“Happy Birthday, America!” the crowd bellowed back as Wyoming Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott opened her speech to those gathered outside the Wyoming Capitol: “Today, we celebrate 250 years of an idea unlike what the world had ever seen.”
Opinion
At some point over the last few months, we all received the invitation to America’s big birthday bash. Some were quick to don their stars and stripes and prepare the yard for guests. Others, like myself, made no plans to party, but rather casually weighed the options and the dog’s fireworks anxiety. Yet somewhere beneath all the red and blue banners, I felt my skepticism soften. I’ve come to think that loving a place means seeing both what it is and what it could become.
I went over the hill from Laramie to Cheyenne for the Capital City Celebration as the co-pilot of my partner, a hired contractor for a stage erected in front of the Capitol. The day’s schedule highlighted a parade, live music, a speaker series, games, and, of course, fireworks over the “People’s House” at sunset. Dogs wore tiny top hats. Chants of “U.S.A” echoed through the parade route.
Long before the marching bands lined up, a rehabilitated 1956 railcar made the same journey to the Capitol lawn, not on the rails it once knew, but by way of crane and semitruck. High Iron is a traveling celebration and story collection of immigrant and migrant workers who built the West. If this party was a birthday bash, High Iron was the kitchen, crowded with chatter of food and family. Passersby rushed in, ignoring the precious stories around them to collect stickers for their event passports. Others lingered.
Watching thousands gather to celebrate America made it difficult not to think about the year that preceded it. This time last year, American Semiquincentennial grant dollars flooded into the nonprofit networks across the nation. Yet, it was hard to relish in the influx of cash. In this same season, funding for arts and culture, healthcare and food security was cut without warning. We got used to the bad news. We’d swap stories of getting “DOGE’d” on street corners and grocery aisles. We clinked our beers and shrugged.
Before the speakers began on the plaza, the Wind River Dancers, including members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, filled the plaza in traditional dance. The jingle-dress dancer wears 365 bell-shaped pieces on her ornate, handmade dress to correspond to each day of the year, the group’s leader and emcee, Darrell LoneBear Sr., explained to the crowd. Small, silver cones are made of tobacco chew can lids — cut, curled and sewn to ring as they step with the beat of the drums. These recycled artworks and sacred traditional dance are a healing tradition originating from the Ojibwe people of the Great Lakes. A young dancer joined her across the Equality State seal tiled into the concrete. Her dress featured similar adornments, as well as a fist-sized pendant of Bluey, the preschool-famous cartoon blue heeler, hanging between her long braids.
The opposite side of the Capitol was quiet. You could hear the bees buzz in the bold blooms of the garden beds. A woman reached in silent sweeps across the large panes of horizontal glass with a sponge and squeegee, like the kind you use to scrub highway bugs from your windshield. She cleaned the skylights that illuminate the bright corridor below, the Capitol Extension.
Here, past meeting chambers and towering bronze, a small corner room burst with noise. Families gathered in the Civics Lab to learn about government through bright displays and invitations to explore. Above the exit door, it said, “The most important role is citizen.”
We didn’t stay for Cheyenne’s fireworks. The Capitol’s stage disappeared almost as quickly as it had risen, and the crowd drifted toward the lawn. Back home, we waited for the booms of our local fireworks. The dog slept at our feet as if it were any other quiet-sky night.
