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Sheridan Renaissance
03/19/2008
By Samuel Western
 khen rinpoche  SHERIDAN - On Thursday, March 13, Sheridan College held its 12th annual Thickman Ethics lecture. The college chose as its speaker not usual philosophers or academics, but a Tibetian monk of some renown, Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan, head Abbot of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery in southern India.
    To a standing-room only crowd, the Rinpoche gave Sheridan a crash course in Buddhism. He spoke in often-hard-to-understand English and waved his arms about like an Italian street vendor. His message, which he delivered with humility and self-effacing giggles: detach from your emotions (do you not shoot your anger arrow!) found a receptive audience.
    It turned out to be a record attendance for a Thickman Ethics lecture. For three days the town talked of little else.
But the Rinpoche wasn’t in Sheridan just for a night, but a full week, giving dharma talks, informal lectures, and meditation instruction.
    The monk’s presence in Sheridan indicates a community in the middle of an artistic and cultural transition.

    Sheridan, along with Lander, has a reputation as one of Wyoming’s more pleasant places. Weather-wise, it’s short on wind and long on rainfall, at least by Wyoming standards. Due to its relatively low elevation (3742 ft) it enjoys a gardening season where one can actually grow tomatoes--sweet corn, even.

    Historically, agriculture, coal mining, and timber supported Sheridan. But over the decades, service industries, government, and education -- the petri dish of the college-educated middle class -- played an increasing financial role.         This admixture of opportunity allowed Sheridan to weather storms that so battered a boom-and-bust state.

    But Sheridan had something else missing in most Wyoming communities: money, mainly old and quiet. Remnants of the British aristocracy settled Sheridan in the 1880s; a small trickle followed with their fortunes. Philanthropy grew. Sheridan County now has 68 foundations, one of the highest foundations per capita of any county in the nation. This includes Whitney Benefits Corporation, an educational foundation with $128 million in assets.

    Over the years, this old money and education combo sponsored a quiet form of political activism or at least a willingness to look at new ideas. If this development seems mundane, remember that for most of its history, Wyoming was poor and tribal. It had one university, one political party, and one image it projected to the world: ranching. Tribalism discouraged dissent. Questioning the status quo was, and still is, regarded as treason.

    So when, at the turn of the century, Sheridan County Republicans rebelled against the old-school politics of then powerful Senator F.E. Warren, it riled the waters. These upstarts supported Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party, an affiliation that most Wyoming Republicans found objectionable due to its conservation planks. There’s even a record of one young Sheridan turk, Fred Blume (who later went on to become chief justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court) duking it out with E.E. Lonabaugh, a lawyer and standard-bearer of the old guard.

    But this dissent left a legacy of not hewing to the line. In the last quarter-century, Sheridan County has elected iconoclastic Republicans from Hardy Tate to Tom Kinnison in the local legislature and Malcolm Wallop to the US Senate.

    But then, in the mid 1990s, the world discovered Sheridan. An 18-hole golf course, complete with starter mansions built off the greens, appeared between Sheridan and Big Horn. Coalbed methane boomed. So did the coal industry. A small, international oil company, Rock Well Petroleum, bucked the colonial trend and decided to put its US headquarters in the Sheridan. Property values soared. The area seemed slated to the similar fate of so many charming western towns with high scenic value and a groundful of minerals.

    With these new homes and new faces came new money. According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 2005, Sheridan County ranked 7th (out of 3141 counties total) in the nation for dividend income. Teton County is first.

    An increased tolerance for new ideas, much of it in the form of art, accompanied this new money. Bronze sculptures appeared on downtown streets; Sheridan College formed a culinary arts program.
 
 sheridan public art   Now some in the area want more than quaint art in public places. They want an art-driven economy. In 2007, Whitney Benefits Corporation pledged $7.2 million to Sheridan College, half of which is dedicated to the nascent Big West Center for a Creative Economy.

Sheridan College’s president, Kevin Drumm, has been pushing for this since he first came to the school three years ago.
 'Driving Force', part of Sheridan's public art display on Main Street.

“We have such a rich foundation in arts and culture,” he said. “The resident artists are, in the broadest sense, a strength to build on for the community. It’s a strength any good college or university should have.”

Drumm takes his cue from where he grew up, Lenox, Massachusetts. Beginning in about 1889 and over the space of 50 or so years, Lenox transformed from a farming, mining, and mill town, to a Guilded Age resort community, and eventually to a renowned center for the arts, including Tanglewood, summer home to the Boston Symphony.

Drumm’s also been keeping his eye on Santa Fe, one of the top art towns in America. “If you’ve been there, you know it can work,” he said.

Recently, the college hired a consulting firm, Regional Technological Strategies of Carrboro, North Carolina, to take the pulse of arts community. The firm is still assessing the data, but president Stuart Rosenfeld says Sheridan County has a very high ratio of artists and artisans. “It’s well above the national average, probably among the top ten percent in the country.”

Rosenfeld said the impact of Sheridan’s art economy is, thus far, underrated. He estimates that local, state, and federal attempts to count the number artists have missed the mark “by at least 25 percent.”

Not everyone appreciates the direction the area and college are heading. says Drumm. “We’ve had a mixed response, but it’s been OK.”

But a little adversity, especially in a change-resistant state, is to be expected. As Woodrow Wilson said, “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

As the Rinpoche reminded the crowd at the college, “sentient beings are not easy to deal with. They make many different and difficult demands. Your enemies are not your enemies, however, but your best friend and teacher.”