Sorted by date Results 1174 - 1198 of 1447
Editor: The Platte Valley Community Center was manifested by the people of the Valley. This same powerful energy has another opportunity to provide for Valley people who need and want Home Health Care. After all, “there but for Graham Steel, goes everybody else.” Lois Darlene Rupert Saratoga and Dillon, Colo....
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, next to skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. The annual campaign promotes early detection by having mammograms and monthly self examinations. There are several websites that explain how to do self examinations. The National Breast Cancer Foundation’s website www.nationalbreastcancer.org has a lot of information about breast cancer, including the types, treatment, myths and more. Did you know there are several types of breast cancer? M...
While sitting at my desk pondering life as the 12:01 siren goes off in Saratoga, I realize that I am more than a bit preoccupied these days. More than likely, by the next time I write a column for the Saratoga Sun, my wife and I will be parents for the first time. Our baby girl is due on the 19th of October, by my wife’s calculations, or the 28th if the doctor is correct. Either way, big change will be here soon. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I have not been overly stressed about the birth of our...
Saturday, Sen. Mike Enzi will be in Saratoga to award the Purple Heart to Robert James. To be awarded a Purple Heart, one has to be harmed by something that is meant to injure during wartime. It has been several years since a member of the armed forces was awarded a Purple Heart in the Valley. With tensions so thick after the beheading of two American journalists and the beheading of a British journalist, war in Syria is most likely eminent, and Americans once again find themselves on high alert. Everyday service members are in harm’s way or h...
It’s time again for the new model year and the old model year-end clearance sales. Summer has come to its Labor Day ending and fall is in the air. For me, this means my birthday is around the corner. This year, I will have hit the half century mark. The big Five-Oh, or maybe Five-Ow seeing as some part of me almost always has some kind of pain. The new normal is a traveling soreness. My foot might hurt one day, my shoulder the next. The knee is acting up today or maybe it was a backache. Some da...
To the editor: Amazingly, people can do the strangest things. For example, I just have finished looking over more than seventy “Retro-Blog” columns written by Keith McLendon and published in the Sun from 2009 to this year. In his essays, McLendon has covered such diverse topics as the rules for waving at people in Saratoga (8-4-10), time flying like arrows (11-10-10), craving grilled cheese (7-11-12), licensing pressure cookers (4-24-13), and smelling road cones (5-28-14). On a more personal level, he has praised his mother (5-8-13) and dec...
On Friday, I will begin my 10th year at the Saratoga Sun. This has been the most rewarding job I have ever had, not to mention the most stressful. Most of the time, it is a good stress. The most stressful days are, without a doubt, Mondays and Tuesdays. It doesn’t matter how prepared we think we are coming into the week, Monday is a long day. Last minute advertisements are coming in, news stories that came in over the weekend need phone calls made and we have sports stories to write during t...
How many votes should a councilperson have on town issues? This is a question that has come up at town meetings and during the election forums sponsored by the Valley Service Organization. Most candidates at the forums agreed there is not a problem as long as they vote the same way on the board as they do on the council. Citizens and town board members don’t always agree. What has caused concern is the potential for a council member who serves on a board to disagree with a board recommendation and vote against it. The council member then has i...
Editor Kudos goes out to Union Wireless and Carbon County School District 2 for bringing in Craig Conrad to not only speak with the students but to share with families during the back to school picnic. I hope that the students got as much out of what he had to share as this parent did. I am going to borrow a quote that he used that night “When it gets darkest the stars come out” this is translated to mean “Don’t lose hope”. I think that all of us have experienced those darkest nights in our lives, and if it wouldn’t have been for the stars s...
I have some ideas for a column. Actually, I have a lot of ideas for a column. The problem with some of my ideas, is that I am not too sure how they will be received by you, as a reader. You see, I like to keep my personal beliefs close to my chest. I don’t have to, I just choose to. I have many strong beliefs, and I do like to discuss them with people. It’s part of my profession. As a journalist, I like to inform, not instigate. Even though, once a month, I have this spot set aside for me to wri...
Editor, The month of September is National Preparedness Month; this year’s theme is “Be Disaster Aware, Take action to prepare”. This year there will be a theme for each week, week one, How to reconnect with Family after a Disaster. Week two, know how to plan for specific needs before a disaster. Week three, How to build an Emergency kit. Week four and five, How to practice for an Emergency, more information is available at www.ready.gov/september. With winter fast approaching remember these terms used by the National Weather Service: Advis...
I can’t open Facebook without a slew of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos hogging my newsfeed. Depression, addiction, and Parkinson’s disease are all hot topics with the recent suicide of Robin Williams. My question is, in our highly advanced society why does it still take gimmicks or high profile deaths to bring a moment of awareness to the many diseases that plague us? My old friend Merriam Webster defines disease as “an illness that affects a person, animal, or plant: a condition that preve...
Editor: The sad tale about mail continues at the Encampment Post Office. Despite all the training and platitudes, getting the mail delivered is still an issue with the Postmaster. Somehow he does not connect people with their address in the Post Office. Recently I received a return of a first class letter to my box. The box number was correct but the name, the town and the zip code were not! The name was a lady and her town is Rock River in Albany County which has a different zip code from Encampment. In his view, one out of four is an OK stand...
Editor: Yes as was highlighted in last week’s Sun, I got my bell rung at the August landfill meeting in Saratoga for not offering my recycling services at the Bullfest and National Night Out event. In chairman Raymer’s angst over my failure to volunteer some more, the real problem was overlooked. The proper handling of the recyclable trash at all public events rests solely with the event organizers. The responsibility to recycle all we can from our trash rests, not with an old man and his old truck but with each of us, our businesses, and the...
Moving to the Platte Valley requires adjustment. As you make friends here, you will find one of those adjustments will be learning to fly fish. This does not, as you might expect from the name, involve very small fishing poles with rotting bits of meat as bait for flying nuisances. It’s much worse than that. The west, in general, is chock full of “ideal fly fishing spots” and we have an abundance of them along the entire length of Platte Valley waterways. You see, Wyoming is host to some of Am...
The Saratoga Sun has been following the recent, sometimes heated, discussions at South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services (SCWEMS) Joint Powers Board (JPB) meetings with interest. Everyone who lives in this area is affected by the availability of timely and effective ambulance and first responder services. It appears to the Saratoga Sun that SCWEMS is experiencing growing pains, and needs to learn some lessons about the accountability of their actions. An article in the Aug. 6, 2014 edition of the Saratoga Sun shows SCWEMS is now...
Dear Editor, Regarding Erik Gantt’s article about the impacts of mosquito spraying in the Saratoga area: The article claimed that mosquito spraying doesn’t harm any other creatures, while citing studies that sound to me shockingly inadequate to prove any such assumption. In particular, I can’t let the near-demise of the nighthawk in this valley go unquestioned. In the 1960s when I was growing up out in the countryside near Saratoga, my family and I would climb to the top of a ridge on summer evenings to witness a spectacular event. From every...
Editor’s note: a sentence was inadvertently left off John Blue’s letter to the editor in the Aug. 13 edition of the Saratoga Sun. The Saratoga Sun staff apologizes for this error. Editor, This is sort of a combination letter to the editor and an open letter to Wendell D. O’Connell, the post master in Encampment. Many of the readers of this paper will recall that about a year ago there was community outcry to have Mr. O’Connell removed from his position. That did not happen and he continues to wreak havoc on the distribution of mail in our com...
Carbon County Fair is over. The kids who did well are now at the Wyoming State Fair to see how they do against the top in the state. Fair week is always an exhausting week for me, so I can’t even imagine what it is like for the parents and grandparents who spend the week at fair working with their children, advising them on how to get their animals ready to show. These families have spent months working with their kids, reminding them to do chores, taking them to pre-fair shows, loading the a...
Big changes are coming to the Saratoga Sun. Perhaps you have seen our ads about some of the changes. The place where we have printed our paper for many years is closing down their press. It came as a shock to us, but as newspaper people, we adjust to change. We looked at several options and starting next week the Casper Star Tribune is printing our paper. Technology makes this possible, as we have been sending our paper up to the current printer by FTP (File Transfer Protocol). What this change means for our readers and our advertisers is a...
Dear Editor, The Aug. 6 edition of the Saratoga Sun featured an editorial opposing any town involvement in a campground for bicyclists and suggested the town’s constrained budget should not have to bear the cost of an in-town bicycle campground. It may be that Saratoga residents do not want a bicyclist campground in town, but it shouldn’t be because it will break the budget. The town already intends to recreate Good Times Park behind the hot pool, listed by the Sun as a location having been suggested for a bicyclist campground. What if, in the...
Editor, This is sort of a combination letter to the editor and an open letter to Wendall D. O’Connell, the post master in Encampment. Many of the readers of this paper will recall that about a year ago there was community outcry to have Mr. O’Connell removed from his position. That did not happen and he continues to wreak havoc on the distribution of mail in our community. And here as I see it is the problem. Mr. O’Connell fails to understand that the sole purpose of the USPS is to deliver mail to the customers of the post office. He believes i...
On Aug. 19, 2009 I woke up in my empty room one last time. It was 4:30 a.m., and on any other day, it would have taken me an hour to pull myself out of bed. But not this day. I was headed to Spokane International Airport. The day I had waited for all my life had finally come: I was moving out and was finally on my own. My mother made me an omelet that morning; just as she had done almost every morning while I was in high school. I was dressed in full Wyoming gear. She looked back from the stove...
As cross-country bicycling becomes more popular, towns like Saratoga are faced with a small dilemma of who is responsible to provide in-town campgrounds. Should the town of Saratoga provide an in-town campground for bicyclers who ride through our town? The Good Times Park behind the hot pool has been suggested as a place to have a campground for bicyclists. When most bicyclists are planning a trip across America, they just don’t decide to jump on a bike and start pedaling. They plan, prepare and research their route. Bicyclists should know t...
