Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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As the country debates whether to arm teachers and school staff to try and prevent mass school shootings, many districts around the state have already moved in that direction thanks to a law passed last year by the Wyoming State Legislature. In the Big Horn Basin, Cody, Powell, Greybull and Ten Sleep are exploring options with Ten Sleep might have its policy before the board on first reading at the March 12 meeting. Big Horn County School Districts 1, 2 and 4, are not currently exploring anything. Around the state, Evanston, Gillette and...
Kudos to the Big Horn Basin legislators for banding together and getting Senate File 112 to study and work toward privatizing the Wyoming Retirement Center and Wyoming Pioneer Home killed. The legislators also worked to restore full biennium funding for the two facilities on both the Senate and House budget bills. While this is good news for now Basin and Thermopolis need to be aware that it doesn’t mean the two facilities will remain state facilities forever. In fact, in listening to the comments during the House budget amendment debate, f...
I caught an article in the Daily News this past Saturday (Feb. 17), addressing school financing. It stated that Affie Ellis, a state senator from Cheyenne, had filed a Joint Resolution that would amend Wyoming’s constitution “to specify that the Legislature has the right to determine how much money it gives to school finance based on revenue.” The Senator assures Wyoming citizens that, “I don’t think the Legislature necessarily wants to do whatever it wants.” I don’t see Senator Ellis’ Joint Resolution in the benevolent light she wishes to p...
Valentine's Day 2018 arrived uneventful in Worland, Wyoming, but while I was writing a story on WESTI Ag Days and laying out the paper, a young man made a decision to go and kill 17 people and wound many more at a high school in Florida. I've written about school shootings in the past and as this one weighed on my mind, I thought is there anything I can write that will make a difference? Is there anything anyone can do that will make a difference? I have to believe that yes, there is something...
When considering topics for my column I find that some weeks I struggle for material and then other weeks, like this week, I have a plethora of issues to choose from. I could talk about how a military parade has to be one of the dumbest ideas President Donald Trump has come up with and the reasons are too numerous to list here. But a few reasons - first, when Congress just passed a two-year budget giving more money to the military is that really what we want to spend that money on ... a totally...
All this talk of economic diversity in Wyoming - it's critical. And key to every conversation is education: How do we prepare and retain a workforce to keep our state strong for years to come? There is a bold answer that will lead more Wyoming students to higher education and prosperous career options: computer science. Computer science is not learning how to use a word processor or create a spreadsheet. Computer science is the foundation for every career of the future and includes programming,...
When is a fire alarm just a drill? The answer to that more than likely is only when you are a student in school. Unless of course your company has drills. But if you are in a store or public event and a fire alarm goes off, you can be assured it is not a drill. So how do you know if it is a false alarm or not? You don’t and you shouldn’t guess. But guess is what patrons at Washakie Museum and Cultural Center did Thursday at the opening reception for their newest temporary exhibits. Just about the time the entertainment was to begin the fire ala...
I met a remarkable young lady Thursday that gave me hope for our future leaders. Much more hope than I had when I read about young people eating detergent pods. At that time I had hope only in survival of the fittest. Grace Belize Anderson is the National Family, Career and Community Leaders of America president. She lives just outside of Devil's Tower in Crook County. She attends Wyoming Virtual Academy and will graduate this May. She already has her plans for the future as she looks toward a...
I hate colds. They last forever and I never think I feel bad enough to stay home. I hate taking sick days. It is not that I think I am invaluable or irreplaceable, because I am not. It is just that my parents instilled a strong work ethic in me and staying home when I know there is work to be done is not easy for me. Thank goodness the Daily News has a laptop enabling me to work from home, which I have done two days this week in hopes of stopping the spread of this, which has already hit three members of the editorial staff. Personally, I...
Why do people recycle? Some people recycle as their gift to the Earth to help reduce use of fossil fuels for plastics and reduce the loss of trees for paper. Other recycle as a way to keep landfills from filling up. Some recycle as a way to make money, although that reason is not as prevalent as it used to be. Recycling in Small Town America is not easy. People may have a desire to recycle, for any of the above or other reasons, but opportunities are limited. The Washakie County Solid Waste...
It’s donut Friday here at the Northern Wyoming Daily News. One of my coworkers was gracious enough to supply the donuts. I’m sitting here at my desk trying to ignore the chocolate one calling my name. I don’t usually ignore donuts. OK, I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever ignored a donut that has called my name. But, I’m trying to create a new me in 2018. You see this year I will have a milestone birthday. It doesn’t matter which one, but as the new year was approaching I got to thinking about my life and if I’m where I want to be when t...
I have to give Mother Nature the nod as the top story in 2017. Mother Nature was critical to several top stories in Washakie County and the Big Horn Basin. First there were the ice jams in February that flooded parts of west Worland. Mother Nature was responsible for the ice forming, the fast melting and the development of the sandbar that created the logjam of ice right in front of Rotary Riverside Park. We had to wait on Mother Nature for the ice jam to unjam. As ice is beginning to form on the Big Horn River it doesn’t look to be as bad a...
Last week I wrote about the “Washakie Day” celebrations first had in 1913, when Washakie County began operation, and I stated that after four years of exuberant celebration, the event was not held in 1917. The reason for this decision was that the nation had gone to war in April 1917, and Worland’s citizens felt that it was not appropriate to celebrate Washakie Day this year, though they were clearly disappointed. In 1918, however, Washakie County citizens decided that the war might go on indefinitely, and they needed to get on with life....
As a child I loved Christmas, some of my fondest memories are from Christmas. Like the first year we had a real Christmas tree. We always had the same artificial tree growing up but the year my sister had moved away and was coming back mom wanted to make Christmas special. She had always wanted a real tree so we got a small one for the basement. There’s the memory of every Thanksgiving holiday where Dad and I would put up the lights on the house and how I would leave dad on the ladder and sneak in to warm my hands because it never failed it w...
The Wyoming State Legislature enacted a statute in 1911 authorizing the establishment of Washakie County as a new county in the State of Wyoming. This news was greeted with enormous enthusiasm and approval by the citizens of this new county to be. These people were ambitious, excited about their great quest to make the desert bloom, and the establishment of a county seemed to validate the risk they had taken just a few years earlier to come to the remote Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. During 1911, however, nothing changed in the Worland area regard...
As an editor I love an active editorial page. I want our readers to engage and share their opinions. Usually that's a struggle in smaller papers but in Worland we have active letter writers. I hope that continues, but going forward, starting Jan. 3 (as that is the first edition for 2018), there will be some new guidelines. You see my vision for our editorial page is that people have the opportunity to express their ideas and views on local events and issues. I want readers to be excited to see w...
If you didn't go downtown Saturday night for the Christmas Parade of Lights you missed a great show. Unlike last year's bitter cold, the weather was perfect, for December in Wyoming. The evening started with the helicopter buzzing main street, followed by a wonderful lighted parade. There was a variety of styles and stories being told on the floats and parade entries. The streets were lined with enthusiastic parade watchers, especially children awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus on the fire...
Don't blame them. Don't blame them or judge them until you know them. Don't blame them or judge them until you've been where they've been. Don't blame them or judge them until you've walked in their shoes. Who are they? They are the many victims who have come forward regarding sexual misconduct and sexual assault against politicians, would-be politicians, Hollywood insiders and others. I made that mistake when everything erupted through the main stream media. I wasn't judging them for what...
I’m still reading a lot of books, some of which are very good. I checked out two books from our library which impressed me. “Eyewitness to Power” was written by David Gergen and it’s a first-rate memoir by a man who worked directly for presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. You still see Gergen commenting on TV periodically and his observations are always fair and full of insight. In his book, Gergen invariably provides new information and his opinions are enhanced by his objectivity. Gergen’s comments about Ronald Reagan surprised me. I...
After a day off to fill myself with food and visiting with family I returned to work Friday morning and amazingly my head wasn’t full of a hundred different jumbled thoughts. While it is nice to have the mind quiet for a few minutes, however, it is not great when thinking of an idea for a column. So here are a few comments on topics I have heard discussed around town. —Pioneer Square. I love the new look. I think it is much more inviting and will even be more so with the picnic tables and benches at the entryway at 10th and Big Horn. The sta...
It’s November and you know what that means, that’s right December is right around the corner. Just kidding, it means it is almost time for Thanksgiving. Since the first Thanksgiving in 1621, people in the United States of America have been gathering in the fall for a feast of thanksgiving, thankful for a bountiful harvest, as it were in the pilgrim days. Today we gather around on the fourth Thursday of November and fill our stomachs with turkey or ham or whatever entrée you might have, and, of course, don’t forget the pumpkin pie. Friday...
What are two things people love to talk about this time of year? That’s right, weather and time. The weather this week has been an especially hot topic with the recent snowstorm that brought record precipitation to Worland on Wednesday. People in Wyoming like to joke if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes, or in fact just drive five miles and the weather will change. On Wednesday and Thursday at our home just south of town it took more than five minutes but we pretty much had the full gamut of weather, the snow started ever so...
It’s a long story how I came to research January, 1950, but, generally, it came about because I wanted to learn in detail about the big move of the Lower Hanover Canal in the 1940s or 1950s. That resulted in a wild goose chase that had, as an indirect effect, a review of the interesting world of January, 1950 seen through the lens of the Northern Wyoming Daily News. 1950 was full of big news, ranging from disputes with the Soviet Union (Russia), to national labor unrest, to the construction of Boysen dam. In January 1950, President Truman s...
I was off last week but had plenty of time in the last two weeks to ponder several issues and I’m going to tackle two here today – gender organizations and park fees. Let’s start with the Boys Scout welcoming girls into their organization but the Girl Scouts saying they are sticking to girls only, citing the benefit of a single-gender organization. First, I don’t have a problem with either organization’s decision. My question is, the Montana-Wyoming Girls Scout Council said it’s important for girls to have a place and an organizatio...
A while back I found a new channel had appeared on the satellite system and with that channel came some old shows, including one of my all time favorites — “Designing Women.” The first five seasons were the best with the original cast members of Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker, Charlene Fraser and Mary Jo Shively. But let’s not forget Anthony and Bernice. I loved the show for a number of reasons but first and foremost was it made me laugh. Not just a polite chuckle but a laugh out loud, snorting guffaw. Let’s face it there are some great one...