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From Jukeboxes and Jackalopes: A Wyoming Bar Journey
Many years ago I was on a road trip from Kansas to Colorado and on into Wyoming. I planned to head into Wyoming on a Sunday morning and I wondered if, like Kansas, liquor stores in Wyoming were closed on Sunday. If so, I'd be buying beer in Colorado before crossing the state line. I asked a wide-eyed young waitress where I'd stopped for dinner in Colorado about Wyoming liquor laws. She told me, "In Wyoming, you can do anything you want, anytime you want to do it." Boy, that's a set of rules that appealed to me and that seemed sublimely antithetical to the Midwest I was then planning to escape. Even now those words are Siren songs to me and I've come near to crashing against rocks trying to get back to my Wyoming home whenever I've had reason to leave its borders.
From Traveling the Power Line: From the Mojave Desert to the Bay of Fundy
With intelligence, ingenuity, and supportive public policy, we can someday produce sustainable, renewable power on a commercial scale at reasonable cost without environmental damage. That might sound like magic--and if we define that term as science plus serendipity, that's what it is. We can do our part by consuming less and developing and distributing more of our own power locally. We can take the responsibility to better analyze the information presented to us by boosters of various causes, knowing the difference between numbers meant to impress, stories meant to persuade, and facts that prompt action. Finally, we can remember that North Americans are not alone on the planet, that our actions invite reactions from others, and that cooperation is worth a try to keep our world inhabitable for all its residents.