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- I'm Craig Blumenshine from Wyoming PBS.

I first began working at Wyoming PBS almost a decade ago, but really my relationship with this station dates back more than 30 years.

But as my time at Wyoming PBS comes to an end, I thought it would be great to remember some of the wonderful people I've met in Wyoming, who we brought to you, our viewers.

A time of reflection and my farewell next on Wyoming Chronicle.

(exciting music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, ThinkWY.Org and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- Welcome to Wyoming Chronicle.

I'm Craig Blumenshine, from Wyoming PBS, and this is kind of a special Wyoming Chronicle.

Actually, it's one of the last Wyoming Chronicles I'll do for this station as I've announced my intentions to leave Wyoming PBS here at the end of the year.

So we're gonna take a walk down memory lane and kind of review some of the Wyoming Chronicles that I've really enjoyed in my time here at the station over the last decade.

And I've asked my good friend, Steve McKnight, who is also a producer here at Wyoming PBS, Steve produces the series, Our Wyoming, which is a digital format series to kind of lead me, I guess, down memory lane.

Steven, thanks for taking the time to, to be with me this evening.

And I guess I'm gonna, with some in trepidation here, give you the reins for the show tonight, but I appreciate that you're willing to do this.

It means quite a lot.

- Okay, it's my honor.

This is truly a very special episode of Wyoming Chronicle.

And I'm looking forward to going through some of your memories here, and let's start at sort of, sort of the beginning.

We, you and I started, full-time here at the station about the same time, but you had some history at the station before that.

Can you talk about that?

- Yeah, we really did start about the same time, but yeah, I was a volunteer at the station, Steve, almost maybe 30 years ago or so.

The station initially needed some help organizing their databases, their member databases.

And I was happy to help.

My background is in computer science.

I'm kind of a techno geek as it were.

And I was able to help the station in their, in its early days, organize those things.

And then I became a on-air talent person.

I was one of those awkward people who asked Wyoming, PBS viewer, some maybe who are watching tonight, way back then to maybe consider donating to Wyoming PBS.

So I've had a relationship with Wyoming PBS for a long time, but then there came time where I became a full-time employee.

And the way that worked out was interesting.

The station needed needed its website redesigned, and Ruby Calvert had asked me if I wanted to do that.

I told Ruby, you bet, I'd be happy to do that, but I didn't think I needed to be a full-time employee.

I just needed, just throw me a contract.

And I would do that.

And she said, "No, you need to be an employee to do that."

And I said that I would, and that didn't take too long.

So I did that and then applied for, and was offered a job as Central Wyoming College's database administrator.

And right then, as you remember, our good friend, Richard Egger, who had this position before me, he passed away unexpectedly.

And it was an awful time here, for all of us.

And it became an all hands on deck moment, really for the station to kind of move forward.

And, you know, Ruby Calvert, our general manager at the time, you know, was asking people who had a relationship with the station to help out, to produce Wyoming Chronicles.

And I knocked on her door.

And at the time the University of Wyoming had hired Craig Bohl is its head football coach.

I am, happened to have liked the Wyoming Cowboys.

I have as much cowboy memorabilia in my office as many other people and had known about Craig Bohl because my son goes to school in North Dakota.

And I just said, hey, I think I can do this.

Want me to give it a try?

And she said, "Sure, go to Laramie."

And lo and behold, Coach Bohl did not kick me out of the Wildcatter suites.

And I had produced a Chronicle and Ruby came to like it, or didn't, decided I guess that she liked it enough to ask me if I wanted to do this full time.

And that was a tough choice because I'm an old guy.

And once you're out of the technology world, as a person my age, you're not going to get back in.

So in the end though, it wasn't really too hard of a choice, really to have the opportunity to drive around Wyoming and meet incredibly interesting people and bring our viewers, their stories.

And in the end, it's just been a wonderful experience.

- We have asked then to compile some of your favorite Chronicle and Capital Outlook segments.

So can we talk about some of those?

- Well, I anticipated that question, of course.

And I thought a lot about it.

The one that I remember all the time is one that I see everyday on license plates in Wyoming, Steven, and we, I think the title is, Wyoming License Plates and Those Who Collect Them.

And the reason why that was so interesting to me is because of the way it came about.

My wife, Tracy and I were in Casper.

And this gentleman comes up to us in a parking lot and asks us, "Can I have your license plate when you're done with it?"

It's just like, well, okay, we have a university of Wyoming license plate.

It happens to be a low number and we go, sure, but now wait, why do you want our license plate?

And he said, "Well, we collect them."

And it's like, well, who's we?

And he goes on to tell me about he and his friends and well, how many do you have?

A few hundred, and he goes, "Well, we have thousands of Wyoming license plates."

And that turned into a Wyoming Chronicle, and his name was Russ Dickerman.

And he was a former postman and yeah, so, many Chronicles, that's how you learn about these things and these great people in Wyoming, who I had a chance to come and meet.

Ham Radio Operators In Wyoming is another one that I remember.

My dad was in the air force and my dad knew Morse code.

And I happened to learn of the SHY-WY amateur radio club in Cheyenne.

In fact, it's one of the older radio clubs in the region.

I met Tony Panarisi, who lives in Western Wyoming, who has an incredible baseball museum in his house.

It's unbelievable.

He's a Dodgers fan and has been since he was about 10 years old, but I met Tony because I went to visit his wife who runs an incredible program called, Horse Warriors.

And we did a Chronicle on her and she goes, "Hey, you ought to go see my husband's "baseball collection upstairs."

So we did.

And it turns out that he has pretty much every book ever written about the game of baseball, among other things, including a baseball signed by Fidel Castro.

But then there were other Wyoming Chronicles that had been important to me that I hadn't known about prior that I wanted to bring to our viewers.

One is the story of Heart Mountain.

And my friend Aura Newlin, Aura's from Riverton.

I've known her family for years, Steve, and she grew up here.

She was a student at the University of Wyoming.

She later became a professor at Northwest College in Powell, and she gave us a tour of Heart mountain, and told us about her ancestors who were incarcerated there.

And so we brought the story of Heart Mountain to our viewers.

And I think that the work that has been done at Heart Mountain is incredible.

It's a wonderful museum.

And I hope our viewers can go visit there.

Another Chronicle that we just filmed this year, Steven, was of Jill Winger, the Prairie Homestead.

Here's this woman and her husband who after college at Laramie County Community College, where they met in Cheyenne, really weren't sure what they were gonna do with their life.

And so they bought a ranch in, near Chugwater, built it up, and then she decided that she wanted to be able to grow food and raise animals, to sustain her own family.

And then she decided that she was going to tell the world what she was doing.

And she created this brand using technology, using blogs and using social network influencing.

And she wrote an Amazon bestseller.

A lot of the Chronicles that I liked to bring to our viewers, Steven, showed people's passion for what they had done.

And the first one that really brought that home to me was this gentleman named Von Ringler.

He's a leather worker.

In fact, I carry his wallet that he made with me.

He has a great bucking horse on it, with me all the time, but he's a leather worker near Powell in Clark, Wyoming.

And he makes these beautiful holsters, among other things, and wallets.

And some other things like that.

But the way he started his, what is turned out to be his vocation, is his wife gave him a leather craft set for Christmas.

And he just then learned the craft.

And now it became his life's work.

And to me, that was just exciting.

And we got to sit with him in his studio and watched him do his work.

We got to interview many artists along the way.

And the one that I enjoyed a lot was artist, J.C. Dye, he's markets himself as an artist of the American West.

He's a sculptor, he's an artist.

We sat with him at his studio in Lander.

In fact, let's take a look at the clip of J.C. and his work right now.

- After a while I just got tired of sculpting.

So I decided I'd try painting.

And I took some workshops from some incredible artists and I enjoy it more that, you know, you can, you can't sculpt sunlight.

You can't sculpt sundown.

You know, it's because of light usually is that, that, you know, painting is so much more rewarding than sculpting, not that sculpting isn't rewarding, but this is a lot more fun to me.

And more challenging, I guess.

- Have you been able to keep your connection with art throughout your entire life?

- Yeah, most of the time.

I had a void away from it while I was in Vietnam.

Although I wrote letters to my dad and friends and back home, and I always included, or usually included a sketch, if I had time.

- Nate Shakur, who was in my position before I was, and I co-produced a piece on a knife maker, named Audra Draper.

And about that same time, you did a piece on a knife knife maker as well.

Can you talk about that?

- James Rodebaugh, yeah.

He's a carpenter, Wyoming.

And we got to spend a day with him just as you notice with, with in your, our Wyoming piece, how incredible it is these people take these pieces of steel, and forge these incredible works of art, these knives.

And we got to spend time with James and watch him do that almost from start to finish.

And the craftsmanship that are in these incredible knives to me was just stunning, it's something I had never witnessed.

And we have a clip with him.

I'd like to roll that also, Steven.

- So we'll refine the point.

I'll go to a lighter hammer.

So once I've achieved that, then what I'll do, 'cause I'm gonna make a raised swetch hutter.

is I'll get a little more heated.

I'll come back here and I'll set a curve here.

- [Craig] How hot are we talking?

- We're working at about 1900 degrees right now.

So what I'll do now is I'll set that curve or the radius part of the amble here, and I'll hit half on, half off, and then I'll refine that a little more.

Okay, and you can see how we've got now a raised sort of area there.

- Craig, one of the, one of my favorite things about working with you over the years was how excited you were about these people and their passions, and you'd talk about them for months afterwards, Von Ringlers, leather work, and James' knives, just how excited you got.

And I, it seems like you always had great stories to tell, and I'd like you to talk about that next.

How did it, how did you, how did you find the stories that you were, that you were bringing to our viewers?

- It was interesting at times, Steven.

Well, one I talked about earlier, people literally would come up to me often in parking lots, like with the license plate guys and say, Hey, did you know, or I would observe folks doing something and just ask them more about what it is that they were doing.

And oftentimes that would turn into stories.

Friends of mine would email me, or even people that I didn't know would email me, but I would also read Wyoming's newspapers, as much as I could across Wyoming.

And maybe the most inspirational one of all was a feature that a reporter from Powell, Mark Davis wrote in the Powell Tribune.

And it was a story about Gary Olson.

Gary is blind and he's been blind essentially since birth.

And he's a lapidarist, he's a gentleman who takes rocks that look like normal rocks to you and me and makes this incredible, beautiful jewelry out of these rocks.

And I read Mark's story and thought, boy, this would be a great Wyoming Chronicle to produce.

So chatted with Mark, got Gary's contact information, called Gary, and he said, "Yeah, "I'd like to meet you and sit down with you."

So my friend, Kyle Duba and I went to Powell, and Kyle's another videographer here.

I'll talk about the staff here a little bit later.

And, we got to sit down with Gary and watch him go to town and hear his story and, just inspirational.

It truly, really is.

And we've got a clip that I'd like to share with our viewers.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that on the backside.

So here's, here's Gary Olson.

You speak as though you can see, you talk about looking at things on the internet or seeing the saw, is that just natural for you?

Or is that something that you do for a reason?

- It's natural for me, and, you know, I think the greatest compliment that anybody can give me is they forget about the fact that I can't see, and they just hang out with me or interact with me just as if I were sighted.

I'm a person, I'm a, I guess I could call a give back kind of, kind of guy.

And I was helped a lot along the way, not only with my rock hobby, but you know, just through life, by different people that I've met.

And I've had, you know, heroes that have inspired me.

And so I want to give back to other people, and make a difference in people's lives.

And I felt that way when I was working, too.

- So let me say one more thing about our time with Gary, that particular Wyoming Chronicle episode was a Heartland Emmy finalist candidate.

And to me, that was a big deal.

Wyoming PBS competes against other stations from Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska for these things called Heartland Emmys.

So we produced what we think or, we submit what we think are our best episodes each year, and they're judged.

And then some are selected as finalists for Heartland Emmy's.

And this was one that was selected for that.

It meant quite a bit to me.

But then you look at, Steven, who we're up against, who for a lot of these shows.

And in our case, in our category, we were up against episodes from Oklahoma and Denver, stations like KUSA, big commercial stations, or even other PBS stations that are much bigger than we are.

And then you'll read their credits for these shows.

And lo and behold, they've got producers and assistant producers, and directors, and assistant directors, and sound engineers, and assistant sound engineers, and lighting people, and then maybe others and all of a sudden 8, 10, 12, 14 people in their credits.

And our story with Gary had two.

Kyle Duba and me, and I'm proud of that.

Kyle's on the other end, Kyle's on the other side of the camera, but it's really cool.

The work that we do here, with just a small staff.

So it's, I feel really good about that.

And of course Gary's an inspiration to all of us in this.

It was really great meeting him, and other good friends of mine that I've kept in contact over the years.

David Peck is one of them.

David is publisher of the Lovell Chronicle.

He's given me story ideas along the way.

And one of them was Queen Bee Gardens.

Geez, you can't miss Queen Bee Gardens, if you drive through Lovell.

It's that yellow and black striped building, and you wonder what the heck's going on in there.

Well, let me tell you, about the best candy produced anywhere in the country is produced right in there.

And so we had a chance to go in there.

I want to play a clip to of Queen Bee Gardens, and then we'll move on after that.

But there we go.

Here's some, here's some Queen Bee Gardens candy clip.

If you haven't had candy there, you need to go in there.

- [Male] We then put the candy into this machine, which goes down here and that knife cuts the candy off.

At the same time, paper is coming around from here.

This knife cut the paper off.

The plunger pushes the candy into the paper, it comes up over here, the fingers rapid close.

This is our best-selling Pecan Pearl.

It's a honey Carmel or a honey praline.

And this is the oldest machine in the building.

We don't have an actual date on it.

The company that made it started in 1913, and we believe this is a 1930s or '40s machine.

- You introduced us to a friend of yours from high school.

Scott Actin, talk about Scott.

- Scott's a brilliant, brilliant person.

Scott and I were friends in high school.

Scott and I were on the same speech team.

Scott is a brilliant physicist and has worked all over the world.

Scott, we actually came upon Scott, and when he was about ready to freeze to death, he was on a cross country bike ride, promoting his work for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is about to launch, Steven.

And it should launch here in December after years of delays, this is a replacement, times a hundred, for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scott's work on that project is essentially once once the telescope blasts off, and once it gets in its orbit where it's gonna be, once the mirror's unfold, his job is to make sure those mirrors align absolutely perfectly within a micron or whatever.

And, he's just brilliant.

And we wanted to learn about, you know, his bike ride around the world, promoting it.

And it was so fun to reconnect with Scott and Scott actually was on two Wyoming Chronicles.

We also visited with Scott and his uncle, who was a space shuttle astronaut during the eclipse.

And it was during the eclipse that we were with Scott and his uncle and some others.

And it was fun to visit with them at that moment.

It's something I'll never forget.

- [Steven] Pretty special moment for all of us at the, in Wyoming at the time of, it was.

- It really was.

And we had a front row seat with some brilliant people.

- One thing that maybe didn't come as natural to you, and, but you, but you were ready to take on was some of this political stuff.

You hosted political debates, special programs, interviews with political figures, and then our series, Capital Outlook.

Talk about, talk about that.

Let's, let's go into those.

- A couple of things, I think I would say about Capital Outlook, Steven.

And I've said this before on air.

First thing is is that, Wyoming's political leaders by and large are accessible and that's not lost on me.

With one exception in all of the years that I did Capital Outlook.

And these are, these are probably now hundreds of interviews, just one exception.

Everyone said, yes, I'll sit down and visit with you.

That's pretty neat.

And when I visit with my colleagues around the country, that's rare.

My most favorite interview at all was with Senator Enzi.

People have asked me often well, why haven't you sat down with Senator Barrasso, or Representative Cheney or Senator Lummis.

And it's because they're still in office, and they're running for reelection.

And I just didn't feel it was appropriate to do it at that time.

But when Senator Enzi announced his retirement, I immediately asked if he'd be willing to sit down for an interview.

And he said, absolutely, would love to do it.

So we went to Gillette and his wife was so great, baked us her famous cookies.

And we got to spend the day with Senator Enzi and got to spend really quality time with him.

And it turned out to be of course, tragically, one of his last public interviews.

I want to roll a clip with Senator Enzi about our last interview.

Then we're gonna talk about that a little more in just a minute.

- Senator, you've passed over 100 bills, that in today's world, that seems almost incomprehensible.

It really does.

- [Senator Enzi] Well, it is because things have changed so much.

We used to be able to work across the aisle a lot more.

And we did bills a step at a time.

Now everything has to be comprehensive.

If you, if you tackle a problem, you've got to cover the whole thing.

And so it's like 3000 pages in the bill.

Who can read 3000 pages comfortably?

And if you do find some things and you always find some things you'd like to correct, you can't correct them because the process is so cumbersome on doing it on the floor that it can't be done.

So you either have to accept it or not.

And most of the things don't get accepted, but if you bite it off a step at a time, you can actually scrutinize it.

You can draw in other people and get ideas.

You can grow those ideas so that they will work, and you can eliminate some things that are gonna cause a problem.

That's my 80% rule or 80% tool.

- And I wanna talk about that because you talk about that in the context of, it's not really compromise, it's common ground, as I understand it.

- Absolutely, yeah compromise is where you give up half of what you believe in.

And I give up half of what I believe in, and we wind up with something that nobody believes in, but there's, as you're going through issues, you'll find that you can agree with 80% of the issues with the other person.

And if you pick out any one of those issues, you'll be able to agree on 80% of that issue, not the whole thing, 'cause there's 10% on both sides that have been colliding for years.

I got to work particularly with Senator Kennedy on a lot of those issues that had been butting heads for years.

And what we did was figure out that you can take that piece out.

It doesn't destroy the bill.

It just doesn't do as much as what people might like to do in that one step, but it gets the rest of it done.

- That was a great show, Craig, that Senator Enzi show and what a great man he was.

I know that he had an impact on you and your future.

And could you, could you tell the viewers about that?

- And that's true.

Just tragic what happened really.

There's no other way to describe it, but I thought a lot about our interview with Senator Enzi, even visited with some of his family about it, Steven, and you know, his last 15 minutes or so of the interview, he talked with me about how he, of course wanted to spend time with his family.

And, so do I.

And so I have that opportunity to spend time with my family, maybe even move to do that.

And so we wanna put ourselves, my wife and I, in the position to maybe spend a little more time with our family.

And, that's why I'm leaving Wyoming PBS.

It's bittersweet, there's just no question about it, but it's important to us.

So now, Steve, I can kind of predict probably the next, and maybe the last question here.

- Craig, what's next for you and Tracy?

- Yeah, Steve, my time here has been great.

It really has been, but we're writing the next chapter now.

We really are.

I've been doing work for the National Museum of Military Vehicles.

You're aware of that, been a part of that, and I'm gonna do more work for them.

Albeit, remotely, as its Director of Communications and Marketing.

I believe in what the museum is doing.

It's an iconic world-class place and it's right here in Wyoming, and I'll get to have a connection to it, but I'll be able to do it remotely.

I can't do my work at Wyoming PBS remotely, lo and behold.

Our family's gonna relocate all within just minutes or a few hours of each other in the upper Midwest.

And we want to be closer to family and that's what's promulgating this whole move.

And so I think that we're looking at probably joining them so that we can be more active grandparents and more active parents and kind of helping, helping the kids raise their kids as much as we can, and being more active part of their lives, as we talked about earlier, it's important, very important to us to be able to do that and we're looking forward to it, but it is remarkable to me that I've had this opportunity.

I had no experience at all in television, none when I stepped in to do that first interview with Craig Bohl, but I've had great support, from folks and it's not lost on me.

Never forget it.

I think our viewers have liked the work that Wyoming PBS does and will continue to.

There's no question that Wyoming PBS will move forward, but I want to thank our viewers, Steven, for kind of riding along with us.

And I know that there are more roads to be traveled in Wyoming, that others will lead them on, including you and others.

So it's just been a great ride for me, and I certainly wish the station the best.

- Excellent well, Craig, on behalf of everybody at Wyoming PBS, thanks for your dedication and your enthusiasm, and your hard work.

On behalf of the state of Wyoming, thanks for bringing such great stories to all of us and in a way that is accessible and honest and with integrity and just personally, thank you for being such a good friend to me and Mary and Matthew.

We love you and wish you all the best.

- Truly it has been great.

- Truly.

- Yes it has, Steven, thank you.

- Thank you.

(exciting music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, ThinkWY.Org.

And by the members of the Wyoming úPBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.