A prophet is not without honor except...

John Perry Barlow died this month. It was about people like John that the Sagebrush Gospel quotes Jesus. “A prophet is not without honor except in his own home, especially if home happens to be Wyoming.” In John Perry Barlow, Wyoming missed another chance to honor one of its own prophets. Such was John. Such is Wyoming. 

John was the son of Norman Barlow, a Republican icon and Sublette County rancher. An influential member of the Wyoming legislature from 1947-1963 he chaired several powerful committees and served a term as Senate president in 1959.

According to Wyoming historians Kim Ibach and William Howard Moore, Barlow’s sense of justice was violated when Juanita Simmons, an African-American woman he hoped would be hired to teach in young John’s school, was denied the job because of the color of her skin. Barlow was motivated to become a leader in fighting for civil rights laws in the 1950s. Senator Barlow sponsored legislation repealing Wyoming’s “separate but equal” school law in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown versus Board of Education.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, things were not going well. Young John was, according to a 1995 People magazine biography, such a hell raiser around Sublette County that Norman shipped him off to a military school in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I’d guess Norman came to believe things only got worse.

There John met a guitar player named Bob Weir. Upon graduating, John headed for Connecticut where he majored in comparative religion at Wesleyan University. Weir, meanwhile, was in San Francisco pulling together a band he named “The Grateful Dead.”

Weir called on his old friend John Perry Barlow to write for “the Dead.” John wrote songs like “Mexicali Blues” and “Hell in a Bucket.” He returned to Wyoming to take care of his ailing father who died in 1972. The Barlow ranch became a favorite hangout for a fascinating group of John’s friends. People like Marlon Brando and John F. Kennedy, Jr. were frequent guests. Occasionally John toured with “the Dead.”

John told People magazine how much he loved ranching and the West. It was during these years that I met him. It was 1982, and I was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the United States Senate. John was the chairman of the Sublette County Republican Party. Wyoming Republicans were then transitioning from the moderates of Norman Barlow’s days to the right-wing extremists of today. My views on protecting Wyoming land, water, and air were more akin to John’s politics than those of the GOP. So, the chairman of the Sublette County Republican Party endorsed this Democrat.

Unfortunately, John didn’t stay around long after that. By the mid 1980s, he became one more casualty of Wyoming’s provinciality and its war on its own young people. Like many young, bright thinkers with new ideas, he left the state. John found a prophet is honored everywhere except in his home state. John packed up his keen intellect, joyful sense of humor, vision for a better planet, his world-class creativity, and took it to New York.

With Wyoming in the rearview mirror, John became an Internet pioneer. According to Wikinews, “Barlow was an early commentator on Internet culture,” writing for “WIRED” magazine. A cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, he helped define what he called “digital citizenship,” with a 1996 essay entitled “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”

John helped create the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2012. Wikinews called the Wyoming native “a foundational figure” in the web culture, citing his appointment to Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and John’s selection as a member of the Internet Hall of Fame in 2013.

May John rest in peace. May Wyoming grow restless.

Wyoming must grapple with just how many young people of John’s caliber have felt the sting of Wyoming’s selfish-conservatism and taken their gifts elsewhere. The brightest stars are people like John Perry Barlow and keeping them here is critical to Wyoming’s future.