Many years ago when public television was just a pup, I was one of a small team of people who helped build WGBH/Boston into one of the country’s premier PBS producing stations.

After retirement, I decided to come west. I’d been here as a visitor, but I’d never really flipped the buffalo chip over to see what was beneath it.

I discovered a vast and inspiring place here, and I quickly found a way to live my childhood dream by becoming a seasonal park ranger in Yellowstone’s remote and beautiful northeast corner. Suddenly, my encore career was off and running as I became a boots-on-the-ground ranger with an “office” of 2.23 million acres.

Between my seasonal stints as a ranger, I have become determined to learn more about the west. That’s why I have now joined the team at WYOMING CHRONICLE. It is a unique opportunity to dig into what makes the west so special, and to bring such people into focus on your home television.

I’ve already interviewed two such interesting and inspiring people and have been blown away by what they each have done. My fellow hosts and I will soon be interviewing more.

Please introduce us to people you know — people who are making a positive difference to Wyoming and to the west. Because, when all is said and done, public television is a two-way proposition that depends squarely on its viewers for almost everything that it does.

I was plenty excited that I was going to be talking with world-class fisherman, veteran ski-patrolman, river guide, inventor, and direct-metal sculptor John Simms on WYOMING CHRONICLE.

Before dawn one morning, John and I climbed into my truck and drove together on slick roads to the Wyoming PBS studios in Riverton. John had cracked a couple of ribs recently – the eighth or ninth time he has done that – so he was a bit sore. “They heal up by themselves,” he said, shrugging it off. Clearly, a cracked rib or two wasn’t going to slow Simms down now any more than it had when he was leading people into the back country, roaring down fall lines, or safely through some of the fastest water in our state.

As we sipped our coffees and talked as the Wyoming landscape changed, I realized that there was no way that we could cram all the inspiring and interesting stuff that John has done into a half-hour interview. But as the cameras rolled, he touched on a lot of it.. It was amazing, inspiring stuff. Wait ‘till you see it.

What an honor to talk with John Simms on WYOMING CHRONICLE. As my fellow hosts and I fan out across Wyoming, we look forward to meeting and talking with others of you, too. People who will inspire you. Just as John Simms inspired me.

Our interview airs next Friday, November 20 at 7:30 pm.

Chronicle broke some new ground this week – an interactive interview with Sen. Mike Enzi with a satellite linking our studio in Riverton to the Senate press gallery in Washington, D.C. It adds just a little more tension – and tension, I’ve found, is generally GOOD in interviews, especially with experienced politicians – and gives us a great opportunity to bring viewers up-to-the-moment news from the Nation’s Capitol.

The subject of the interview, health care, brings some tensions of its own. Enzi was famously one of the Gang of Six, a bipartisan group trying to forge a compromise on health care reform in the Senate Finance Committee. Though Enzi has a very conservative rating as a Senator, he is known for working across the aisle, and he kept his attacks on Democrats to a minimum in our interview. But he has taken some heat at Wyoming town hall meetings for his cross-the-aisle work, particularly from voters who oppose the “public option” health plan, which opponents fear signals a federal government takeover of health care. In the end, he voiced opposition to the bill that finally emerged from the Finance Committee bill, which he said was rushed out under artificial deadlines.

There are some surprises in the interview – check out what Enzi now says about the “public option” – and a minimal amount of political rhetoric.