Daugh­ter of Mal­colm X speaks on campus

“Just as one must drink water, one must give back.” This is Dr. Betty Shabazz’s legacy, and one that her daugh­ter, Ilyasah Shabazz con­tin­ues to live today. In her Keynote address for the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming’s eighth annual Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Days of Dia­logue event last night, Shabazz pre­sented her audi­ence with a mes­sage of unity and equality.

“My mother raised us really embrac­ing the human spec­trum,” Shabazz said, empha­siz­ing the neces­sity for every­one to view one another in the same light. “I think it is extremely impor­tant to under­stand our human­ity, that we are one.”

Shabazz, one of six daugh­ters of Mal­colm X and Dr. Shabazz, has spent years con­tin­u­ing liv­ing the same path of fur­ther­ing civil rights as both her par­ents. She wit­nessed the death of her father and then her mother, yet refuses to let this keep her from reach­ing her goals and work­ing for the bet­ter­ment of human­ity. “I don’t live my life as a vic­tim, no one should.” Rather, Shabazz reminded lis­ten­ers of the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion and of under­stand­ing the past. “…I think it’s just extremely impor­tant that we should under­stand history…”

The inter­con­nect­ed­ness of the past and present is a bond which Shabazz explored through a brief his­tory of Haiti dur­ing her speech. The inter­ac­tions between Haiti and Europe, and later the United States is, “…why we see Haiti in the con­di­tion it is today.” The earth­quake that has dev­as­tated Haiti is an oppor­tu­nity for us to learn about the past and come together in order to rec­og­nize our com­mon human­ity, Shabazz said. With regards to Haiti, lis­ten­ers were reminded, “…we can no longer indulge our focus on the me, my and mine syndrome…”.

For audi­ence mem­bers, the speech was the oppor­tu­nity of a life time. Mes­sages many of us have heard since child­hood were repeated, but held more weight with the words and mes­sage of Shabazz behind them. “You are the lead­ers of tomor­row,” she said, mak­ing clear the respon­si­bil­ity of this role. “Take full advan­tage because you can never, ever, ever get these years back.”

Shabazz left her lis­ten­ers with a mes­sage of strength and direc­tion. “If you are will­ing to stand for some­thing, com­mit your­self to giv­ing back. If you are will­ing to answer the call for lead­er­ship, study, give it one hun­dred and ten per­cent. Pre­pare your­self so that you can ful­fill your life’s purpose.”

Today is the last day of Mar­tin Luther King Jr. and Days of Dia­logue events.

A Laramie din­ing envi­ron­ment like no other

Prac­tice makes per­fect, dreams can come true, and hard work pays off. Laramie has a new din­ing option and an aspi­ra­tion has become a real­ity. Mizu Sushi, which offi­cially opened for din­ner Jan­u­ary 13^th, offers sushi as well as Viet­namese entrées to Laramie’s down­town cui­sine selections.

“We want to offer some­thing unique to the com­mu­nity,” said Lil­lian Luu, co-owner of the restau­rant with her brother Travis Luu. And their restau­rant fits this niche perfectly.

Travis, who majored in design while at uni­ver­sity, designed the restau­rant from the ground up. Design­ing is about the poten­tial of the space, he said, and when he first saw the build­ing, he, “thought it was too big.” How­ever, the loca­tion on Third Street right down­town was too good to pass up, and so the ren­o­va­tions began. … Con­tinue Reading

Mizu Sushi review

Sushi makes a bold and fresh appear­ance in Laramie with the grand open­ing of Mizu Sushi.  Laramie Free Press spills the deli­cious details in this review.

When I first moved to Laramie not too long ago, I really did fall in love with this lively lit­tle town.  The com­bi­na­tion of local charm and the hus­tle and bus­tle of a uni­ver­sity endeared itself to my city lov­ing heart.  But as time passed, I found myself feel­ing as though some­thing were miss­ing, specif­i­cally in the din­ing depart­ment.  It took a new arrival on the culi­nary scene to make me real­ize what that some­thing was.  One word: Sushi!  Now, let me clar­ify.  You can get sushi in this town from the gro­cery store and the con­ve­nience store.  But, I’m talk­ing about plac­ing an order and watch­ing a trained, knife wield­ing sushi chef pre­pare a dish just for you, being able to look over and give a head nod of grate­ful­ness to the chef that lov­ingly, metic­u­lously hand­crafted your meal.  Luck­ily, you can do just such a thing at Laramie’s lat­est, Mizu Sushi.  … Con­tinue Reading

Con­struc­tion acci­dent causes fire at War Memo­r­ial Stadium

[UPDATED 11÷23÷09 @ 11:48am] A fire broke out late Mon­day night inside War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium where the new “Wild­cat­ter” club seat­ing is under con­struc­tion.  The fire was caused by portable propane heaters inside the con­struc­tion site being placed too close to lum­ber mate­ri­als.  Quick action from the Laramie Fire Depart­ment pre­vented what could have been a much big­ger fire.

The Laramie Fire Depart­ment responded to a fire at War Memo­r­ial Sta­dium at 6:53pm on Mon­day night. Fire Depart­ment units arrived to find flames vis­i­ble from the east and west sides of the lux­ury seat addi­tion cur­rently under con­struc­tion.  Portable propane heaters had been used ear­lier by con­struc­tion crews work­ing at the site.  The heaters had been placed too close to a wood bar­rier shield­ing an open ele­va­tor shaft, this accord­ing to a press release from the Laramie Fire Dept.

“It was sim­ply a con­struc­tion site mis­take, there was no intent,” said Kyle Poli­dora, Laramie Fire Dept. shift commander.

The fire spread to three 100-pound propane tanks inside the con­struc­tion area. The reg­u­la­tors on the tanks were dam­aged due to the ini­tial fire and the gas con­tin­ued to feed the flames.  Fire crews uti­lized an aer­ial lad­der to apply fire streams from an exte­rior posi­tion to con­tain the fire while inte­rior crews made access and removed an addi­tional nine 100
pound propane tanks to pre­vent fur­ther fire hazards.

“It was a unique fire attack, in that we had an exter­nal stream on the fire to hold it while also hav­ing
inte­rior crews in to remove the fuel sources,” said Poli­dora.  “We nor­mally would not apply an exte­rior stream to an area where crews were inside.”

The fire was out at 7:52pm with no injuries reported.

“There was some fire dam­age to a 1 and 1/2 inch PVC pipe car­ry­ing gas into the build­ing, Poli­dora said.  “Pres­sure built, but the pipe did not breach; the fire could have been much worse.”

The extent of the dam­ages will be fur­ther assessed by the con­struc­tion company.

“There was dam­age to the con­crete, the con­struc­tion com­pany will need to have a struc­tural engi­neer look at con­crete to eval­u­ate integrity,” said Polidora.

Poli­dora expects con­struc­tion will con­tinue on sched­ule upon inspec­tion by an engineer.

The Fire Depart­ment arrived with two pumpers, a lad­der truck, an ambu­lance, an inci­dent com­man­der and the Fire Pre­ven­tion Chief. A total of 13 fire­fight­ers were on the scene. The Laramie Fire Dept. has fin­ished their inves­ti­ga­tion into the accident.

Green means more than money at First Inter­state Bank

The First Inter­state Bank is get­ting a face lift—an envi­ron­men­tally friendly one to boot. FIB has decided to remodel their build­ing in Laramie to reduce harm­ful effects on the envi­ron­ment, said Gary Negich, pres­i­dent of First Inter­state Bank Laramie market.

“We feel that it is time to become more envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and take advan­tage of some tech­nol­ogy that will reduce our elec­tric­ity and gas con­sump­tion,” Negich said. Some of the new fea­tures include sof­fit light­ing and new insu­la­tion around the build­ing and sec­ond floor windows.

The remodel will be con­structed by sev­eral Laramie businesses—including Arcon, Inc as the gen­eral con­trac­tor, Sum­mit Struc­tures, Inc and Fre­mont Elec­tric, said Tom Man­gan, vice pres­i­dent of FIB Laramie. The build­ing was orig­i­nally con­structed in 1964. “While the tech­nol­ogy was very good at the time, energy effi­ciency was not a key ele­ment in any con­struc­tion,” Negich said. … Con­tinue Reading