Drag Queen Story Hour Comes to Cattle Country
Jun 1, 2023 0:53:13 GMT -5
Post by leilani on Jun 1, 2023 0:53:13 GMT -5
Drag Queen Story Hour Comes to Cattle Country
BY LINCOLN BROWN 9:52 PM ON MAY 30, 2023
If you have never heard of Vernal, Utah, you aren’t alone. Many people in the state don’t know where it is or have heard of it in passing. The town is situated in the northeast corner of the state, close to Wyoming and Colorado. Its prime economic drivers have been the oil and gas industries, but it is perhaps best known for dinosaurs. It is close to the Dinosaur National Monument, and dinosaurs are everywhere. T-shirts, statues, books, toys, stickers — if you need a dinosaur-related product. chances are you can get it in Vernal. It is also a prime spot for anglers, hunters, and hikers due to its proximity to the Ashley National Forest and the Green River. And it is steeped in history. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent time around there. You can still find the house where they used to rest up in between jobs. You can still see the remains of settlers’ cabins by the road and, in more remote areas, petroglyphs, pictographs, and tipi rings from a distant past that all of a sudden doesn’t seem so distant.
And it was cattle country. When I lived there people were still running cattle and sheep. You could get local grass-fed beef.. and it was not out of the ordinary during the spring for cattle drives to go past my house. It was hell on the edge of my lawn, but it was always kind of fun for a city boy to watch. It is home to a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo. The majority of the population is LDS. And Uintah County was and may still be the reddest county in one of the reddest states in the union. Vernal was my home for over 20 years. I started my radio show there and even started writing for Townhall there. I knew the people, and I knew the land. I drove much of it when I served as the fire warden for the state. It’s still small-town, heavy on pickup trucks, Mexican restaurants, steak houses, and barbecue joints. And a couple of bars. The beauty of a small-town bar is that the bartender knows what you drink and has it waiting for you by the time you grab a stool. I’m not LDS, but almost everyone I knew was. I went to their funerals, the homecomings when their kids came back from missions, and their wedding receptions. It’s true that I butted heads once in a while with someone who was narrow-minded. I got yelled at a few times for a comment I made on the air, but for the most part people in Vernal were never hostile. Hell, they put up with me for all of those years I was a committed Democrat so that’s saying something.
I lived there longer than I lived in the city where I grew up. In some ways, it’s more my hometown than any place on earth. So knowing Vernal as I do, I was more than slightly surprised to find out that there is a drag queen story hour slated for June 7 at the Uintah County Library. I read the story and thought, “Man, they’re gonna wreck their transmission shifting gears that fast.” Could it be true that this tiny cow town literally in the Middle of Nowhere, Utah, was hosting such an event?
Yes, it is true. It just goes to show that no matter how far out you live, no matter how wide you may range, much like your student loan servicer and car warranty companies the “approved narrative” will eventually find you. And small towns can be easy to overwhelm and intimidate. As it turned out, that was not the case. To save you time and me the trouble of an hour of transcribing, you can see what transpired at the library board meeting over the subject in the video below. Unless your hobby is studying small-town libraries, I recommend you scroll to about the ~58-minute mark.
Continued with videos at link
BY LINCOLN BROWN 9:52 PM ON MAY 30, 2023
If you have never heard of Vernal, Utah, you aren’t alone. Many people in the state don’t know where it is or have heard of it in passing. The town is situated in the northeast corner of the state, close to Wyoming and Colorado. Its prime economic drivers have been the oil and gas industries, but it is perhaps best known for dinosaurs. It is close to the Dinosaur National Monument, and dinosaurs are everywhere. T-shirts, statues, books, toys, stickers — if you need a dinosaur-related product. chances are you can get it in Vernal. It is also a prime spot for anglers, hunters, and hikers due to its proximity to the Ashley National Forest and the Green River. And it is steeped in history. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid spent time around there. You can still find the house where they used to rest up in between jobs. You can still see the remains of settlers’ cabins by the road and, in more remote areas, petroglyphs, pictographs, and tipi rings from a distant past that all of a sudden doesn’t seem so distant.
And it was cattle country. When I lived there people were still running cattle and sheep. You could get local grass-fed beef.. and it was not out of the ordinary during the spring for cattle drives to go past my house. It was hell on the edge of my lawn, but it was always kind of fun for a city boy to watch. It is home to a PRCA-sanctioned rodeo. The majority of the population is LDS. And Uintah County was and may still be the reddest county in one of the reddest states in the union. Vernal was my home for over 20 years. I started my radio show there and even started writing for Townhall there. I knew the people, and I knew the land. I drove much of it when I served as the fire warden for the state. It’s still small-town, heavy on pickup trucks, Mexican restaurants, steak houses, and barbecue joints. And a couple of bars. The beauty of a small-town bar is that the bartender knows what you drink and has it waiting for you by the time you grab a stool. I’m not LDS, but almost everyone I knew was. I went to their funerals, the homecomings when their kids came back from missions, and their wedding receptions. It’s true that I butted heads once in a while with someone who was narrow-minded. I got yelled at a few times for a comment I made on the air, but for the most part people in Vernal were never hostile. Hell, they put up with me for all of those years I was a committed Democrat so that’s saying something.
I lived there longer than I lived in the city where I grew up. In some ways, it’s more my hometown than any place on earth. So knowing Vernal as I do, I was more than slightly surprised to find out that there is a drag queen story hour slated for June 7 at the Uintah County Library. I read the story and thought, “Man, they’re gonna wreck their transmission shifting gears that fast.” Could it be true that this tiny cow town literally in the Middle of Nowhere, Utah, was hosting such an event?
Yes, it is true. It just goes to show that no matter how far out you live, no matter how wide you may range, much like your student loan servicer and car warranty companies the “approved narrative” will eventually find you. And small towns can be easy to overwhelm and intimidate. As it turned out, that was not the case. To save you time and me the trouble of an hour of transcribing, you can see what transpired at the library board meeting over the subject in the video below. Unless your hobby is studying small-town libraries, I recommend you scroll to about the ~58-minute mark.
Continued with videos at link