One of the fun things about my job as a reporter is the opportunity I get to meet a lot of different people. I have fun talking to people, learning their stories and sharing some of them here, with you.

Not every story I hear gets into the paper, and not every person I meet wants their story told. I usually try to discern what category person I am talking too before I get the notebook out.

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jo Dee Messina over the phone. If, like me, you have no idea who that is, you can do a quick Google search and learn, as I did, that she is a pretty popular country music star. Hmm. Who knew?

After working through her people, we finally arranged a suitable time for the interview. When she called the Herald, she was funny and kind, two of my favorite traits. But she did ask if I was using a made-up name. “Is that your REAL name?” We chatted about kids, life and eventually, her latest album. Before she hung up she said, “Come see me after the show.”

I imagine she says that to all the reporters.

On Saturday, I attended the Uinta County Fair concert, which featured music by “Due West” and Charlie Jenkins. After they played, my friend suggested we go meet the bands.

Wait one second. Meeting bands is not something I do. I might appear bold and brash on the outside, but inside I’m pretty shy. And I don’t just walk up to people for no good reason.

She insisted I do my job as a reporter and march down onto the fairgrounds and interview those young fellows. Hiding behind my camera and under a hat, I followed her, half expecting the local sheriff’s posse to stop us dead in our tracks.

We made it all the way to the barricade, when the friendly deputies did stop us in our tracks. And, they had the audacity to laugh when I said I wanted to interview the bands.

After their laughter died down and they wiped the tears out of their eyes, one deputy said he would find out if the band wanted to be interviewed.

A long time later, I assume after he assured them that I was “legit”, he came back and said they would do it. The only problem? I had neither a notebook nor a pen. No problem. My erstwhile friend cheerfully agreed to take notes on her phone, while I did the interview.

Once the talent came over, the guys were quite nice, and the interview went well. Except when I asked them the best use for duct tape. They looked at me quizzically. Duct tape? I explained 15-questions, the Friday feature that runs in the Herald and they quickly came up with a number of good uses for duct tape, including fixing broken refrigerator shelves, guitar cases and glasses.

By then, the main act, my new best friend, Jo Dee Messina was on the stage. She played for an enthusiastic hour, bounding across the stage like a woman half my age. I’ve only got a couple of years on her, but she sure had a lot of energy. I got tired just sitting and watching her.

Once the last number had been played, my friend looked at me. “Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for?”

She wanted me to go through the torture of going back to the arena, and interviewing a star. A real star. With talent and everything.

“I think she’s probably tired,” I mumbled.

“Are you kidding me? Get down there and interview the main act. Isn’t that your job?”

Oh yeah. My job. With a deep sigh of resignation, I followed her back down the bleachers.

By now, it was mostly dark, and the people around us were mostly drunk. We walked over to the barricade, me half expecting to be arrested on the spot. To our surprise, there were no officers in site. Anywhere.

We looked around, and I wondered what to do next, when my friend began climbing the gate.

Let me set the stage. It’s dark. Two women, of questionable age and intent, are climbing a barricade. One is wearing heels. One is wearing a skirt. A short skirt. Both women reach the top of the gate, only to fall inelegantly to the other side. She lost her wallet, and I lost my dignity. What little I had left.

Fortunately, in the dark, no one saw our stealthy moves. We stood up, brushed ourselves off, and looked around.

I was expecting to be handcuffed by security at any moment. We straightened up, dusted off, and headed toward the talent. As we rounded the giant black bus, a drunken woman was being escorted rather loudly from the area. I nearly panicked and ran away, but my friend grabbed me firmly by the arm.

I think she sensed my cowardice.

We walked boldly around the bus, and there stood Jo Dee Messina.

She wasn’t surrounded by crowds, or security, or guards; she was standing there talking to someone. We politely waited our turn, and when she looked at me quizzically I stuck my hand out and said, “I’m Deborah Demander.”

She laughed. “Oh yeah. I remember talking to you. You had the made up name.”

And just like that, she broke the ice. The conversation focused on all the peculiarities she noticed in Evanston, and I asked about the duct tape. She immediately had an answer. Fixing diapers. Actually, that works. I’ve done it myself.

It was quite an adventure. We stood there talking for several minutes, and then she got on the bus with her sleeping babies and drove off into the dark.

And I was left standing on the wrong side of a barricade, in a skirt, in the dark, wondering how the heck to get over without being seen again.

And that is how I met Jo Dee Messina.

Namaste friends.

I often wonder if my kids ever listen to what I say. My lengthy lectures are usually met with rolled eyes. My angry outbursts bring glares of disapproval. When I try to share life lessons, I find my kids dozing in the back seat, lolled to a peaceful nap by the droning of my voice.

Occasionally, however, I am surprised by the wisdom of my children. In a fit of sorrow, as I cried inconsolably, my daughter patted my back and said, “Don’t worry mom, everything always works out.”

Although I continued crying, I was touched to hear my own words coming back to haunt me. Funny, they seem so much more conciliatory when I’m saying them, rather than receiving them.

My son recently began moving his Lego’s to our garage attic. He had previously used a small empty room in our basement for his Lego City, but found the confines of the room to be too containing. Often I would find myself tripping in the dark over helicopters, fire trucks and villains forgotten in the hallway.

During a momentary epiphany, I realized that we have an entire attic over our garage, mostly unused. There are a few boxes of Christmas decorations and some camping gear, but the bulk of space sits unused.

The older girls decided to make a craft room out of part of the attic, and hauled up tables, stickers, and craft supplies of all sorts. I think they finally realized that I am no help when it comes to things of a crafty nature, so they decided to find a place where I wouldn’t constantly hover over them, asking irrelevant “mom” questions.

Gunnar decided to recreate his Lego City in the attic, and to help him out, I swept all the Lego’s into a box. Much to Gunnar’s dismay, not all of his creations survived the sweeping.

I admit to being a little overly zealous in my endeavor. I am thrilled to get the Lego’s out of the hallway. I may have swept them just a little more vigorously than necessary. Some of the Lego creations may have come apart as I tossed them carelessly into the box. I’m not sure that had anything to do with it, but I am admitting to my part in the destruction of Lego City.

When Gunnar discovered his millions of Lego’s thrown haplessly into a plastic storage bin, he was less than enthusiastic about my help. He stormed out to the garage, insisting that he could get the work done himself.

About an hour later, he came into the kitchen, looking somewhat abashed.

He told me he was pretty mad when he found all his stuff broken. And he tried to devise a pulley system to pull the enormous box of toys up the attic stairs. As he hoisted the box overhead, he watched in alarm as it began to slant. Then, the box crashed to the ground, thousands of Lego’s covering the garage floor.

Gunnar said, “I was so mad when all my stuff broke. Then I thought that everything happens for a reason. So I figured I could make a bigger and better Lego City in the garage.”

With that, he happily bounded back out to the garage to begin the daunting task of sweeping up thousands of Lego’s.

I stood in wonder at the brief conversation. My eleven-year old son just repeated and applied something I preach to my kids every day. And he applied it much more quickly and cheerfully than I ever have.

Everything does happen for a reason. Whether it’s Lego’s crashing to the ground, a car breaking down, or your sweetheart breaking your heart. It is a waste of time to ask ‘why’ something happens. Instead, like Gunnar, ask yourself what you are going to create out of the situation.

You can’t control everything that happens in life. What you can control is your own response to situations. Your response is your responsibility. What can you make of the things that life throws your way?

Try looking for opportunity in the situations facing you. You might just find yourself with the biggest and best Lego City ever created.

Namaste, friends.

I typically stay out of the morass of political discourse. While I do vote in every election, and have served and will continue to serve as an election judge, I believe politics makes for dull conversation and even duller reading.

Politicians on either side of the aisle tend to use the power of sesquipedalian speeches and lofty ideals to obfuscate their agenda from the eyes of wary citizens. In other words, they use those big, fancy words and vague references to party platforms to hide their true intentions. Certainly not all people running for office are politicians, but all politicians eventually run for office.

The problem with hiding behind obscure words and ideologies is that they tend to alienate the average Joe, such as myself. I don’t really care about party platforms and big words. What I do care about is how things will affect my life, and the lives of my kids. Beyond that, party politics mean little to me.

Recently, a campaigning politician referred to environmentalist extremists, who value rocks and sage chickens just as much humans. His comment to those folks, to us folks, was that sage chicken is tasty.

Well, yes it is. Unfortunately, politicians and many other people look down on so called environmentalists without understanding what caring about the environment actually means. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one values one thing over another. Instead, I see value in all things. Caring about the environment doesn’t necessarily make one an extremist, either.

In a philosophical sense, rocks, sage and people serve different but equally important functions in the vast macrocosm of our lives. Of course, humans have opposable thumbs and are therefore superior. When it comes to doing things that you can only do with thumbs, then yes, I suppose it is true. But what about all the other things, that thumbs don’t help with? In those cases, then perhaps we aren’t so superior after all.

Unfortunately, we lose sight of the importance of things when we become too focused on ourselves, and that, I believe is the greatest shortcoming of politicians.

They focus on themselves, their message, and their agenda. They lose sight of the common folk, who are trying to survive.

We just want to enjoy life, pay our bills and live a decent life. At the end, we want to look back, with some satisfaction, that we left the world a better place for those who come after us. And sometimes, we might like to hike in the sagebrush, enjoying the wonder of the world around us. While sage grouse and stones might not serve an obvious purpose, our hike might be less interesting without their grounding presence.

Of course, the only folk the politicians pay heed to are the ones who vote. And more specifically, the ones who vote, and who also have money. To narrow it down further, they really care about the people who fund those expensive campaigns, allowing them to travel hither and yon, spouting big words and fancy obscure ideologies.

The little people, the ones affected by their decisions, rarely fund those campaigns. The little people are working, taking care of families, and wondering how they will survive next week, next month and next year.

The little people don’t typically cast aspersions at environmentalists, at the tea party, or at activists of any sort. We little people are too busy trying to survive and thrive. Not only do we not have time, but we don’t have interest in extremes at either end of the spectrum. What the people care about is what affects them every day.

We care about the price of gas, and how we can make a tank stretch until next payday. We care about buying milk, diapers and whether we can afford day care next week.

Politicians typically get lost in rhetoric. They forget all about serving people and making the world a better place, if they ever think about it at all.

There are public servants, who work to ensure that our town is safe and well run. They care about the quality of life for the people they serve. Those public servants are not politicians, just average people like the rest of us, just trying to get by.

With campaign season in full swing, we will soon be inundated with loquacious politicians, trying to schmooze us. They pretend to be just like us, to understand the plight of the common folk. They try to disguise their rhetoric, to simplify and dumb it down.

What we can’t lose sight of is that they are no better, nor really any worse than any of us. Misguided? Yes, probably so. But we are all fighting a hard battle, in one way or another. During campaign season, my advice to politicians, and the victims of politicians, is to be kind. Everyone is fighting a hard battle.

Namaste, friends.