Laughter may be the best medicine, but can it destroy hate?

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING 
FOR THE EASILY OFFENDED: 

There are pictures of both neo-Nazis and their opponents doing stupid things below. Let the viewer beware. 

These kids were AWESOME.

A very strange thing happened here in my college hometown this past weekend-- we had about fifty National Socialists from freaking Michigan descend on our downtown and hold a rally against illegal immigration.  I really have no idea why they bothered coming to Appalachia, but they caused quite the gridlock in the downtown area because it took 400-500 police in riot gear to protect fifty Nazis from getting creamed by the enraged locals.  It was just so surreal-- I felt like I was on a different planet. 

They had a short (as in four block) parade down the main drag in our downtown area (which is called Gay Street, mind you) and parked their sorry neo-Nazi butts on our old courthouse lawn to spread their message of hate from an itty-bitty PA system.  Yours truly, along with about 100-200 other people, showed up for a counter-protest across the street.  Since I've written about the ethics of using humor to combat hate previously (but with Fred Phelps) I thought I'd show you the varieties of response I saw to the Nazis as they made total fools out of themselves.  I saw a lot of love, a little bit of hate... and a whole lot of humor.  And the humor really interests me, I have to admit. 

Okay, so if you don't want to be offended by racist people doing nasty things, go no farther. For the rest of you, let's start off with some pics of the so-called "master race" to set the mood for you...

What's in a fence?

Okay, so I was wandering around in the subdivision just across from the Laramie Wal-Mart a while back, just a stone's throw from the city limits sign you see on the Vintage edition of The Laramie Project.   It's exactly what I have nightmares about when it comes to subdivisions: rubber-stamp versions of the American Dream with almost nonexistent lawns, people made out of ticky-tack and all look the same...  (oh, wait.  That's a Joan Baez song.)  I hate neighborhoods that are all stacked together like frosted cupcakes all popped from the same pan: identical, crowded, tiny, with only the sprinkles indicating their difference.  They just feel soul-killing to me. 

Anyhow, I was tootling my way up the roads to the end of the subdivision to get a better look at this new church just off of Grand Avenue, as I had been taking pictures of churches that day, and here's what I saw:

Oh, wait-- my bad.  That's not what I really saw when I dropped by this church.  The first thing I actually saw was this:

**shiver**

I can remember this congregation from my undergraduate days at UW.  This is a reformed church for sure, and might even be Baptist (I'm pretty sure it used to be, but I can't remember if they changed.)  A friend of mine went to this church when they were still in a tiny stucco white building not far from campus, and they tended to run conservative to fundamentalist back then.  Then the church split over some doctrinal issues which were never really clear to me, although they seemed really important to my friend at the time.  This building is new to me, constructed sometime after 2000 because I can remember the flap about the remaining members selling their old building to the Islamic association.  It was built at least two years after Matt Shepard was killed-- and they chose to put a buck fence around it.  Um, what am I supposed to do with this?

Okay, so I know I'm the same person who thinks that the demonizing of buck fences is unfair, because I've always rather liked them, and they're unique to my home territory.  (I mean, imagine how pissed off the French would be if for some reason the Eiffel Tower suddenly became an international symbol of hate.  That's how I feel.)  This fence wouldn't bother me near so much if it weren't for the location.  You see, If I turn my back on this church and look away from their roundabout, I can sight my eyes down this road like the barrel of a gun and see the exact spot where Matt was murdered.   They're on the same damn road.   The only difference is that it turns to a dirt track about a third of the way down its length.  This church sits on the pavement, tucked back in the corner of the cookie-cutter subdivision; Matt was beaten just off of to one side of a the dirt track in the scrub.  

Okay, so I have to confess-- my ambivalence meter hit the roof when I saw this.  On the one hand, it's their land and they can put up whatever the heck kind of fence they want, I guess.  And, up to this point, I suppose I would have even applauded someone who fought the stereotype and reinforced the good side, the rugged and beautiful side, to the buck fence.  There are, after all, a lot of split-rail fences in this neighborhood, so maybe they're just trying to blend in, right?  Right? 

There are a lot of reasons to choose a buck fence.  For one, it is rather decorative, and it adds to the "little white chapel in the wilderness" motif (although the church is too big and modern to really pull it off.)  Maybe there's a neighborhood association covenant that says you can't have chain-link or picket for all I know.  And, you don't have to paint it, and there's no maintenance needed... and maybe they don't buy into the buck fence as a symbol of hate.  I kind of wish I didn't either, so that's understandable.  And, maybe they don't know where Matt died, though I find this impossible.  If you have an infamous crime scene practically in your neighborhood, you know. 

All these justifications aside, one thing seems clear to me regardless: they don't give a crap whether or not a gay person feels welcome at their church, because regardless of how the congregation might feel about buck fences, the GLBT community in Laramie has one very big, negative association with them.  And for a community with an already embattled relationship to the church, walking up to a church with a symbol of a gay bashing encircling it (and a fifteen minute walk away from the murder location) certainly isn't going to make it any easier.  To be honest, that probably never even occurred to them because, in my experience, most of the churches on my end of the faith spectrum don't spend much time thinking about gay people at all.  Maybe the nice people in this particular church would prove me wrong; I'm certainly open to the possibility, but after ten years of battling it out with others, I'm not holding my breath. 

I would have to sit down with the pastor or a couple of deacons over a cup of coffee and chat candidly with them to really see what their thought process was when they decided to mark off their property with that fence; and to be honest, I would really welcome the possibility of that kind of conversation if they'd be interested.  I bet they have a unique perspective on that location, how the neighborhood relates to it, and how they negotiate with the space where they live and the knowledge of what happened down the road.  And that conversation would be far more productive than assuming terrible things of people I don't really know, especially when they might have very complicated and interesting things to say if I'd let them. And, since they still live in that community and I don't, they might have a much, much more nuanced and interesting approach to all this.  I can't really know until I let them speak for themselves, and at the moment I can't.

The only thing I can really know for certain is this: for all my pontificating about buck fences and disliking what they've come to symbolize for so many, apparently I can't escape that association between the buck-and-rail and brutality, either.  I can dislike the association, but I can't get rid of it.  It's a part of my imagination now, making me flinch at something as seemingly innocent and picturesque as a rustic fence in front of a clean, white mission church.

Laramie in Pictures: Bosler

On the 4th of July, I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting for one of the nastiest prairie storms I had seen in ages to blow into town. I drove out chasing the storm about an hour previous to watch the thunderhead build up and get a few pictures. The clouds were stacked up about a mile high, thick, with a lot of heat and water in them. They were almost black near the bottom. If they hit town, I was pretty sure we’d at least get some serious hail. Once I realized that the black, ominous eye of that storm was hurtling in my direction, I turned around and went back to Laramie.

So, while I’m eating lunch and watching the wind pick up, two people, an older lady and a kid in his twenties, greet each other and start chatting about the day’s events. Eventually that conversation turns to the storm gliding over the prairie towards town.

“I heard there was just a tornado north of town,” the lady says.
“It didn’t kill anybody, did it?” The kid asks. “There’s not much out there.”
“Nah, it can kill a couple of cows for all I care,” the lady replied. “As long as there’s no harm done.”
The young man thought for a moment. “It could kill a couple people in Bosler and I wouldn’t mind,” he observed dispassionately.  Yeowch.  

As it turns out, it became clear as their conversation unfolded that the young man was referring to a certain eccentric old man who has a small role in The Laramie Project. Apparently, opinions haven’t changed much since I was here last. 

The funny thing is, about ninety minutes after that kid hoped for a tornado in Bosler, I guess it really did happen. From what I could see, however, none of the buildings or houses were touched-- not that I’m sure I could tell even if they were. Bosler’s pretty much a ghost town anymore; it's no longer even considered a town by the state.

So, for your viewing enjoyment, here is the legendary Bosler....

Faith as Landscape in Laramie, WY

With the exception of the Interstate, when you drive into Laramie, Wyoming from any other direction, the first thing you will probably see cresting over the horizon is a church steeple pointing to the heavens.  It's St. Matthew's, the Episcopal church which sits like a beacon on the corner of 3rd and Ivinson.  Its undressed sandstone tower and red archway doors basically define the whole of downtown Laramie.  A lot of the locals use it as a navigation point for newcomers: "Turn left at the big church there, that's Ivinson Avenue..."

Landscape was something I really started thinking about this time when I was in Laramie.  We talk about Laramie as an outlaw town in the popular imagination-- you know, Butch Cassidy, Big Steve Long, the territorial prison and all that-- but the strongest visual cue for that past is the territorial prison and its Wild West reenactments, and it's tucked away in West Laramie.  You can't see it until you get past the overpass at Snowy Range Road.  That might be the image you get in your head if you've never been here, but when you stand in the very heart of the old Downtown and turn your face to the hills, you get a very different impression.  This is a landscape dominated by faith, and now that I see this, it's no wonder that Tectonic Theater would have focused on faith as a major player in the Laramie drama.  Tectonic is very aware of Laramie's landscape, I have always thought-- and if they were, the landscape of faith is a part of Laramie's topography you simply cannot ignore... 

Laramie in Pictures: The Road to Laramie

While I was in Laramie, I took literally hundreds of photos from Vedauwoo to Centennial, and I'd like to share a few with you over the next couple of months as I continue to write through some things. The first series I would like to share with you isn't Laramie proper-- rather, the vast chunk of land between Laramie and Casper.  These photos, taken on that lonely, beautiful drive, stretch from the Shirley Basin, to Medicine Bow, Rock River, and just north of Laramie. 

So, here are some of the most iconic images from the road to Laramie: wind turbines, antelope, and fences.  Oh, and mosquitoes, but they don't photograph so well.

Enjoy! 

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Why, yes, I am sitting down in the middle of an active highway...
This is the road approaching the Shirley Basin.  

Medicine Bow, WY's newest additions, which aren't producing power just yet.




These are snow (also called "drift") fences, which keep the snow off the roads in winter.

Back to Laramie

[This is the first of several posts about my recent visit to Laramie, Wyoming to visit my brother and do a little informal research.  I hope you enjoy it!]

As I write this post, it is the beginning of July and I am sitting in the self-proclaimed "Home of Edgy Coffee" just a couple blocks off of campus, drinking an iced coffee with a wedge of lime in it.  Some crooner from the fifties drifts out a lazy melody over the radio.  In fact, this new branch of Coal Creek Coffee Company is about as "edgy" as a paperclip on a quarterly report, but, hey-- I guess they can call themselves whatever they want.  At least it's not Starbuck's.

How does it feel to be back in Laramie after at least six years?  Pretty darn good.  I started out for Albany County from my in-laws' house on the first and took a leisurely drive through the Shirley Basin in the early evening and crossed into the prairie just ahead of a huge set of thunderclouds brewing on the horizon.  It's as green as far as the eye can see right now, just starting to get its earliest tinges of gold as the heads on the grasses ripen and dry.  In a few weeks, if it doesn't rain much, those oceans of rippling green will turn into a golden, waving sea. 

My brother Coyote walked me around the downtown my first night here to introduce me to the new Laramie.  He's in school here now, sort of, trying to walk that delicate, fine balance between school and starvation.  Right now he's out of a job, but he's also out of school, so he can eat.  He looks more gangly than starved-- a little like Shaggy off of Scooby-Doo, with his wavy red hair he never cuts until he donates it to Locks of Love and a chin patch that should be on a saxophone player.  On the way he introduces me to a good portion of Laramie's fringe culture: a bouncer called "the hippie" and several real hippies, one of whom got in trouble with the city for living in a wigwam by the river.  As we walk he chats about his friends, most of whom don't fit in to the mainstream in one way or the other: punkers, rebels, gays and lesbians, bluegrass guitarists, hippies, artists, philosophers, troublemakers.  Coyote knows all these people because he's one of them, and their company suits him well. 

Has Laramie changed much since I lived there?  Yes and no.  Most of the downtown looks virtually identical to my high school days except that the names of the stores have changed.  The restaurant where my sister Sparrowhawk worked when I was in high school is now an Italian restaurant, and the downtown now houses two yoga centers, an honest-to-goodness sushi joint, and an oxygen bar.  (An oxygen bar?  Really?  That's just over the top.)  The major change is that the old Fox theater, which had stood as an abandoned piece of Laramie Americana for generations, was finally so dangerous that they were forced to tear it down.  Now an empty lot stands next to the Cowboy bar, its glaring, yellow sign no longer oxidizing in the Laramie heat.  Farewell, ye vintage pigeon haven.

The major changes are all east of town.  The little strip mall I'm sitting in behind War Memorial Stadium is entirely new, as are the big hotels clustered around it.  It used to house a couple of old rain barrels in an empty field.   In fact, there's a set of "Cowboy Condos" going in right next door, too-- as housing for Wyoming football fans, I suppose, which will overlook the pitiful cinder-block married housing for college students that should have been torn down when I was in college.   Out towards Cheyenne around Sherman Hills there are hundreds of gleaming, new houses all stamped out with a Technicolor cookie press.   Coyote tells me this is all just a few years old.   Little Laramie is growing up pretty fast, it seems, though I wonder from the numbers of houses whether or not the population has grown to match. 

And yet, for all this growth it doesn't really seem to be that much bigger-- nor does it seem to have a different character.  I almost had to smile when I pulled my car over a few miles north of town and a black cloud of mosquitoes made the windows go black.  Some things never change, it seems.  It's been one of the wettest summers on record, and the mosquitoes are getting so big and so nasty that I'm waiting for them to run for political office.  The Public Health office is handing out cans of Off to help the poorer residents deal with the bugs.  Laramie has never had much of a mosquito abatement program, and it looks like that hasn't changed at all.  Scratching the bites on my ankles with my pen as I type is a good reminder of the not-so-good side to the town.  

As we wandered around town last night towards the railyard, I looked up at a deep blue sky edged with purple and sighed.  "I would really love to come back here," I said.  Coyote gave me a fuzzy look.

"Seriously?"  He asked.  "To be honest, I'd give anything to get out."

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PHOTO CREDIT:

2) The old Fox theater in Laramie, from awkwardindeed's Flickr photostream. available through a Creative Commons 2.0 license.

Big Gay Jim's Bigger, Gayer Blog

One of Matt Shepard's friends, Jim, still livesthere and runs a personal blog.  His blog's name makes me crack a smile every time I see it:  "Big Gay Jim's Bigger, Gayer blog."   As you can tell by the photo on the right, he was an Angel Action angel, and he's been deeply, deeply involved in Wyoming and GLBT activism since then.

I barely knew "Big Gay Jim" in college-- he was actually my boss at one point-- but he has about the quirkiest dang sense of humor of anyone I've ever met.  But that's beside the point.  His blog has some great first-hand stories about what he's been up to since 1998.

But it's a personal blog, y'all.  If you don't like personal blogs, it's probably not your cup of tea.  But he has a great perspective on the GLBT community in Wyoming and how it's been developing over the last ten years.  If you want a quick link to the relevant posts from the 10th anniversary of Shepard's death, just go through UW's online archive of Shepard materials, permanently linked and archived here.