Pioneers will play Saturday for title

The Powell Pioneers knocked off the defending AA state champion Gillette Roughriders on Friday afternoon in American Legion district tournament play at Casper. The final score of the contest was 8-5. First pitch in Saturday's championship game (against either Cody or the Casper Oilers) is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.

By virtue of today's win, the Pioneers have assured themselves of a place in next week's state Legion tournament at Rock Springs. Complete district tournament details will appear in Tuesday's edition of the Powell Tribune.

Tomorrow's Tribune: 7-23

A peek at tomorrow's paper using quotes that didn't make the cut...

“We try to be very cautious and ask people to hand it out as much as possible,” Rinda Coons, commenting about the Park County Fair Parade's candy tactics. Coons, who works for the Powell Valley Chamber of Commerce, said the parade has not adopted a no candy-throwing policy like the Cody Stampede Parade's. Read more about Saturday's fair parade on Page 3.

“Go forth and subdivide,” Bill Brewer, Park County Commission Chairman, blessing a plan to split a county-owned lot in west Powell. The property currently houses the county's Powell search and rescue base and road and bridge shop. Commissioners voted to split the lot, and one day sell the road and bridge shop to Powell Valley Recycling. The story is on page one.

“The guy with a high blood alcohol content is the typical falling down drunk,” Powell Police Chief Tim Feathers, speaking as the president of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police. The association recently released a study showing that criminals apparently drink more than their fair share of alcohol. Some eye-opening statistics below the fold.

Tomorrow's Tribune: 7-21

A peek at tomorrow's paper using quotes that didn't make the cut...

“I know this is a sore spot for a lot of our residents. They don’t like it when it occurs. We get a lot of calls,” Police Chief Tim Feathers, speaking about the tough decision to suspend Powell's ban on door-to-door salesman. Find out why on page 1.

“At this point Cody Police set up a perimeter to ensure the safety of nearby residents,” a press release from the Cody Police department, recapping a roughly 75-minute confrontation between police and an armed man, who allegedly fired a number of shots Friday evening in Cody. The incident led to no injuries, but did yield an arrest and a couple criminal charges. More on page 3.

“A bunch of kids just come for the rides, but I actually enter in the fair,” Cody teen Trevor Cook, on why he enjoys submitting artwork and cooking for adjudication in the Park County Fair. We've got a special insert loaded with fair above average previews of this year's shindig inside tomorrow's paper - even more reason to pick up a copy.

Where Park County is spending its $33.8 million

Commissioners are finalizing Park County's budget for the 2010 fiscal year (July '09 to June '10) on Tuesday. However, on Monday night at 6 p.m. in their meeting room, they're first holding the annual public budget hearing.

If you're planning to attend, and want to go raise a stink about how outrageous some aspect of the budget is, it might help to actually look at it first.

To help you, the Tribune has uploaded the preliminary (but almost final) budget to Google Docs, so you can read and flip through it online or download a PDF copy (it's about 14.4 megabytes large and 50 pages long). It also can be found in a little, hard-to-read box at the bottom of this post.

If all those options fail, you can also get an electronic copy by emailing County Clerk Kelly Jensen and asking nicely, or can check out a paper version by swinging by the clerk's office in Cody.

Now, you've got no excuses not to comb over every cell of the budget spreadsheet. Or something like that.

We'll try to wrap up the county budget in Thursday's paper.

Sheep in ... sheep's clothing

A person can see a lot of strange things at the Park County Fair -- weird people come out of the woodwork (and I'm not even talking about the carnies), people consume massive quantities of food (in public!), huge vegetables are on display and sheep wear clothing.

Yes, the neighborhood lamb is bathed, shorn and fluffed within an inch of its life, and then gets all dressed up in -- what else? -- sheep's clothing.

Here are a few photos from last year's fair...

'7-8-9' photos and next photo theme: 'Orange'

A rare line-up of consecutive numbers occurred in the date of Wednesday, July 2009 or 07-08-09. The Tribune marked the occasion with a day-in-the-life photo theme. The following photos were all captured on 7-8-9.

The next photo theme is: "Orange."

We invite photographers of any age and skill level to submit entries for our photo themes.Please send submissions to web@powelltribune.com. Photos may be submitted as jpegs, tiffs or PSDs. Please include the first and last name of the photographer with entries. For more information about our photo themes, see our blog entry. We'll publish one or two shots in the print edition and post the others on our blog.

Willie Marcus captured a variety of shots on 7-8-9, from morning until night. In the afternoon, "Checking out the garden, I found that the potato plants are flowering."

That night, Willie took this image of the moon.

Children from the Learning Garden have a spin at Washington Park merry-go-round during the afternoon. Tribune photo by Ashley Stratton-Lauritzen

Ashley also joined the Learning Garden kids on an afternoon tour of Homesteader Museum in Powell.

An afternoon dog-walker captured the eye of Tribune News Editor Ilene Olson.

Ilene also captured this shot of the clouds that day.

Fred Burris took the "night-in-the-life" approach with his photographs and took this photo on Bent Street.

Streetlights glowing on Bent Street also provided inspiration for this 7-8-9 night photo. Tribune photo by Tessa Schweigert

Cross-country blogger writes of Powell

When some people get laid off, they mope around, or switch to a job that just pays the bills. Not Sharon Altaras (feet pictured at right). In May, the Seattle-area journalist grabbed her dog Armani, fired up a blog (American Road), jumped in an RV, and headed out on a cross-country trip.

Her goal, roughly? To give the U.S. a closer inspection.

"Americans can't help but evolve our patriotism through good times and bad. What does our psyche look like today?" Altaras wrote in an introductory post. Put another way, the project is aimed at "documenting the state of patriotism around the U.S. and taking a snapshot look at certain subcultures: newspapers, churches and Indian reservations."

There have been challenges, both from her vehicle (a Serpentine belt snapped leaving Devil's Canyon overlook), and sometimes wary residents ("I'm having a hard time figuring out how to approach people the further from big cities I get," Altaras wrote on June 3. "The word 'blog' throws them off. The word 'reporter' makes them suspicious. And often they don't use the Internet.").

But despite the challenges, she's already compiled some fascinating material -- for example, a collection of colorful street art/graffiti in Rapid City and Depression-era recollections from a elderly resident in Spokane Valley, Wash.

Between picture-taking and writing, Altaras has made her way from the Pacific Northwest to Nebraska. She made some stops in Powell last month, chatting with Rowene Weems over at the Homesteader Museum, grabbing some photos of Powell's murals, and, since the Tribune fits in the newspaper category, talking with our news editor, Ilene.

Altaras was recently generous enough to answer a few questions about her project via email.

Q: Roughly, for how long are you planning to travel? Any specific destinations on the agenda?

Altaras: I'm going to keep going until I feel I've seen enough or my RV totally breaks down or I find a job in a community that I cannot bear to leave. I really don't have specific destinations, though there are several states I've always wanted to see (Wyoming was among them and I loved it there).

Q: Why the focus on wall murals/art?

Altaras: We actually don't have very many where I'm from in Seattle, so in the smaller communities they always strike me. In fact, by the time I'd made it to central Idaho, I realized I needed to create a category for walls and signs. They are ubiquitous, often allude to patriotism (my theme for this project) and speak of a community's values in a powerful, often-wordless way.

Q: Is the blog an end in itself, or do you have plans for broader use, like a book, essay, or lengthy limerick? Put another way, when/if you find America's current psyche, what will you do with that information?

Altaras: I would love to do a photo-heavy coffee table book or write about my journey, once I'm through and can process it all, mentally. But if no one wants to buy those ideas and the blog is all I have, I'll still be happy. It has allowed me to meet and interact with so many interesting people. It has turned what could have been just a long road trip into a true educational, life-altering journey.

For more, check out American Road.

(Altaras kindly let the Tribune use the two above self-portraits that she snapped in the ghost town of Kirkville, Mont., and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, respectively.)