Your source for news in Hot Springs County
Your source for news in Hot Springs County
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Well, Halloween has come and passed once again. The holiday has always been a favorite for me, even taking a higher place than Christmas, largely because of the amount of fun you get to have dressing up as a creature of the dark, a silly clown or some other figure and banging on doors to demand candy. In my childhood days, I always wanted something cute like a clown, but as I aged the costumes got a bit darker. Zombies, Riff Raff, the grim reaper, etc. I did once go back to being a clown, but Pe...
Voting is a fundamental right of our democracy. The decisions made on school boards, in city halls, at the state legislature, and in Congress impact all of us. There are many ways to influence our elected officials, but only one to determine who our officials are: by voting. On Tuesday, voters will decide which candidates will be our next representatives. Because Wyoming’s election laws allow for same-day voter registration, even people who have not yet registered to vote can go to the polls and cast their ballot on Election Day. U...
Certainly one of the most talked about races in the General Election is for the Hot Springs County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees. To that end, the Community Hall was home to a special forum for all six who are on the ballot for the school board. A similar situation happened in the Primary, with a forum specifically for candidates in the running for Hot Springs County Sheriff. As with any forum this past election year, introductions were given, questions were asked and answered, and there was plenty of visiting with candidates outside...
Halloween marks the start of the holiday season, from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve, with lots of food and family time. Holiday dinners with family were huge when I was growing up. My grandmother hosted them all in our house on Fifth Street, getting up at the crack of dawn to get things cooking. My job was to set the table and then sit with grandpa to wach the parades on TV. Just the scent of my grandmother’s rolls baking in the oven were enough to fill the whole house with that fee...
The Joint Appropriations Committee for the State of Wyoming will be meeting in Thermopolis next Wednesday and Thursday and it looks as though Tom Forslund, the Director of the Department of Health, may be gearing up for another run at selling the Wyoming Pioneer Home. In their wisdom, Wyoming’s founding fathers created the Wyoming Pioneer Home, by state legislation in 1949, for “the purpose of providing a place for the care and maintenance of residents of this state who are afflicted with the infirmities of old age.” (W.S. 25-8-101) Here in Ho...
When I was graduated from high school and college, I thought I was done repeatedly going over lines in preparation of a stage production. Then along comes Dr. Fox and the Nosy Pig. For those of you who don’t know, this story of talking animals and learning to be yourself is what students in the Lights On program have been rehearsing and preparing for the past couple weeks, with opening “night” this Wednesday (Oct. 17). Not only have they been practicing their lines, but also getting invol...
I just completed watching the first episode of Ken Burns’ “Dust Bowl” which was originally aired on PBS several years ago. It had a special meaning for me since both my parents were “Kansas kids” whose lives were forever impacted by what some ecologists call the greatest ecological disaster ever on the North American continent. Memories of Mom’s response to questions about the “dusty bowl” as I called it were mostly confined to “It was just something that happened before you were born.” As the years passed, I discovered there were a lot of thin...
The first recognized printed newspaper is a publication titled “Relation,” published in Antwerp in 1605 under Johann Carolus. However, the first evidence of a newspaper is the “Acta Diurna,” published in Rome around 59 B.C. Against such dates, 117 years might not seem a significant span of time to some, but that’s how long the Thermopolis Independent Record has been bringing the news of Hot Springs County to you. The Independent Record came about when two papers — The Thermopolis Record and the Thermopolis Independent — merged. It is the off...
There is much to celebrate in Hot Springs County Schools as the 2018 WyTOPP results are released in Wyoming. Hot Springs County School District #1 has the best results ever recorded on the state assessment! The WyTOPP was the new state assessment rolled out in the 2017-18 school year, replacing PAWS. The new test added writing as part of the English Language Arts component and included questions in reading, math and science that required students to demonstrate learning through a series of problem solving steps, not just multiple choice. Just s...
It has recently been brought to my attention that the Russian olive tree is more than a beautiful Non-native tree. It was given to us by the Lord for beauty, flood control, and as I found out, a medicinal and edible source. Like the many benefits of the rain forest the Russian olive is fast disappearing from our landscape. Before The last Russian olive tree falls, and we give up free food, medicine, and the other benefits it offers please research this wonderful tree....
Its here! That smell of fall is here! You can step outside in the morning and the air actually smells different. There is no way you can escape the constant barrage of pumpkin spiced everything, either. Who decided we need pumpkin spice yogurt pretzels? Pumpkin spiced smoothies don’t really sound appealing to me, nor does pumpkin spice Jell-O. Non-alcoholic pumpkin spice sparkling juice? You can also find pumpkin spiced kettle corn, moonshine and salsa. I kid you not. Now that’s not to say I don...
Schools across the Cowboy State received the results of the new Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress (WY-TOPP) recently, a new testing method for our students that replaces the PAWS testing of the past. Our students did well, ranking in the top 10 in some of the categories tested at the individual grade levels. Kudos to our kids! However, what is concerning is the state averages on the same tests. There are many, many students in the state of Wyoming who show below basic skills in areas such as math, English and science. Wyoming schools suf...
The adage about March coming in like a lion certainly didn’t take Octobers like this one into account. It’s a very rare that I get woken up by nature, and when it does happen it’s usually something peaceful like a low roll of thunder somewhere miles away or raindrops hitting the roof. Not some kind of eerie howling wind that’s got me running around the house making sure the doors and windows are closed and wondering where I could go that has a storm cellar. But that howling seems fairly appropr...
It seems like this year has been the “Year of the Detour” when driving around Thermopolis, with work being done to replace water transmission lines and the renovations happening outside Gottsche and the hospital. It seems like almost daily one’s route has to change to get to a destination, particularly on the south side of town. A return to our regular routes is on the horizon, though, and even though delays happened — both early on and recently — with the water line project, adjustments were made to the timeframe and additional crews wer...
After observing two different elderly folks fall last week — up the stairs at our post office — I feel compelled to say something. Who in the world decided to make the last step only one-fourth the size of the others? At least paint it orange or hang some warning sign. This is dangerous and someone is going to break a hip!...
We have hit that time of year when some days it feels as if Mother Nature is having some kind of psychotic episode – freezing in the morning and roasting in the afternoon. That’s the wonderful thing about Wyoming. It also makes it difficult to decide what to wear for the day, whether its sweater and boots weather in the morning or jeans and a t-shirt in the afternoon. I’ve lived in a few places in my life and it seems like the contents of my closet have been different everywhere I’ve been. F...
Monday is the start of Homecoming Week for the Thermopolis Bobcats. A time when alumni return home to see the parade and cheer on our volleyball players and football team. Gone are the days of the snake dance through downtown and the burning of the effigy at the flagpole with the cheerleaders, the band and almost the entire town, but we have to understand today’s Bobcats have their own idea of fun and we should be joining in just as we did decades ago. Have you ever seen a “Mangeant”? It takes a lot of courage and self confidence for these...
Everyone who has lived here through a summer knows how crazy the traffic can get during tourist season. While here at the Independent Record we provide stories about what’s going on in town, often times those visiting for a few days during the summer months are sharing their own stories. One recent example is a story written by Joshua Berman about his family’s finding Thermopolis while on a trip around Yellowstone to avoid the typical tourist traps like Yellowstone. But it doesn’t end there...
“We the people.” These three words form the beginning of one of the most important documents in our country’s history, the U.S. Constitution. September 17 marks Constitution Day, commemorating the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution by 39 men on Sept. 17, 1787. While the Declaration of Independence was adopted in July of 1776, it was the U.S. Constitution that set forth the supreme laws of these United States and recognized all who were born in the country or by naturalization as citizens, laying the groundwork of what our count...
One of my favorite times of the year is here...football season! Although I love sitting on Sunday and watching my Broncos, I’m really talking about all the youth football we have around here. This last weekend was so fun. I had the chance to shoot the little guys playing rec football as well as the older kids with the middle school and the high school athletes on Friday night. It really gave me a perspective on how the game is played. The rec kids are having so much fun, learning as they go, a...
The newspaper industry let out a huge sigh of relief this past week as the U.S. International Trade Commission overturned an administrative decision imposing tariffs on Canadian newsprint that went into effect in January. That tariff could have ultimately caused newspapers across the country to raise their prices by nearly double or create layoffs of reporters, photographers and other staff to make up for the cost. Small, weekly newspapers such as ourselves, would have felt the pinch, possibly to the point of putting us out of business....
Tuesday marks the 17th anniversary of one of the most horrific attacks on U.S. soil, a day that will forever stir memories and emotions when someone mentions the date — 9/11. It’s weird to think that many of our high school upperclassmen weren’t even born when the news came over of the planes striking the two towers of the World Trade Center, only learning of it through textbooks and what their parents have told them. Though a time of extreme fear for our country, it was also a period when we ca...
A poem I once read and taught from spoke to the heart about a trip by the poet to the home of his youth. In it he spoke of how much smaller than his memories were the realities of the mountains, now barely hills, the river, now barely a creek, and the schools which seemed so large as he started his education, and now seemed so small as he returned from the city in which his life now unfolded. In celebration of last Memorial Day, my spouse and I drove to Torrington to visit Mom and Dad’s grave. I think of my parents often, and their r...
With the Primary Election behind us, it seems the hot topic still on the table is water, particularly whether we continue to use surface water or explore sinking a well at other sites to start using ground water. However, another water project has certainly seen some prominence in the past couple months — the water line rehabilitation project. The project began as an already large undertaking, incorporating Hot Springs State Park, Fifth Street, Seventh Street, and small portions of Warren Street and Sixth Street. However, there’s been ple...
The 2018-2019 school year and activities lie just around the corner. It is easy to see the hard work and dedication of student-athletes and coaches during the school year, yet those involved with sports know that the majority of program improvement must take place in the off-season. Thermopolis is in a unique situation of competing at high levels with low student enrollment, which causes for some extra hurdles to success. First, student-athletes must be involved in multiple sports/activities/clubs in order for those programs to be in the...
