Thumbs up to the Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation’s efforts to stop the auction of artifacts from internment camps, including one at Heart Mountain, in which hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

We agree that those artifacts, including some remarkably beautiful works of art, should be kept as part of public collections that preserve that history and the lessons learned from it.

Auctioning these historical artifacts so they can be put into private collections seems like profiting from the misfortune of the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in those camps — again.

Thumbs up to the planned organization of an Alzheimer’s caregiver support group in Cody. The support group being organized by the new Wyoming Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, created last July.

That’s good news.

The association notes that Alzheimer’s often is referred to as a “caregiver’s disease” because of the tremendous toll — physically, emotionally and financially — it takes on caregivers. These caring people certainly need support, and they need a chance to share ideas and talk with others who understand what they’re going through.

The initial meeting will take place at 5 p.m. Thursday in the second floor meeting room in the Cathcart Health Center, 424 Yellowstone Ave., in Cody. For the full story, see Page 12.

Thumbs down to the huge pileups on Interstate 80 near Cheyenne and Laramie on April 16 and 20.

It seems that at least part of those pileups likely could have been avoided if truck drivers had been driving cautiously and had been listening to their radios.

A family member, whose son is a professional trucker, responded to a column in the April 21 edition of the Powell Tribune thus: “Our son ... reports that the days of the CB-talking, looking-out-for-each-other, flashing-the-trailer-lights-when-it’s-OK-to-pass days of the stereotypical truck driver are gone. These days, there are a lot of truck drivers from other countries who mostly keep to themselves, and the CB radio waves are mostly silent. Kinda sad.”

These pileups were tragic and costly.

Tragic, because lives were lost and many people were hurt.

Costly in terms of the number of vehicles lost, private and commercial, and the accompanying loss of cargo; health care costs incurred for treating the injured; and economic damage to the trucking industry, to responding rescuers and agencies, and to the Wyoming Department of Transportation, and to taxpayers who must foot much of the bill.

There also was an economic loss, not to mention a huge inconvenience, caused by long-term shutdowns of a major national interstate that runs the entire width of the country, from the East Coast to the West Coast.

These pileups should serve as wakeup calls to the trucking industry and to drivers in general. They also may serve as impetus for changes in state and/or national laws in an effort to help prevent similar tragedies in the future.

Thumbs up to the scientific and technological lessons learned by Powell High School students who recently participated in the launch and retrieval of a weather balloon.

Students were able to launch the balloon, track it, see photos taken from it and hike up to retrieve it when it came back to Earth. Now they’re analyzing the results of the experiments they sent up with the balloon.

These students are actually doing what students in the past only read about. That’s a great way to take education outside the classroom and look to the sky for answers.

Thumbs up to the revival — albeit a small one — of snowmobile use in Yellowstone through the East Entrance. Thanks largely to new winter-use rules that allow a limited number of unguided snowmobiles in the park, a total of 269 snowmobiles ventured through the East Entrance between Dec. 22 and March 1 — an increase of 100 over a year earlier.

It’s nice to see a bit of a rebound, though it is a far cry from the 4,000 snowmobilers who entered the park through the East Gate in 2001-2002.