The Glenrock Branch Library has been hitting the headlinesthis fall, with great coverage from the local newspapers in Converse County. Ethan Brogan, editor of the Douglas Budget and Glenrock Independent, was kind enough to allow us permission to repost these two stories from late September.
Farmer’s Market brings local flavor, taste
By Ethan Brogan
The downpour outside couldn’t stop Glenrock residents from visiting the Farmer’s Market at Glenrock Library Sept. 23. Various stalls lined the walls of the library, featuring foods grown from Glenrock and even baked goods from Casper.
Sharon Davies sold her Glenrock grown produce to attendees next to YBarBQ sauces that had a lot of the foot traffic walking in the door.
Moonberry Farms brought their organic produce including wide varieties of colorful fruits and vegetables.
Stacie’s Bakery, of Casper, featured quiches, fruit tarts, cupcakes and a variety of different baked goods. Deer Creek Honey Farms was also in attendance, selling the remainder of honey left for the season.
This market is one of several events hosted by the Glenrock Library during the past several weeks as an effort to sponsor more events with the available space at the library.
“Tamara Lehner is doing a pretty bang-up job at trying to make things happen at the library,” Glenrock Mayor Doug Frank said. “I’m really happy to see our library making an attempt at programming and things that I hope that our townspeople will enjoy.”
Rockin’ the Glen: UW econ prof offers music appreciation 101
By Ethan Brogan
When you go to hear a musician play, you never really know what you’re getting into. When you hear the act coming to your local library has played at the Lincoln Center in New York and the Kennedy Center in D.C., is an economist and worked for former President Bill Clinton and the King of Sweden, you really don’t know what to expect. For the select few shuffling into the Glenrock Library Friday, there was no way to be prepared.
Jason Shogren sits before his audience with his 1957 Gibson CG1 in hand. The guitar is scratched with black duct tape strewn around the center.
He rips into his first song. A light-hearted melody with ghosted bass undertones. He is precise while he shifts between fast and slow tempos, playing lead and rhythm simultaneously.
When he finishes his first song, the small crowd of nine claps, as he tunes strings between songs and tells everyone about the roughed-up guitar he plays.
“The only thing older than what is sitting on this stool, beside me, is this guitar,” Shogren says. “That makes me about 29.”
The guitar is only one year older than Shogren, he adds, and wasn’t the first instrument he played. His played piano at age 5 and moved onto accordion at age 10, but at age 15, he found the way to soothe his muse, the guitar.
“If you want to get the girls, guitar is the way,” he says laughing. “It made sense; been playing it pretty much ever since.”
Shogren is originally from Duluth, Minnesota, but moved out to Wyoming in 1980s to study environmental economics at the University of Wyoming. He had never heard of the merging of these two ideas and immediately became intrigued.
After Shogren earned his doctorate, he worked at several places before he got a call from the White House. He went out to Capitol Hill and served on an advisory board for Bill Clinton.
“It was a very interesting time,” he tells the audience. “A lot of smart folks with a lot of fancy degrees.”
Shogren remembers the time fondly, remarking how the other advisors were from ivy-league schools like Harvard and Yale. He was from UW.
“This is so and so from Harvard and J. from Wyoming,” he recounts with a laugh.
Shogren also traveled to Sweden to advise the King of Sweden Carl XVI Gustaf on biodiversity and climate change. Shogren joked he thought he had a chance of wooing the princess, but fate had other plans for him. He met his wife Linda. It was their mutual interests that drew them together at first. Linda was interested in behavioral economics, what drives people to make decisions about consumption of food or habits.
“It is a merging of economics and psychology,” Shogren says.
Linda moved to Centennial, Wyoming, where she and Shogren work as professors at UW.
Through all of his professional and personal triumphs, Shogren has focused on music his whole life. He played in bands in high school, college, during his work and, now, is in two groups J Shorgren Shangha’d and 10¢ Stranger. The drive to always be doing something has been instilled in Shogren since he was a kid.
“I can’t sit still, that must be it,” Shogren says. “If I sit, I feel like I’m gonna drown.”
Shogren also appeared at the Converse County Library in Douglas. This story has been shortened from the original article.