A Day for Spatting.

Today is October 12, 2026.

Department of Defense logo from 2000.

It's also officially Columbus Day, which has a long history of introduction in the U.S.  It was first celebrated, on this day, set to always occur on a Monday, in 1792 by the Columbian Order of New York, better known as the Tammany Society, which evolved into the famous New York political machine.  Italian Americans picked it up as a day of Italian pride as Columbus was an Italian.  It was recognized annually by the Federal Government starting in 1934, and then officially made a Federal holiday in 1968, to be first on the calendar in 1971.

It's still there.

Native Americans have never been particularly keen on the day, for obvious reasons.  This lead to protests over the years and eventually the day was recognized in some areas as Indigenous People's Day.

Taking the guns at Standing Rock.

Columbus Day was the source of increased agitation by Native Americans dating back into the 1970s, which was the height of power of the American Indian Movement, although if you look at today's entry for 1911, you'll see that it was on this day that the first national organization for Native Americans convened.  That probably wasn't an accident.  Some Native protests against the day have verged on violence, so deep is the opposition to it in those quarters.

Wyoming doesn't officially recognize either day, thereby avoiding taking any kinds of stand, but it does recognize Native American Day, which is in May.  Laramie and Jackson recognize Indigenous People's Day on this day, however, those two municipalities being the most "liberal" in Wyoming (which makes Rebecca Bextel's campaign being headquartered in Jackson ironic).  Casper doesn't recognize either day but usually finds a means of making the day a municipal holiday.

This year, Casper found a way to recognize both:

City of Casper Releases Indigenous Peoples’ / Columbus Day Services and Hours

City of Casper releases Indigenous Peoples’/Columbus Day services and hours

Garbage collection, water, sewer, emergency services and more will operate as usual.

Casper, Wyo. (October 8, 2026) – The City of Casper administrative offices will be closed for the observance of Indigenous Peoples’/Columbus Day 2026 on Monday, October 12, 2026.  Normal water, sewer, 911 dispatch, police, fire, and metro animal control services will maintain their regular schedules.  Solid waste crews will collect garbage as usual on Monday, and other crews will be on call to respond as needed.

The following is the complete list of services and hours.

• Trash collection will run on the normal schedule.
• Casper Regional Solid Waste Facility: Open 7:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
• Police Patrol, Fire-EMS, and 911 Dispatch: Regular hours.
• Water and Wastewater Treatment Plants: Regular hours.
• Water distribution, sewer, streets, parks, fleet services, and public facilities crews on call for emergencies.
• Metro Animal Services Patrol Officers (APOs): Available 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.by calling non-emergency dispatch at 307.235.8278.  Outside those regular hours, APOs are on call for emergencies by calling 911.
• Fort Caspar Museum: Closed (closed on Mondays for winter hours)
• Casper Municipal Golf Course: Open normal hours, 1st tee time is 8:30 a.m., the Golf Shop will close at 6:00 p.m.
• Highland Cemetery: Grounds open dawn to dusk with burial search map signs.
• Casper Area Transit, operated by the City of Casper: limited services on Monday. LINK transit services will be unavailable. ASSIST services will run limited services from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for scheduled medical-only appointments and for ADA complementary paratransit services.
• Metro Animal Shelter: Closed.
• Casper Ice Arena: 6:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. (Open Figure Skating), 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Open Figure Skating)
• Casper Family Aquatic Center: 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• Casper Recreation Center: 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Donald Trump, who loves a good cultural spat, spoke in Columbus, Ohio last week, which took down its statute of Columbus some time ago.  While there, he stated; “We demand that Christopher Columbus be put back into the heart of Columbus, Ohio,”

Well, we demand the dumb ballroom be taken down.  

Anyhow, Trump loves to troll in racist waters, which this is an example of.  It feeds into the far right belief that "whiteness" is some sort of inherent quality, and that it's being attacked.  If you want to polish that up, it would be that the country's European heritage is being attacked.

Yesterday was National Coming Out Day, which always occurs on October 11.  It's set by some homosexual rights organization.

I don't pay much attention to this as I largely do not care if people with same sex attraction come out.  I don't think that people have to make social martyrs of themselves.  But Adam Kinzinger made an observation that no GOP members of Congress came out.  Well, I wouldn't have expected any to, but he's suggesting that there's at least an appreciable number, or perhaps a number who are significant, in the GOP in Congress.  That might actually matter for a party that takes a position, sort of, on social issues in this arena.

There are consistently rumors to this effect.  Hunter Biden, who may very well not be the most reliable witness on this topic, claims there's a Republican "closeted gay mafia".  There are some figures whom rumors circle around continually.  I was once told by a very inside member of the state's GOP that a certain Republican figure was a homosexual, which is the first time I heard the term "beard" used to describe a female spouse of a male homosexual, married to camouflage the attraction.  The marriage, in that context, made sense to me.  I've been told the same thing about the same person by an openly homosexual politician, but that person is sort of wildly unreliable.  And there are questions that circle about others simply due to their state in life, I suppose.

None of these people may actually be homosexual, and if they are, that doesn't make them "gay" or "queer".  Still, it matters because if you are holding yourself out as a defender of traditionalism in all sense while engaging in homosexual liaisons, you are being hypocritical.

Back to Trump, or rather the Trump Administration, Scott Bessent, who is a homosexual in a homosexual union, sent Elizabeth Warren this letter last week.

I've never been a fan of Warren's, who is one of those Democrats that cause people to avoid the Democratic Party, but this letter is just mean and snarky.  Warren legitimately is an expert on economics.  The final handwritten line recalls Warren's claim to have Native American heritage.  And she actually does, as her DNA tests revealed.  It is, however, remote.  Trump repeatedly lampooned her for this, calling her Pocahontas, which is mean, but Warren should have avoided the entire topic in the first place.

So should Bessent who perpetually comes across as scared when he's interviewed.  Maybe he isn't, but that's how he comes across.  And Bessent has been press ganged into the Trump ongoing excuse machine.  Some of his own claims have been lampooned, as in "I'm a farmer".

But the point here is that, once again, the MAGA Hypocrisy is at work.  Trump's supporters claim to support him due to his traditionalism and his loyalty to Christian values.  Bessent is an unapologetic homosexual in a same sex union, which is not traditional to say the least.  Trump's a serial polygamist himself.  The administration won't release the files on Epstein whose island was an epicenter of child rape.

So, like Festivus on Seinfeld, let the airing of the grievances begin.

 

A thought about not thinking things through on Indigenous Person's Day.

Wyoming politician Bob Ide is saying he's going to sponsor a bill to take the Federal domain into state hands, requiring, as if Wyoming can require the Federal Government to do anything, the fulfillment of a promise that the Federal Government never made at the time Wyoming became a state.

In fact, the opposite was true.  Wyoming promised not to seek any more Federal land than it was getting.

But a promise was made regarding those lands. . . to the Cheyenne, Arapahoe and Sioux tribes. . . that being that they could keep them for hunting grounds.

And a larger reservation than they currently have was originally given to the Shoshone.

In her campaign to displace Liz Cheney, Harriet Hageman emphasized the hardworking nature of her family and forebearors, and has been a standard-bearer of conservative and populist values in her brief time in Congress. She's from, she related, a fourth generation ranching family.

But most families that have been in agriculture in Wyoming that long, outside the descendants of British remission men, are remote beneficiaries of a gigantic government system which used Federal agents, in the form of the U.S. Army and Federal Indian Agents, to dispossess the occupants of that land, sometimes by force, and remove them to where they did not want to go, so that the land could be transferred free or cheaply to European Americans.  Those original European American occupants, we might note, in the case of homesteaders, were not the wealthy and were perfectly willing to take advantage of a government program.

My point?

Well I don't mean to be one of those who are going to engage in hagiography of any one group of American people, Natives nor European Americans, but on this day it might be worth remembering something.

The "pull up by the bootstraps" argument that the middle class, or lower upper class, so frequently states, or imagines about themselves, fails pretty readily upon close examination.  Almost every class of American with longstanding roots in the country that have been here for quite some time benefitted from a government program, whether that be homesteading, Indian removal by the Army, the mining law of 1872, the Taylor grazing act (which saved ranching in the West), the GI Bill, and so on.

That is, in fact, the American System.  Not the Darwinian laissez-faire economics that libertarians so often proclaim.

I'm not demanding reparations, or that injustices committed to people of the past be retroactively lamented.  Indeed, that's pointless.  What I’m suggesting instead is that justice be done for those now living, and that as part of that we admit when we are vicariously beneficiaries of some Federal program in the past, as I am.

And as part of that, I'm also suggesting that we don't engage in myths or hagiographies about our own predecessors.  Nobody carved a civilization out of an empty wilderness, unless we go back in North America 15,000 years.  Nobody promised that Wyoming could have the public domain.  None of us are as independent or virtuous as we pretend, if we pretend that we are, and nobody's ancestors were hearty bands of go it alone giants.

Shoot, even Columbus, if you prefer to ponder him on this day, was on a state funded mission.

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Today is Columbus Day.

And Indigenous Peoples Day.

And, oddly enough. Coming Out Day.

It's self-evident why it'd be Indigenous People's Day as that's a counterpoint to Columbus Day.  Why somebody chose this for Coming Out Day is a mystery.

It's also General Pulaski Memorial Day, International Day of the Girl Child and International Newspaper Carrier Day.

All of which is a lot of titles for one day, and which is why for most people, anymore, October 11 is a work.  Not that I've ever worked anywhere that had it off.