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By Dr. Dean Bartholomew I personally and professionally have struggled with how to think about the novel 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Let me share with you where I am with COVID-19: It is a real pandemic; our government's drastic efforts at containment measures are necessary; the containment measures are sincere efforts to help the American people. Why do I say this? Settle in, because we are going to have to put on our thinking caps. First, we need to talk statistics. I have seen...
By now, we have all seen the news and heard countless coverage on the COVID-19 situation. However, there is something else that is spreading among us, and that is fear. The amount of emotional and mental energy fear and worry take is quite staggering. Mix this with an unprecedented situation of “social distancing” and we as humans are sitting in a recipe for anxiety, depression, sadness and mania. Watching the internet, constantly refreshing for updates, and checking your phone every few minutes are cyclical activities that provide the ill...
When I was living in Taiwan, my awesome stepmother passed away and I felt a major loss. My father had died a couple years before, so that parental group was gone out of my life. They both died fairly young and I hoped my mother and stepfather would live many more years. I was lucky up until March 6 when, I am sad to write, my mother passed away. No one in my family really saw it coming but, I have to admit, she was not the same person I knew and admired growing up. Many people know my Dad...
Editor, In response to the article by Mike Armstrong,”A Missed Opportunity” I would like to support both Mr. Armstrong’s reporting and the members of the CCVC as well as other tourism partners. As Bill Sniffen noted in “Tourism is a runaway success for the Cowboy State,” tourism is the second-largest industry in the state, with promises of greater growth and expansion ahead. If you are a conservative who believes in trickle down economics, tourism spending is essentially putting money in the bank. For every dollar spent on promoting tourism,...
Last month, the Saratoga Sun informed our readers of three pieces of legislation that had made their way through the House of Representatives and were headed to the Senate (see “Your right to know is at stake” on page 4 of the February 19 Saratoga Sun). Since then, we have kept an eye on that legislation. On Wednesday, all three bills were overwhelmingly passed by the Senate. The bills were then sent over to the House of Representatives for concurrence to determine if the House agreed with changes made by the Senate. All three bills passed con... Full story
During the course of my business career, our companies have published and distributed over four million magazines promoting tourism in the Cowboy State. My first magazine was started in 1970 called Big Mountain Country that sang the praises for my Fremont County, home of the biggest mountains in the state. Flash ahead 50 years, and I am attending the annual Wyoming Governor’s Tourism Conference in Cheyenne. Hundreds of members of the 31,000-plus people who work in the hospitality industry were there. Over the years the tourism industry has f... Full story
Growing up I lived in some small towns in Texas but, even then, they were in close proximity to Houston. When my folks moved to the D.C. area, my father had us live in suburbs. My mother liked living more rural. She and my stepfather liked being away from what they called “anthill living” which meant having a house with a bit of acreage and in small towns that were just outside the D.C. metro area. Dad liked the suburbs and, since I lived with him most of the year, that lifestyle was my upb...
Much like a bad penny, attempts by the Wyoming Legislature to remove public notices from the pages of Wyoming newspapers, and leading to less informed constituents, have returned. Despite the failure of three similar bills last year, these bills—HB0050, HB0051 and HB0052—would amend Wyoming State Statute to where the only notice required would be on the state procurement website. On Friday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved these three bills. These pieces of legislation, having now passed the House, will go onto the Sen... Full story
I have been sending out quite a lot of emails to friends in Asia telling them to be careful as the current coronavirus keeps taking its toll. I actually know of one person who was in Wuhan that caught it in December but China wasn’t acknowledging it then. He survived but the virus put him the hospital for a couple weeks. I feel for acquaintances and friends that are taking a hit from this fast spreading beast. When SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) hit in November of 2002, my restaurant in Taiwan had been open for about eight months. I... Full story
Dear loyal readers: Please indulge me this week as I pay tribute to a former Sun employee and "adopted daughter"-Carrie Ann Craig who recently passed away at the too young age of 63. Carrie was a student trainee at "The Saratoga Sun" in the mid-to-late 1970s and was a reporter, photographer, darkroom technician, printer's devil and all around "gofer". Although she worked at the award winning weekly newspaper for only four years, she often bragged that that training and experience were the basis...
The Saratoga Sun recently went to the 121st Wyoming Press Association and won 10 Pacemaker Awards. On a weekend in which we are able to meet and visit with our peers, getting recognized for the hard work we put in over the year is also a very wonderful feeling. It’s even more wonderful when you consider how many newspapers are in the small weekly category with the Sun. That category seems to grow annually. You can see the awards won by the staff of the Sun on page 5 of this week’s paper, but... Full story
I was a tyke when I first started watching Jonny Quest. For those who don’t know this cartoon (which I think is near impossible) it came on TV in 1964. It was not the first time a cartoon was in prime time, but it was the first attempt at being for both kids and adults. Jonny Quest was a preteen who had a super scientist for a father, a body guard named Race who was cooler than James Bond, a best friend named Hadji who was from India that lived with the family and a pug pup called Bandit. Consid... Full story
“How strange it is to view a town you grew up in, not in wonderment through the eyes of youth, but with the eyes of a historian on the way things were.” ~ Marvin Allan Williams A couple weeks ago, I had a conversation with a former high school classmate. We discussed a variety of things, but the one topic we seemed to discuss most was growing up in and returning to the Valley. Not only that, but the realization we had both come to that we now had a responsibility to be the change we want to see... Full story
Dear Editor, I write this letter with a heavy heart, while I prepare to leave Saratoga for a new job. I came to Saratoga last March to join the healthcare staff at Platte Valley Clinic. I came here under the pretense the town was moving towards establishing a critical access hospital. In that time, I have seen and participated in the passionate debate of moving forward with the CAH. I have listened as misinformation has been spread, and what appears on the surface, to be conflicts of interest for whatever the underlying reasons. There has been... Full story
Welcome back to the 20’s! Since we are in the new decade of 2020, I thought it was appropriate to pay homage to the art movement of the 1920s, Art Deco. It is an art movement that touched almost every trade in the 1920s and 30s; architecture, interior design, industrial design, fashion, painting, graphic arts and even film. The 1920s was a time of Industrial Revolution and progress. People were becoming wealthy. The generation know at the Lost Generation wanted more from life since many had come...
The holidays have just finished and, with them, have come in messages from friends all over the world. There were a few from friends overseas that wonder when I am going to come back. It is a fair question in a way. Although I bought my first home in Saratoga back in 1998 and my second house in Hanna a couple years later, for almost the past two decades I made my living out of this country. I would come back to Wyoming for a few months and then head back to where jobs were a bit more plentiful.... Full story