I’m at my hotel in Wyoming. I gave my talk in the afternoon, for the Early Intervention and Education Program of the state department of public health. A lot of educators in the audience; some parents, too. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the talk and the interactions with everyone there. A lot of questions, mostly of the sort: “What would you want an educator to know when dealing with your child?” The people who go into these professions are just amazing the way they care. <\/p>\n
At night, some of the attendees asked me to go to dinner with them. It was really fun. We went to an Olive Garden, and then to the mall. I bought real cowboy boots — totally psyched to wear them in Boston! It’s funny how so many things in America are universal, like autism, malls and women who love to shop together; but also, how different. Here there are pick up trucks with gun racks; men with cowboy hats and cowboy boots (how can I get Ned to wear cowboy boots? Very hot.); and that lazy drawl. I overheard one man in the airport — tall, lean, crackly tan, wth a black bolo around his neck — saying into his cell phone: “So yoo won’t marry me raht now, but yoo know<\/span> how I love yoo.” I thought, “She ought to marry him right now.”<\/p>\n And of course, the sky is huge, endless, and the air smells different — earthy, dusty. I love it. The cab driver, too, was friendly, easy to talk to. He told me about the huge biker gathering here this week — bikers on their way to Sturgis, South Dakota<\/a> for a big rally. Last week, he said, was the rodeo — Frontier Days<\/a>, which sounded like so much fun, but the cabbie hates it because “there’s horseshit everywhere.” At the hotel, I asked about dinner and I was told the restaurant was closed, under renovation. “Where can I get a salad?” I asked. “Bout three blocks from here there’s an Outback Steakhouse.” But it was dark and I had no car. “Someone here could probably give you a ride,” she offered. I ordered Dominoes, sent to my room.<\/p>\n The women at dinner told me all about the rodeo, and what they do there, from wrestling steer to riding a bronco who is wild because his testicles are strapped down too tight! <\/p>\n I leave tomorrow morning, back in Boston in time for dinner. “I’m not cooking,” I told Ned. He already knew that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m at my hotel in Wyoming. I gave my talk in the afternoon, for the Early Intervention and Education Program of the state department of public health. A lot of educators in the audience; some parents, too. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed the talk and the interactions with everyone there. A lot of questions, mostly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-2g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
When I arrived in Cheyenne airport — which is really like a couple of two-story buildings and a runway, and one guy manning the ticket desk and handling bags — I felt like I’d arrived in a foreign country. It was so sleepy, so deserted. I asked the friendly all-purpose desk worker, “Where is the shuttle to the hotel?” And he blinked and said, “Well, I don’t think there’s a shuttle, but I can call you a cab.” <\/p>\n