The primary election is June 28, selecting candidates for the Nov. 8 general election. Ballots have been mailed and candidates are hard at work campaigning. I’m getting confusing mailers from Democrat sources about Republican candidates.
There is a considerable amount of money being spent on this deception and interference with direct mail content, and it is questionable at best. There may be some legal implications about these direct-mail materials.
***
Gerri and I traveled to Cody, Wyo. this past week to attend the summer board meeting of the National Newspaper Association. I served as president of this group several decades ago. It is the largest and oldest newspaper trade association in the United States with headquarters in Wash. and Fla. When I was president we were located on the campus of the University of Missouri at Columbia.
NNA lobbies for newspapers in Wash. on First Amendment issues and postal matters. Like almost everything, the cost of mailing newspapers continues to rise. The postal service has been hard hit by the pandemic and shortage of workers.
We mail The Villager every Wednesday morning with privileged periodical mail that is entitled to the paper to move as first-class mail when possible. Third-class (bulk mail) can take a week for delivery. There is some confusion among postal ranks about what is a periodical legal newspaper and what is a shopper. The U.S. mail is very important to the lives of Americans and has been a wonderful service started by our founding fathers. Postal employees are some of the hardest and most vital government workers. If you have a delayed newspaper, put a note in your mailbox asking for faster service from your mail carrier.
Back to the trip to Cody, Wyo. to check up on NNA activities and the latest newspaper issues across America. The Association seems to be doing well and is attempting to educate members on digital and online distribution of newspapers. If your reading this you know that we like print, but we do have an ISSUU online edition.
It was good to see some old friends and sons of former publishers that we have known for many years. We have traveled on NNA study missions to some interesting destinations that have included Cuba, China, and Vietnam, making many lasting industry friendships.
While in Cody we toured the Buffalo Bill Center; a major attraction and a wonderful museum with Bill’s life story. He started the town and founding the Cody Enterprise newspaper in 1892. The center has tributes to American Indians, Winchester rifles, natural resources, and the history of “Wild Bill” and his traveling circus that toured the U.S. and the world.
Buffalo Bill is actually buried in Colo., directly west of Denver on Lookout Mountain where there is an excellent museum about his life story. The tomb overlooks Denver and the front range. Cody’s folks wanted his remains returned to Wyo., but he is still interned in Colo. with a large monument at the museum site.
This local museum is well worth a trip and contains a treasure trove of history about William Cody and the history of the west.
A sidelight of the trip to Cody was the massive road destruction in nearby Yellowstone National Park that has closed the park for the summer and well into the future. An estimated 10,000 visitors had to be evacuated from the park.
The closing is unfortunate for Cody tourism as one of the major entrances to the park is through Cody, with dozens of motels along the main street.
We had lunch in Bill’s “Irma” hotel and restaurant with an antique bar taking up one wall of the restaurant. Bill had two suites in the hotel and his office located in the main street hotel.
Cody is a neat town, with a year-round population of about 10,000 people and a view of the Grand Teton mountains.
Along the way in Wyo. we saw signs for Liz Cheney for Congress.
One Wyo. publisher thinks she will hang on and win. The Cody publisher thinks she will lose 80 to 20 percent. My prediction is that she is “toast.”
The highways in Wyo. are fast and smooth, while crossing in and out of Colo., our highways offer a bumpy ride.
The Cody Enterprise recently sold to a new owner and he hosted everyone to lunch and gave us a tour of the fabulous newspaper plant with a 10-unit Goss printing press.
I sponsored his father into NNA 30 years ago.
Time flies when you’re having fun.