new. In fact, about a year ago, a highly similar attack was made on a website belonging to former Vice President Al Gore.

Usually, the point of inserting the code is to boost traffic to a given web page, and thus, in theory, boost sales of a site's under-the-counter pharmaceuticals.

Search engines like Google read the full code contained in a web page (such as what's pictured at right) - not just what an Internet surfer sees in their browsers. Therefore, links, whether viewable or not, can be used to temporarily increase a site's credibility.

Whenever you link to a webpage, (such as the Powell Tribune's), you're telling Google, Yahoo, and all the other search engines that the site you're linking to has value and relevance.

Generally, the more links a page has, the higher it will rank on search engine results pages, and that helps drive web surfers to the page. Hacking, of course, is a cheater's way of boosting traffic and revenue.

However, in this case, the hackers appear to have been utterly incompetent in that regard. They succeeded in adding links to 1,203 webpages in Carter's coding, but all of those links point to abandoned pages buried deep on Carnegie Mellon's web site that hold no opportunities to purchase Viagra (here's an example).

Whoever added the coding will probably remain a mystery, but it's highly unlikely that the attack was launched by a political opponent or, for that matter, anyone in the U.S.

It's similarly unlikely that the coding was a desperate attempt to draw over-50 voters from incumbent U.S. Senator John Barrasso's side.

Paddling for Obama

You may remember that last week in this exact space we posted a pic of a nifty homemade Palin-McCain sign planted in a Powell yard.

Manuel Olveda happened upon the photo and decided that as an Obama supporter, he was not about to be outdone.

Putting together and painting some leftover boat oars, a pool ladder, box, and a board, he crafted the below-pictured sign for the Obama-Biden campaign.Olveda is getting some of his leftover stuff together for a future garage sale, but he figured he "might as well" put his extra oars and ladder to creative use.

Sadly, the handmade McCain sign has since been replaced by some official ones.

In this writer's opinion, hand-crafted signage speaks volumes more about a candidate's appeal than shiny ones from some far-off campaign office.

Grants lacking common cents?

The Park County Homeland Security Department was recently awarded a pair of very specific grants from the state office of Homeland Security.

A precisely $143,357.69 grant will fund equipment purchases and training while an second package offers exactly $4,588.67 for Citizens Corp Program expenditures.

It left a clear question in Commissioner Jill Shockely Siggins' mind at the commissioner's Tuesday meeting.

"What are we going to do with the 67 cents?" she asked.

It was suggested that the office could perhaps buy a stamp.

Weird numbers are pretty typical for grants at the local level. By the time they've been handed down from Uncle Sam to Gov. Dave to county commissioners, the money has usually taken some screwy splits.

"They've always had cents since I've been here," said Park County Homeland Security Coordinator Martin Knapp. "I can ask (the state office), but I'm sure they'll have some patented answer."

You can actually view an old Citizen Corp cash formula breakdown on this Homeland Security pdf. Basically, every county gets a certain cut of the cash pie, plus additional funds based on population.

Commissioner Bucky Hall offered perhaps the sagest two cents on the subject.

"Just be glad we didn't get two-thirds of a cent," he quipped. "How would we spend that?"

Here's another reason for commissioners to be glad: this year's Citizen Corp grant is $16.53 more than Fiscal Year 2007.

That means the county can finally buy a copy of "Internet dating just bytes: A survivor's guide to Internet dating and relationships," which undoubtedly covers issues of domestic online security.

Thursday's Trib: Zoning, relocation camps, and sub $3 gas

A sampling of what you'll find in the Oct. 16 Powell Tribune, as illustrated by a few extra quotes:

"It’s kind of like putting a striped shirt next to plaid pants. It just doesn't work," Jim Zeigler, a resident concerned with the new development in the Water Tower West subdivision. Zeigler and other residents in the area of Avenue D and Edmonds Street are concerned that the new housing development next to their old neighborhood just won't fit in. Learn more about the issue in tomorrow's Trib.

"We’re all kind of foreigners in this land, in a sense," documentary filmmaker Kevin Walker, explaining why he feels relocating Japanese residents during World War II was unjustified. Walker was in the area to film the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. Find out more about Walker's documentary on Japanese relocation on the County page.

“We do own a one-ton (pick-up) -- it sits a lot,” Denice Harris, American Automobile Association spokesperson in Helena, Mont., referring to her family’s diesel-drinking truck. Gas prices are dropping, but it still ain’t cheap. Read about the price dip on page one.

I can't see Sarah Palin from my house

There are more than five times as many Republicans as Democrats in Park County. However, there are (roughly) a bazillion more Obama signs on county lawns than McCain-Palin signs.

The obvious question is, why?

Right after the Park County Republicans opened their campaign office, Chairman David Northrup said he'd seen a huge demand for McCain-Palin yard signs. He said the party was working to get their hands on some.

Some folks are eager enough they're not waiting on official swag. A Powell resident apparently constructed the below-pictured sign by hand to voice their support of the Palin-McCain ticket.
However, it's about the only McCain sign I've seen, and some folks allege mischief is to blame for the Obama-McCain discrepancy.

Last week, after the County Republican's office was vandalized, GOP member Terry Hinkle said that McCain signs are being stolen almost as soon as they're in the ground. But Park County Democratic Chairwoman Margaret Whited said the Dem's have had similar trouble with pilfered Obama signs.

No one has any hard numbers, and a big reason why is that no one had been reporting the thefts.

Before the Tribune and Enterprise ran stories last week about the vandalism, there had been zero reports of swiped political signs to Powell or Cody police. In the days since those stories were published, reports have started trickling in.

Sounds like some troublemakers could stand to get a new hobby. I mean, what do you do with signs you don't want, anyway?

UPDATE: An Obama supporter decided to make a homemade sign of his own. Very cool.

Alan: The library renegade

Alan M. has been working as a temporary employee at the Cody library during the move to its new home at the Park County Complex.

At Saturday's grand opening, Alan was sporting quite the get up - complete with lace up boots and knives.

The obvious question, was why?

"We've got a lot of cowboys, but not a lot of renegades," he said. "That's pretty much it."

Alan, who describes himself as "from the U.S.," recently moved to Cody. He's planning to stick around, though he said the library may not be able to keep him on.

"But that's alright," he said while cleaning up from the opening day festivities. "I got to be part of this."

The new facility is a big hit with him.

"I'm thrilled - and I'm just a newbie," he said.

Wyoming's presidential ballots

As you hopefully already know (especially since it was in last Tuesday's paper), Wyoming has five presidential candidates on the ballot.

They are:

-John McCain / Sarah Palin - Republican Party
-Barack Obama / Joe Biden - Democratic Party
-Bob Barr / Wayne Root - Libertarian Party
-Ralph Nader / Matt Gonzalez - Independent
-Chuck Baldwin / Dick Castle - Constitution Party

The Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties are all major parties in Wyoming and thus automatically get their nominees on the ballot, but Nader and Baldwin had to qualify through the independent signature-gathering process. It takes 3,868 sigs to get on the ballot in Wyoming. Those can only come from registered voters - and a voter can only sign for one candidate in each race.

Some numbers that political geeks like myself find interesting:

Nader turned in 437 pages of signatures, and Baldwin turned in 394. Each page has slots for 20 signatures, which would yield a maximum of 8,740 and 7,880, respectively.

State Elections Director Peggy Nighswonger said both candidates had loads of unregistered voters on their petitions. So, the Secretary of State's office had to process 6,709 Baldwin signatures to come up with 3,973 valid ones. With Nader, the state processed 8,424 sigs and accepted 3,962.

Nighswonger said at least part of the reason it took Nader more signatures to reach the threshold is because Baldwin turned in his signatures first. Some voters signed petitions for both candidates - so, on the first-come, first-serve basis, the overlapping signatures only counted for Baldwin's campaign.

That's probably more than you wanted to know about ballot access - especially since throwing out the number of Nader petition signatures isn't all that great of a party trick.

Thursday's Trib: Yellowstone, new library, and bad water

“We’re focused on what’s legally sustainable. ... Especially when a judge has kind of told me something and I don’t want to go to jail,” Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis discussing the park's winter use options this year. A federal judge kicked snowmobiles out of Yellowstone a couple weeks ago. Find out when Yellowstone hopes to have a new plan in place in Thursday's paper.

"Goodness guys - it's so sad!" Library Board member Pat Stuart, looking at the now-barren Park County Library in downtown Cody. The library's books and other materials have been moved to the new Park County Library at the Park County Complex. The spiffy new facility opens this Saturday. Read about its sweet new features in tomorrow's Trib.

“We’re delivering water out of well No. 3 and it is just fine,” Tod Stutzman, president of the North End Water Users, Inc. Stutzman was referring to a notice sent to North End customers warning them not to serve North End water to infants. See what's going on with local water in Thursday’s Tribune.

New Cody library a few books short

The new Park County library will open in Cody this weekend with about 76,000 items. That includes magazines, DVDs, audio recordings, and other things that aren't books.

"Because," notes Park County Libraries Director Frances Clymer, "Libraries aren't just about books anymore."

However, about 1,000 items (such as the below-pictured National Geographics dating back to 1917) aren't making the trip to the new building.
Old stuff - from computers to beat-up, unpopular books - were pulled out off their shelves and offered for sale to the public last weekend. Roughly 600 books were yanked from their homes in the children's section, and around 400 were weeded from the adult collection.

About 25 folks were waiting at the door to get first pickings Friday morning. Branch Librarian Marge Buchholz estimates about 500 or so of the items were ultimately purchased, raising about $600, and leaving behind a stack of interesting stuff.

Among the titles that were passed over by shoppers is a 1960 tome entitled "A History of Capital Punishment." An excerpt from the preface:

"Philsophically, psychologically, and legally the scaffold has ceased to produce any new arguments for or against its use. As an intellectual pastime, its pros and cons have ceased to interest all those who are not prejudiced."

With the topic still a hot button issue some 58 years later, we apparently have a whole lot of unintellectual, prejudiced people.

A 24 volume set entitled "Man, Myth and Magic: An illustrated encyclopedia of the Supernatural" also failed to disappear over the two-day sale (pictured at left). The creepy magician hair may have been a factor.

The leftovers also indicate how much our education system has improved. A withdrawn (and unpurchased) 1984 title, "How to Write Book Reports," hadn't been checked out for 10 years - undoubtedly because today's students are just innately good writers.

Bestseller or not, Phil McGraw's "Self Matters" didn't make the cut either.

Anyway, we've got a far less frivolous story about the new library in tomorrow's paper.