Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

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 statue of the farmer plowing is much more visible and stands out like never before. It especially looked great with the Christmas lights on it as I headed home Wednesday night. And rest assured, not a lot of taxpayer money has gone into the project with most of the expenses covered by the Newell Sargent Foundation that wanted to see improvements at the park. One of the reasons the project has taken a while, is the city crews have worked on it as time allowed.

—Water rates. I live outside the city limits so what the city does doesn’t affect me directly, but the increase in water rates does have many people talking. Raising rates is never easy and it is not something the council took lightly. Those who voted in favor of the increase were not doing so happily but out of necessity to try to get Worland in compliance with state statute as enterprise funds (water, sewer and sanitation) are required to be self-sufficient and the water fund is not. The council members that favored the largest increase are hoping another rate increase won’t be needed for some time. Other members wanted to address the issue gradually. Either way there was going to be an increase. The timing is not great, right before the holidays, but is there ever really a good time for an increase.

I appreciated the thoughts of the letter writer in today’s paper, who noted we should consider the type of water we are getting, much better than in some parts of the state and the country.

—Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. I appreciate the local businesses who have sales on Black Friday but for me, I usually try to avoid Black Friday shopping. I can recall only once in my adult life shopping on Black Friday and for someone who gets claustrophobic around large crowds, it was not a pleasant experience.

That being said, I do try to shop on Small Business Saturday and I make a concerted effort to shop locally. While I love to surf the internet for recipes, fun memes and information, I do not like shopping online. I prefer going into the store, being able to see in person what I am buying, to be able to look first-hand at the quality and decide if that is really the gift I want to buy.

I encourage everyone if they have time to check out our local stores and see what they have to offer. You might be surprised what special gifts or stocking stuffers you will find. You might also be surprised to find what businesses offer. I bet many of the stores offer more than you realize.

—Christmas Music. I’m just going to say it right here and out loud — it is not too early for Christmas music. I usually wait until after Thanksgiving and last year I waited until Dec. 1, but this year I started on Monday. I love Christmas music. For many years I would buy at least one Christmas album every year. I have 16 albums on my iPod. That is a lot of songs to get through every year and last year I didn’t get them all listened, one of the reasons I started earlier this year.

But, rest assured, I respect those who do not like Christmas music played early and I listen with earphones at home and work, or alone in the car, driving along and jamming to Amy Grant’s “Little Town” or Brooks and Dunn’s “Rockin’ Little Christmas,” or the other 100-plus songs on my iPod.