Cinema Danger Duo Podcast Episode 9

Raymond and Miranda as the Cinema Danger Duo

Cinema Danger Duo is a bi-weekly podcast with two friends, Ray and Miranda, who have had too much time on their hands and have watched far too many movies. Together they review three different films for each episode covering a wide gamut of genres. Their spoiler-heavy discussion is less of a critique and more of a jumping off point for discussion. *Warning may contain explicit language, content.  CINEMA DANGER DUO IS NOW OFFERED ON iTunes!  Please use this link to listen and subscribe through iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/cinema-danger-duo/id1048788079?mt=2

Episode 9.  In this episode, Ray and Miranda are joined by their forever guest Tim Kupsick to discuss the films Room, Trumbo, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Join us next week for our discussion of Anomalisa, Zootopia, and Hell and Back.

Conspicuous Consumption

“Expenditure on or consumption of luxuries on a lavish scale in an attempt to enhance one’s prestige.” The term was introduced by sociologist, Thorsten Veblen, explaining why the bulk of society was purchasing items that served little to no purpose for them, other than superficial. Veblen wrote during the early 20^th Century United States; a time rife with economic inequality, atrocious working conditions, huge gaps between the rich and those in extreme poverty; whom produced the wealth for the few, and thus leading to huge labor wars between these parties. This is the time of the ‘muckrackers’ like Jacob Riis and Upton Sinclair. I know I’m starting to sound like I’m writing a Socialist manifesto, and maybe to a point I am. However, much like the classics works done by those previously mentioned, Veblen’s claims and their applicability are every bit as relevant today (if not more so) than when initially created.

Conspicuous consumption was really intended to address the materialistic nature of how Western culture views the depiction of success. Are there other avenues that Veblen’s term could be attributed? Music, art, clothing, automobiles, past-times, all could qualify. Is there anything to the idea that ‘food’ could be another area that shares in this dubious distinction? What makes the consumption of ‘nutrition’ conspicuous?

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say,” (Italo Calvino). Read The Jungle and try not to vomit, when you realize that this novel was based on true events surrounding the meat industry (people losing limbs or their whole bodies into a product to be eaten by their neighbors; the serving of yourself to your family at your own wake; a rather nauseating reenactment of the Eucharist). Roosevelt (Teddy not FDR) was so appalled by what was addressed by Sinclair that he passes the Meat Inspection Act. The irony, when looking at our current state of affairs, is not a whole lot has changed, in practice that is, well, maybe more mechanization. What boggles the mind is that this is happening right out in the open, making it very conspicuous, yet to even utter (ha) malpractice in the dairy and meat industry you could find yourself in a modern installment of Sweeny Todd, experiencing a ‘shave’ and a meat pie.  I guess we really are what we eat, or eaten by.

All things work within a given system. Therefore, the welfare of its parts is parallel with the welfare of the whole. Any gear-head will tell you the quality of the product that s/he introduces into that which makes the machine run, directly effects the performance of that very machine. Consequently the cares taken when choosing the energy source for … a vehicle, per say, is typically extensive and aggressively defended if challenged. Why then, are these same people drinking a wading pool of soda, to wash down that side of beef and bucket of French fried GMO, thus making up the bulk lunch, and can’t seem to understand why anyone would eat “like those damn hippies!”? You think, maybe, that might be what is keeping your motor from running? And considering we actually ARE what we eat, that shit isn’t even real cow (or buffalo, or chicken, or whatever); it’s an Island of Dr. Moreau conglomeration of science fiction and nature. The consumers of this ‘food’ are probably better off eating the fucking packaging rather than what it contains; it is more environmentally friendly than what is marketed to ingest.

We re-generate every cell in our body after so many years (not all once mind you … I’m not that damn naïve), and by seven years every cell has been replaced.  So, every seven years you have a new body. And what constitutes that building material for this new physique? The food we eat of course! So, again, whether we are eating sustenance provided by Mother Earth, and harvested humanely, or we are eating shit, harvested violently, we are what we eat … beautifully natural, or violently shitty. Choose wisely, and pay attention to whom your are running your fucking mouth to and about; the waste produced by those whom understands and practice “health” is more beneficial to your body than what you typically imbibe. So, when they tell you to “eat shit,” you really should consider it.

Our Experiments in Environmentally Friendly Period Products

When I first started my period I did what most beginners do: I stuffed toilet paper into my underwear and panicked. I attempted to hide my increasingly obvious state of bloody adulthood with little success, and ultimately had to migrate to the then terrifying realm of feminine hygiene products. I was raised on cardboard applicators, an entirely unattractive introduction to the world of period products. Lacking the smooth exterior of a Tampax Pearl applicator or the Playtex Sport’s supposed dexterity, the idea of shoving a cardboard cannon into my vagina and releasing its cotton interior was not entirely appealing to my thirteen-year-old newly pubescent self. Poised with a mirror in one hand and the box’s instructions in the other, I unsuccessfully attempted to locate my own vagina. I read and re-read the directions and developed little besides a newfound fear of Toxic Shock syndrome. It was only after a lengthy amount of time spent prodding that insertion was successful.

And from the moment the blood flowed forth, I entered the seemingly never ending world of attempting to subtly shuffle tampons into school restrooms unnoticed, of worrying about leaks and of actually getting them, of spending a certain amount of money every month on pain relievers and tampons, and of wasting toilet paper to wrap around the remnants of used period products.

There are alternatives. Innovative people are spending a lot of time trying to make periods better. These products are supposedly easier on our bodies, more convenient, increasingly economical, and environmentally friendly.

But, as public opinion seems to convey, still not all that appealing. Based on conversations I’ve had with people who use tampons or pads, change scares them. And what seems most terrifying is interacting with our bodies and our periods in unfamiliar ways. As it turns out, even in adulthood we don’t know that much about how our body functions.

I decided to try one of the better-known products – the period cup. It’s designed to catch menstrual blood and only needs to be changed every twelve hours. Two popular variations of this are the Softcup and the DivaCup. Softcups are disposable. DivaCups last for a year. Both force people to interact with their menstrual blood in previously unknown ways. While tampons can be messy, it’s entirely possible to avoid even really looking at one’s bodily excretions. With the period cup, full on bloody interaction is essential upon insertion, removal, and sanitation.

I tried the Softcup first. They cost about ten dollars for a box of fourteen.

There are subtle differences between the Softcup and the DivaCup that could dictate purchasing decisions. For one, they sit differently inside the body. The Softcup sits just below the cervix, immediately outside the opening of the uterus. The DivaCup sits lower in the vaginal canal.

This is confusing to me. I’ve come a long way from the scared hand mirror holding teenager that could not find her own vagina, and yet, reading the directions on these products I found myself in a very similar situation to my adolescent self. Due to the Softcup placement, according to the packaging, people should be able to have penetrative sex while using it. And neither partner should be able to feel the Softcup at all. This makes me feel like I need to Google map the inside of my vagina because I cannot visualize how this works. And I still can’t. Somebody who’s having more sex than me should review the product in that context and chart out a detailed topographical map of the unexplored territory that is the vaginal cavern. You can be the Lewis and Clark of vaginas and period products, but ideally without the violent legacy of settler colonialism and unsettling manifest destiny style expansion.

I watched an instructional video on how to effectively insert and place the Softcup. Despite the mild animated images of what vaguely represent female reproductive organs, I had to sign in to prove that I was over eighteen. Apparently, completely non-graphic depictions of normal bodily processes, and bodily processes that very typically impact people under the age of eighteen, are unsuitable for certain viewers. Such stigmas could have bearing on why I can still barely comprehend the intricacies of my own body, why when I started my period I thought that tampon insertion bordered on the physically impossible, and why while I was wearing the Softcup I woke one night in a fit of fear thinking that a mild increase in cramping meant that my Softcup somehow made its way into my uterus.

The video told me to sit on the toilet with my legs spread, pinch the rim of the cup in the middle, insert it, push it back to my cervix, and then tuck the rim behind my pubic bone to keep it in place. It sounded like a lot of activity to me, but it wasn’t. I pictured sticking my entire hand in there and shoving the cup violently into place, but I simply nudged it in and slightly up with one finger and it was set.

And for the most part, it stays set. If you pee, leakage is normal. Ideally, it moves back into place. If you exercise, leakage can also occur. Although the Softcup can be worn for up to twelve hours, you may need to change it more frequently. Because the Softcups are disposable, you don’t need to wash them. I simply dumped the contents into the toilet, wrapped the product, and threw it away. But removal was still messy. I had to directly interact with my period goop. To me, this was not really problematic. More problematic is that disposing of the cup after every use makes the Softcup far less environmentally friendly than the DivaCup and no more economical than tampons.

The following month I used the DivaCup. Costing around forty dollars, it feels like a semi-hefty investment for somebody who regularly avoids checking her bank balance. Ultimately, it will save a lot of money. But a lot of things save a lot of money if you can afford to splurge on something once. The problem is, many people can’t.

With the DivaCup I was expecting a religious style conversion, a moment of life changing menstrual clarity in the form of my “size one DivaCup for people under thirty who have never given birth vaginally.” People who love the DivaCup love the DivaCup. I have yet to see it personally but I know there are enthusiastic women everywhere passing out pamphlets for the environmentally friendly church of period catching silicone cups.

My experience was not so sublime. It wasn’t traumatic, as many people fear, but insertion and removal was not as easy as I originally anticipated. At least on the first try.

My roommate stood outside the bathroom calling out directions to me so that I could have both hands free for the semi-difficult and seemingly complicated folding that was about to ensue. When inserting the DivaCup, you need to fold it one of two ways: Either by only pressing down in the middle to create a type of U, or by pressing the rim down and back to make the entering point smaller. You then need to push it in about half an inch (much more or less will cause discomfort or leakage) and rotate the cup 360 degrees to guarantee suction. This, admittedly, sounds like an exhausting process. I overthought the measurements, both the inches of insertion and degrees of rotation, but due to the lack of a measuring apparatus that can be used vaginally I left it the way it was and hoped for accuracy.

I left the house with no alternative protection. I wouldn’t recommend doing this generally, but due to my lack of preparatory skills I don’t own panty liners. I tend to forgo such precautions for no viable reason other than I don’t take the time to buy them. If you’re using the DivaCup for the first time, buy them. It will make your life less stressful and allow you to occupy your mind with something other than the state of your underwear.

During my first twelve hours, nothing happened. The DivaCup sat inside of me and caught blood. It didn’t leak.

The next day, at the grocery store, it did. I hustled into the two stall public restroom and attempted to re-rotate the cup. That morning, I hastily ignored the 360-degree rotation rule and the DivaCup neglected to open fully, therefore not suctioning. While my by then bloody fingers were cup-deep in my vagina, making solid attempts at re-rotation, a pair of pre-teens entered the restroom and proceeded to chat loudly. Their giddy laughter nearly masked the slurping vaginal sounds my re-insertion and rotation were making; however, the entire ordeal felt like a near public spectacle I would generally hope to avoid.

But, this was my only real problem other than needing to get used to dumping a silicone cup full of blood into the toilet every twelve hours. Despite minor missteps when I was getting used to the DivaCup, once I learned the intricacies of insertion and removal (and this doesn’t take long to do), I realized I would not be able to go back to permanently employing tampons as my primary mode of period protection. The idea of changing something every four to six hours, worrying about adequate absorbency, and stuffing my purse full of feminine hygiene products will never sound more appealing than only needing to keep and maintain one small silicone cup.

It’s cyclically perfect for a working person or a person that does anything at all. Changing it every twelve hours implies that I can change it once before work and once before bed and I don’t have to worry about anything else throughout the day.

I need to mention other DivaCup specific benefits as well: First, it comes with a carrying case, a necessity I would have overlooked. DivaCup brand also has a convenient multi-purpose wash for “The DivaCup, face, or body.” Additionally, it has a fantastic website. Not simply because it has a user-friendly interface but because it actually includes detailed descriptions of the female body and its processes, something that I’ve found is not common in a world that is so afraid of periods that you need to be eighteen to watch a YouTube video describing them.

Both the Softcup and the DivaCup allow people with periods to interact with their bodies on a different level and perhaps to learn a little bit more about them in the process. The more options people have for personal period care, the more likely they are to choose the one that is most suitable for them individually. And truly, this is the most obvious benefit.

No Label Roundtable Podcast Episode 9

Sean, Miranda, and Joe

No Label Roundtable is a bi-weekly podcast produced by three close friends: Casper locals Miranda, Sean, and Joe.  Join the inquisitive trio as they seek to learn, educate, and foment cultural enthusiasm through roundtable discussions, interviews, and the unrehearsed amusement that is a talk among friends.  There are no scripts; there are no labels. Speakers and headphones are chairs at this table.

iTunes link to subscribe to No Label Roundtable:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-label-roundtable/id1054466507

Life Flight Click on link to the left for video

Episode 9.  In this episode, we met with Clancy Henderson and Kaspen Haley of Wyoming Life Flight who were kind enough to talk with us about the exciting and fast paced nature of being part of the Life Flight team.

That Time We Didn’t Actually Lose Our Virginity, Ourselves

At the age of sixteen I lost my virginity to a freckly boy with red hair on an unmade bed during an afternoon off from school.

At least, that’s what I told my friends.

I had every solid intention of having sex that day. My closest friends were older than me and were having sex with relative consistency. Because of this, our conversations typically veered towards that topic. Due to my dearth of sexual expertise, I could contribute nothing beyond the occasional question, nothing beyond “Oh.. well, how do you feel about him?” Or “Wait, while you were babysitting?”

Often, I was excluded entirely on the grounds of my naivety. They didn’t want to expose me to the harsh world of adolescent sex, didn’t want me to listen to their Cosmopolitan spun stories of rampant sexual deviancy. They thought I was innocent. I didn’t want to be.

So I decided to have sex.

Well, I decided to try and have sex.

The narratives implanted in my mind about teenage sex were an incompatible hybrid of terror and romance. The romance aspect was long forgotten for me. I had, at this point, abandoned the visual of tender post-prom sex during a slow moving yet catchy 80’s soundtrack in favor of something more realistic. My first kiss had happened only a few months before, and although I told myself that my first kiss setting would be at least semi-romantic and a little heart palpitating, it wasn’t. I had my first kiss in the front seat of a car on the high school’s campus after going to Quizno’s for lunch. It was neither thrilling nor exhilarating and his mouth tasted like mustard and processed meat.

So I focused on the terror aspect. Rather than daydream about romantic gestures and soul crushing adolescent compatibility, I focused on how badly it was probably going to hurt and how long it would have to last. In an attempt to distract myself from such fears, I shifted my focus to the tangible: I bought new underwear, I made a playlist of songs actively describing the sexual process and mentally labeled it “songs I would have sex to if I were actually having sex,” and I opened my mind to the boys around me in an attempt to find one that was willing.

The one that I thought would be willing was a red headed track athlete who was a distant relative of Dick Cheney’s. We used to go to church together. We texted sporadically. We hinted towards attraction. We decided to meet up.

The day we chose was a half-day off from school. I drove my dad’s Ford Taurus to his house, the entire drive convincing myself that the experience would last no longer than two of the songs playing on the radio. I flipped the knob in search of something explicit, something mildly directional, a how-to song of sorts. I didn’t find anything.

I pulled up to his house sweating. I had no idea how to initiate the interaction, not sure what level of formality to employ. What kind of conversation can halt the awkward acknowledgement that we both knew that we sort of wanted to touch each other? And how was I supposed to interact with a person who knew I sort of wanted to touch him but didn’t know that I didn’t have even the slightest idea of how to go about doing that in any real pleasurable way?

We stood in his doorway.

Would we watch TV first? Eat a snack? I was still sweating.

He invited me up to his room.

It was messy. I don’t even think he made his bed. Athletic shoes littered the floor.

He stared at me. I stared back.

He kissed me. I sort of kissed back.

Almost immediately my shirt was off, my very small adolescent breasts barely poking out of the slightly padded training bra. He felt me up anyway. And after a moment of struggling, threw the slightly padded training bra to the side.

The next step would have been to take off my shorts. He would have unbuttoned them with his teeth and slid them off in one swift motion, throwing me onto the unmade bed and then rhythmically making non-awkward adolescent love to me. I would be naturally good at sex, would know how to overpower a man with nothing more than a seductive grin. We would have started dating, unable to remain apart for more than a few hours of time, bonded by our visceral physicality and intense sexual chemistry.

But he couldn’t take my shorts off because I was wearing a cast boot.

I had a stress fracture in my shin and because of my injury needed to wear a massively awkward padded boot around all day. It covered my entire foot and extended up to my knee, and because of its bulk I regularly kicked myself in the opposite ankle, nearly always drawing a fresh stream of blood. Because of its rough and sweaty interior, I had to wear a long sock underneath it at all times. And when I went to have sex, I hauled the heavy boot with me.

But, in order to take off my pants, an essential element to sex, I first needed to take off my boot. And I needed to try and do so seductively.

Topless, I sat at the edge of the bed and slowly peeled back the Velcro to my knee-high cast boot. I looked up at him and smiled as I did so, stating slowly and seductively, “I wouldn’t wanna boot you in the head.”

Based on the damage I had already done to my opposite ankle, mangling it with every awkward step of my lopsided walk, he most certainly would have been concussed had I chose to leave the boot on. He would have aggressively swung my legs up near his head, knocking himself out in the process. So, with every piece of Velcro I slowly separated I was not only getting closer to nudity, I was making him aware of his own safety.

I wiggled my way out of the newly loosened boot but neglected the one long sock, distracted by fumbling out of my shorts.

He then fingered me the way adolescent boys do, by aggressively two-finger punching me in the vagina until he felt like I should do something in return.

He was in his boxers at this point. I sat up and stared at his crotch. Exasperated, he grabbed my hand and put it in his pants. I let it rest there and looked up at him. I looked down at his penis. I looked back up at him.

“I don’t know what to do with this.” I whispered it breathlessly, the way people are supposed to do in events that constitute “the heat of the moment,” and nodded down towards his penis.

He sighed and curled my hand, moving it in a masturbatory hand-job fashion.

Then somebody walked into the house and we stopped abruptly. I think he was relieved for a way out of the situation because by the time I glanced back he was already fully clothed and standing. I got dressed, slipped my boot back on, and wondered how to say goodbye. Do I lean in for a kiss? An extended and mildly intimate embrace? Do I say something seductive about the assisted hand job I just halfheartedly gave?

I gave him a bro-hug, leaned in, and instead of fully closing the embrace slapped him on the back and retreated.

“Welp… thanks for having me over.” I walked out.

Then I told my friends I lost my virginity.

And from that moment forward I drifted from the realm of the sexless to the sexed. Despite not actually having had any sex at all, this became the moment boys started to expect it. This became the moment my peers could call me a slut, could create a number of narratives based on the one I only slightly skewed.

I walked out of his house that day knowing all of this would happen. I knew that the adolescent world would permanently change my identity based only on a blip of time in which almost nothing happened.

I knew all of this. But I also knew that from that day forward, I was in.

Pimp’n the Stupid

One can tell a lot about a person, people, communities, and entire cultures from that which they revere or desire. This is quite a powerful concept when any one of the aforementioned dare to look in the mirror. So, what is it that is revered in our culture (and don’t dare lie to yourself)? A great place to start in the investigation is in the direction of where people spend their time, energy, and money. What Internet topics get the most traffic? What TV shows are the most followed? What artists (including musicians, especially musicians) are the most well known? Albeit, the answer varies in accordance to those who are asked, but what is the common thread? I don’t know, maybe 15 minutes of fame at any cost? The equivalent to shouting obscenities just to be heard; fearfully absent of any cognition. We haven’t always been put on the defensive by the carpet-bombing of the atrocious, have we?

I tend to believe that we’ve been bought by the hollow nature of celebrity-day-dreams, and that scandalous bitch (used in an androgynous manner) ‘power’ traveling in tandem. The evidence lies right before us, to the point of saturation. It is brilliantly conceived. Not only are our senses pummeled, but also we’ve been conditioned to accept the violation to the point of reverence. We are getting it all at once from every possible angle, the ultimate mind fuck.

What is so sinister is we are not so much being forced into this mentality directly; intermediaries with nefarious intentions have hijacked the institutions that are of the people. This is nothing new mind you, any heist that has longevity and a systematic retirement plan, funded through vicious violations of the populace, can’t be a harebrained scheme. At one particular time our culture was a global leader in education, health, innovation, and humanity (though not without our historical maladies). The thing is there was an era when those with vision and integrity were looked up to. Those with the moxie to stand for what is right, as well as the intelligence to determine what is right, were seen as heroic. In addition, the conduits in which people could share experiences and knowledge were not corroded to the point they are now.

What the false prophets found was that it is much more difficult to combat those whose martyrs had the wherewithal to bring attention to the holes in various systems, as well as the charisma to create a following to incite revolutions. It is so much harder to stop an object in motion as it gains momentum; easier to rob the object of said momentum all together. What has been the power of revolutions? Angst, absolutely, but blind rage will lead people astray if it is not harnessed. And knowledge, of course is that harness. So, a two-pronged approach is what we’ve been privy to for the entire duration of this wretched mutation; the turning upside down of virtues and the glorification of that which keeps people ill (mentally and physically).

At any given moment the vast majority of a population is connected to a media outlet, an enterprising entity could send whatever message desired, and is sure that it will be seen. Conversion of terms, re-direction of motivation, and the vilification of the wise can only be checked by those in the know. It would only take a few generations where vices are seen as virtuous and the upstanding slandered as arrogant and misguided; in what fucking plane of existence other than our own would Iggy Azalea be hailed a musical sensation, and Lauryn Hill virtually silenced?!? Paying off people in terms of giving credence to debauchery whether you are violating your palace with vapid television, music, art, or another person’s syphilitic appendage, seems eerily like prostitution of your very soul. Maybe not ho’n, as that is a somewhat honest trade, in that you typically know what you are getting. It’s the pimp’n that’s disgusting. Not merely taking advantage of another’s weakness (either due to circumstance or situation), but manipulating the parties involved to think that is what they not only want, but also need. That’s what has happened here, we’re witnessing the pimp’n of stupid.

By cutting off education and giving us brain candy; by perverting our music and giving us pop sensations selling clothes and liquor; by stealing our art and giving us endless ‘reality’ shows (or the Housewives of … , better known as Satan’s Harem), all hoping we’d tune out. Additionally, flooding our bodies with manufactured meals and the belief that the only remedy is medication to deal with the side effects of what we’ve ingested. How about “don’t fucking eat the shit that causes the shit!” To boot, merely suggesting that we indeed are what we eat, and should consider eating, maybe real food, is actually seen as insane. Much like questioning the content of the music being memorized by our young minds, seen as contemptuous, or the calling out the amateur porn that passes as art seen as judgmental (well, I have to be honest, I do judge that shit … as absolutely ridiculous).

I believe it was Chilton Pierce that said, “We need to be what we want our kids to become,” and I believe that conversely, we can see ourselves, and our legacies, by watching what fundamental our youth operate from. Look around at those within the range of influence of the institutions and ask how are they faring? Again, be honest with yourself at what you see. Libraries have become an endangered species. Neighborhood grocery stores are closing and fast food restaurants take their place. Dietary diseases are on exponential rises (in parallel with pharmaceutical companies, likely by design). We are not only graduating people who have no clue of their heritage (or even definition of the damn term), but have been indoctrinated into that army of the aggressively ignorant, getting promoted through acts of treachery and brutal promiscuity. Each day the ranks waking to bruises and lesions, hung over from the previous days conquests, wondering what the fuck?

Any attempt to wake the blissfully ignorant has been met with severe retribution, either from the orchestrators or the addicted. When a student thinks that Moby Dick is what you get if you fuck around on Spring Break without protection, we need to re-evaluate our knowledge base. The kicker is that faith in our government is not all that great. So why buy what they are selling? That recognition should be enough to motivate us to look elsewhere. Don’t be led astray by the insidious nature of the scandalous.

Ernest Hemingway in Wyoming

Ernest “Sean Connery” Hemingway

 

If you don’t know who Ernest Hemingway is, then you sniffed glue through high school, or you are a Siberian emigrant, or you may be a mermaid who gave up your voice to live on dry land, and now you’re just getting familiar with silverware and life’s other mysteries.

Ernest Hemingway is known to have said,”There are two places I love: Africa and Wyoming.” His love for Wyoming gives me a sense of affirmation in my great personal love for our humble state. It makes me think,”See, Hemingway knew what’s up.”

There’s a pretty sweet little honeypot of incredible stories about Hemingway’s close relationship to Wyoming. He wrote some of his most well known works here, and his personal life played out in some of Wyoming’s most time honored bars and hotels. We’ll do a quick run-through of every reliable story I came across in regards to Hemingway’s time in Wyoming, a topic that was suggested by my friend and Horse Trough Time Machine superfan Lee Harden. He didn’t explicitly come out and say he was a superfan.  That’s when I knew he was one.

 

Hemingway updates his operating system.

“Can someone tell me what a goddamn plug-in is?”

 

In addition to being a literary icon, Hemingway’s personal life was about as interesting as you can get without being the Dos Equis dude. Here are some of his standout attributes and accolades:

• Served in both world wars
• Was present for the D-Day landings on Normandy and for the Liberation of Paris
• Served as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War
• Received the Bronze Star Medal for bravery (U.S.A.) and the Silver Medal of Military Valor (Italy)
• Won a Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize
• Published 10 novels, 10 short story collections, and 5 non-fiction books (some of these publications were posthumous)
• Married 4 times
• Drank heavily and carried on
• Survived a plane crash in Africa, and survived another plane crash on the following day
• Was under FBI surveillance for a while because of his association with Cuba
• Loved hunting and fishing of all kinds
• He, his brother, and his sister all committed suicide and are believed to have suffered from a genetic form of depression
• Was a badass throughout his entire life, and has a great many larger-than-life stories to his name

Hemingway was an adventurous soul, and he loved the great outdoors. Not the 1988 comedy phenomenon, The Great Outdoors starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, but just outdoor living in general. So for him to have fallen in love with Wyoming is not a huge stretch nor a big surprise when you look at his life through that lens. In fact, he told a friend that the best fishing on Earth was at the Clark’s Fork branch of the Yellowstone River. He loved Yellowstone National Park and spent a lot of time there, as well as in the rest of the state, with his closest family and friends. He even married his third wife in Cheyenne, WY. Let’s check out some notable times and places in Hemingway’s Wyoming adventures:

 

Ernest “Walter Sobchak” Hemingway

 

The Spear-O-Wigwam

The Spear-O-Wigwam Ranch outside of present day Sheridan, WY was a place that Hemingway loved to go for its peace and solitude. It was founded in 1923 as a dude ranch, and it’s where Hemingway finished his famous novel “A Farewell to Arms” in 1929. The ranch was recently sold to nearby Sheridan College for education and preservation.

Wine of Wyoming

Wine of Wyoming is one of Hemingway’s celebrated, if not sometimes overlooked short stories. It received a lot of praise from literary critics in its heyday, but it has become somewhat forgotten by time. The most likely reason for this is that it’s written partly in French, a language whose presence in America died with the advent of Freedom Fries and Franzia.

The story is a great one though, and it basically illustrates the culture clash between an older French immigrant couple in rural Wyoming, and the less refined locals who view them has snobby. The clash between French and American culture is a dichotomy with deeply historical and political origins.  It is still alive and well today, and it can be observed in real time if you’ll refer to my Freedom Fry joke in the previous paragraph.

Cody, WY

On October 16, 1932 Hemingway checked into the Chamberlin Inn in Cody, WY, where he finished and sent off the final manuscript for his book “Death in the Afternoon,” which was published later that year. We know this because the current owners of the Chamberlin Inn, Ev and Susan Diehl, found the actual register that Hemingway signed, cluttered amidst old antiques and ledgers in the inn’s basement. This piece of information was corroborated by a biography that referenced a letter from Hemingway, in which he stated he had sent the manuscript from Cody via US Mail. The Chamberlin Inn still serves travelers through Cody today, and they have preserved the room that Hemingway stayed in, aptly naming it the Hemingway Suite.

Actual registry signed by Hemingway at the Chamberlin Inn in Cody, WY.

That same night, a local man named Carl Lorenzen checked into 

Room #1 in a calculated effort to make the history books at all costs.

In the book “Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story” by Carlos Baker, there is another awesome story about Cody, WY in which Hemingway received a deep cut on his chin at the nearby L Bar T Ranch (modern day location of the LGBarT Silly Ranch). After getting this cut on his chin, Hemingway went to the local ranger station and rented a car with which to drive to Cody. Upon his late evening arrival in Cody, Hemingway awakened a former veterinarian named Dr. Trueblood. No shit, that was his name! Since this was prohibition era, alcohol was only legally available by prescription, and the reliable Dr. Trueblood fixed ol’ Ernest right up with a bottle of whiskey and a proper stitch job. After presumably saving some of the blood for breakfast, Dr. Trueblood accompanied Hemingway across the street to a local restaurant where they drank the whiskey with some of the locals and partied well into the night.

Casper, WY

One of the coolest stories I found about Hemingway took place right here in Casper. As I mentioned before, he was married four times, and it was his fourth wife, Mary Welsh, who this story is centered around.

In July of 1946, Mary revealed to Ernest that she was pregnant. So like any caring husband in the 1940’s he immediately planned a vacation trip for her to Sun Valley, Idaho so he could go hunting. They began the trip by arriving in Florida from Cuba, where they picked up Ernest’s sweet ass Lincoln and embarked on the long drive to Idaho. After driving through 8 states, they pulled into Casper, WY and got a room at the Mission Motor Court, which stood then at the corner of Durbin and Railroad streets. They went out for a dinner of steak and fries and a bunch of local beers.  Mary wasn’t feeling well when dinner was through, so she turned in early. Ernest stayed out for a few more beers and several games of pool, the cutting edge in prenatal care in those days, before retiring to bed himself.

When he awakened the next morning on August 19th, 1946, Mary was writhing in excruciating pain and clutching her belly. Since Dragon Wall Buffet didn’t exist at that time, Ernest wondered if it might have something to do with her pregnancy, so he called for an ambulance.

When they arrived at Natrona County Memorial Hospital, Mary was fading in and out of consciousness. The doctor concluded that her fallopian tube had burst due to an ectopic pregnancy, and she was bleeding internally. To make matters worse, the surgeon was out fishing that day, and nobody knew when he would be back. The doctor and hospital staff were transfusing blood into Mary’s veins when she began to take a turn for the worse, and then all of her veins began collapsing.

Right about then, the sturgeon-slaying-surgeon got back from his little fishing adventure and began assessing the scene. He concluded that it was too late for Mary and solemnly told Ernest that he needed to say his goodbyes. Unwilling to accept the dire prognosis, Ernest called upon some of his wartime memories of hospital tents and gruesome surgeries, and he grabbed the IV needle and told the doctor to cut open the vein on her arm. Then, with MacGyver-like prowess, he worked the needle back and forth, to and fro until the plasma bag began emptying into Mary’s bloodstream again. They put four more bags of plasma into her before the surgery was through, and several hours later, the fishin’ physician had removed her ruptured fallopian tube and had Mary back in stable condition. It was Ernest though who had saved her life, and I’m sure he reminded her every Valentine’s Day thereafter.

Mary recovered in Natrona County Memorial Hospital until September 3rd, and then they stayed in Casper for another week while she fully gained her strength for the remainder of the “pregnancy/hunting/we’ve come all this way” vacation trip. In the three or so weeks that Mary and Ernest were in Casper, it is rumored that Hemingway visited the Wonder Bar on Center Street numerous times. He once told the bartender that if only there were a One Man Band who played there on Wednesday nights, he may have stayed in Casper for good.

 

Hemingway pours himself another snifter of Wife-B-Gone

 

There is another story about Hemingway in Casper, although this one is a bit more tragic. As Ernest was traveling through Wyoming on a plane, the pilot stopped at the Casper airport for routine repairs. In a sudden bout of depression and paranoia, Hemingway attempted to walk into the moving propeller of the plane. Luckily, some nearby men stopped him from doing so, and he was abruptly transported to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota for treatment.

He would attribute his suicidal tendencies to being ferociously pursued by “the Feds”. This may have been a plausible and forgivable mindset for Hemingway when we later learned that Herbert Hoover did indeed have him on a watch list because of his villa in Cuba and his fraternization with political figures therein.

 

Hemingway looks on as Fidel Castro declares himself the

winner of every Pinewood Derby Car race in the World.

 

So as you can see, Ernest Hemingway loved Wyoming, and he seemed to return here time after time to seek her plains and mountains for serenity and inspiration. It’s important for us to remember what an undeniably special human being he was. Heck, if every heavy drinking Wyoming guy with four ex-wives and clinical depression could be like him, The Alibi would be an Oxford think-tank.

 

As a lifelong Wyomingite, I’m honored to know that Hemingway loved it here so much. Thank you again to Lee Harden for suggesting this topic. If you enjoy reading about the history of Wyoming or the rest of the world’s history in general, or if you have an awesome topic or story you’d like to suggest, please email me at sean@rallycasper.com and join the Horse Trough Time Machine email list. If you join the mailing list, you can choose to be notified every time a new edition comes out, and it helps perpetuate the writing of this blog! Thank you for reading. Your support is very much appreciated!

 

 

Sources:

Ernest Hemingway and Wyoming – My Wyoming Adventure

Cody hotel preserves Hemingway’s memory | Wyoming News

A farewell to Ernest Hemingway’s Wyoming cabin? | Jacket …

Ernest Hemingway | | Cody Wyoming | Chamberlin Inn …

Ernest Hemingway Saves Mary’s Life – March and July, 1946