Features

Fifteen-year-old Kade Clark stood shirtless at a water spigot outside the Niobrara County Fairgrounds in Lusk. He reached into a bucket full of red-brown dirt, grabbed a handful, and ran it under the water. Then, he began to paint himself.

“So we look like Indians and stuff. Yea you get it wet, it gets on easier,” said Clark.

Clark is white, and is one of the dozens of people, from toddlers to the elderly, playing Sioux Indians in The Legend of Rawhide, the annual July Pageant and Wild West re-enactment.

One of the animators for The Beatles Yellow Submarine movie and several other children’s cartoon series will be coming to Casper and Cheyenne this week.

In his fifty-year career, Ron Campbell not only worked on the Beatles film, but on Scooby Doo, Sesame Street, The Flintstones, Rugrats, The Smurfs, The Jetsons, and more. He says cartoon work was always collaborative.

“Everybody that works in animation is very aware of this and knows this. So no one person can take credit for an entire film. Never can they do that,” said Campbell.

After spending the past decade working primarily in New York City as an actress on stage, TV and for the Metropolitan Opera, Oakley Boycott of Lander is playing the character of Nancy in the sci-fi western film, The Rider. Director, writer, and leading actor Jesse Judy says the part was written for Boycott. 

“Oddly enough, the part that I wrote, the woman in mind was actually Oakley Boycott. Oakley read the part exactly how I envisioned writing it.”

As summer gets into full swing in Wyoming, many people will be getting outside and hitting the state’s trails. In his new book On Trails, author Robert Moor explores why animals and humans make trails in the first place, and what they end up meaning to us. He told Wyoming Public Radio’s Caroline Ballard and he got the idea to write a book after hiking the Appalachian Trail. The paperback edition of On Trails is out July 4th.

For almost 20 years, the Wyoming-based punk rock band Teenage Bottlerocket has grown in popularity. Formed by Laramie natives Ray and Brandon Carlisle, and later joined by Kody Templeman and Miguel Chen, the band gained an international following. In fact, a group of Japanese musicians have recorded a tribute album to honor the band and one of their songs even appeared on an NBA broadcast this season. The band is set to release a new album and a couple of extra songs this month.

A new book focused on the people who live and work in Yellowstone is out. Called People of Yellowstone by Steve Horan and Ruth W. Crocker, it features wonderful photography by Horan with prose by Crocker. Horan photographed 120 people who work in and around the park. It features 87 photographs and stories of people who have a number of jobs and roles. Horan says the idea was pitched to him by his brother and it took several years to complete.

Several years ago Cheyenne residents Bob and Jill Jensen went looking for a service dog to assist Jill with her multiple sclerosis. Their search took them to Kansas City where they acquired their animal. The couple then wondered about developing a training facility for various types of service dogs in Cheyenne, which is unique in this region. The project that Bob and Jill Jensen developed is called K9s 4 Mobility.

Rising from the ashes in Dubois, after a void of more than two years, is a one-story building that stretches across a city block, built of cedar to fit in with the town’s western look. Mayor Twila Blakeman says the new building is a welcome replacement for the black hole left by the fire that destroyed several downtown businesses, including a landmark – Stewart’s Trapline Gallery.

A new art exhibition at the University of Wyoming explores and expands what it means to live in and love the American West. TOPOPHILIA: A loving reconfiguration of the mythology of our American West through studio practices and collaborative projects has its opening reception tonight from 5 to 7 p.m. at the University of Wyoming Visual Arts Building Gallery, and runs through the end of August.

Many communities and hotels in Wyoming are preparing for a busy few days surrounding the August eclipse. State Parks Administrator Dominic Bravo says that it should be very busy in parks along the eclipse.

Wyoming is scrambling to prepare for the August 21st total solar eclipse which could attract so many people here that it'll double the state's population. But one thing many people may not be prepared for is what to watch for in a total solar eclipse. Wyoming Public Radio's Melodie Edwards sat down with University of Wyoming astronomer Mike Pierce to get some tips. Pierce says this eclipse is known as the Great American solar eclipse because the shadow of it will race at almost 2,000 miles an hour across the entire U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina. 

When middle schoolers at the UW Lab School in Laramie first heard they were going to be studying garbage as part of the nation-wide initiative Project Citizen, which promotes democratic engagement, their reactions were about what you’d expect.

“Everyone in the class kind of shrugged their shoulders and went ‘okay.’ And we were all just mellowed out about it and not excited,” said Yousuf Abdel-Kader, an eighth grader at the lab school.

Earlier this month, those involved with arts organizations in the state were able to exhale after a proposal to zero out funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, Humanities, and similar organizations this year was averted. The proposal was part of President Trump’s budget.

At the University of Wyoming Art Museum, Susan Moldenhauer sits at a desk of neatly stacked brochures and contracts as she prepares for another year of exhibits. She is the Director and Chief Curator at the facility. 

President Trump's first budget proposal called for totally zeroing out federal funding for the arts and humanities, which could disproportionately hurt rural states like Wyoming.   

Last year some of that money went to a mobile museum that toured the state teaching students and adults alike about the state's heritage. Wyoming Senator John Barrasso admits that he doesn't like that the president is calling to end the program.