Tis the season for making your lists and checking them twice, and we hope plenty of the gifts on your lists can be found right here in our community.

One of our favorite Bench Sitters asked, “What’s with these ‘wild’ turkeys around town? Don’t they know next week is Thanksgiving?”

It was an unusually busy weekend for Johnson County and Buffalo firefighters and emergency responders. The crews responded to two house fires Saturday night into Sunday morning. Thankfully, no one was hurt in either fire.

Monday morning the mercury was down to 10-below at Sven’s place. One of the advantages of living down the Clear Creek valley below town is the cold air that settles in the low spots and keeps the snow light and fluffy so it’s easy to shovel.

As the Johnson County Rural Health Care District board worked on its budget this spring, it was hoping to find cost savings. Like all special districts in Johnson County, the rural health care district’s mill levy has shrunk dramatically, and the district was hoping to balance its budget wit…

Veterans have willingly served our country, fully accepting that they could be called away from family and loved ones and into harm’s way at any time to defend our country and our way of life.

The thing about dinner is that, as a parent, you are expected to serve it nightly. Most frequently, what I lack is inspiration. My kids would eat a steady diet of spaghetti with meatballs and tacos, but I need a little more variety. Oh, and it should be easy. Preferably fast and not require …

Either in the spring or in the fall, nearly every year at least one of the Bench Sitters will have a minor tantrum over Daylight Saving Time.

The Bench Sitters, who are football nuts, are pretty excited over the prospects for the Buffalo Bison winning another state title this year. We know they have some playoff games and will probably meet Mountain View in the championship if they get there … but these old guys predict a repeat.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and there is much to celebrate.

Maybe I didn’t get the memo or I have never paid much attention, but when did the whole sexy Halloween costume industry take over? It appears there is no sort of guiding premise as to what otherwise innocuous costume can be sexed up. Everything is in bounds: sexy nurses, sexy teachers, sexy …

If you happened to be just about anywhere on the mountain on Tuesday morning of last week, you didn’t need a calendar to tell you it was opening day of elk season for rifle hunters.

We are pulled: tensioned between risk and reward in an inherently imprecise tabulation of pro-con, making best-information-available choices, fingers crossed, scribing out a lifetime.

How many Wyoming high school athletes sustain concussions each year? What sport were they playing when they sustained a concussion? Was it in practice or a game setting?

Tom Borgialli was inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame last month. We know this because we featured him in a front-page feature story in the Buffalo Bulletin.

You can tell locals pay a lot of attention to the weather forecasts. If you happened by the dumpsters the city put at Prosinski Park to handle plant waste from local gardens and lawns, it was clear everyone in town was cleaning out things to prepare for winter.

The usual rain gauge contest was underway at the coffee shop early Monday morning of this week when the crowd started talking about how much rain fell here over the weekend.

Folks who live on the east side of the Wind River Mountains have a tradition of getting “looped,” as often as possible. This is my term for driving the spectacular Loop Road.

It appears the Johnson County School District No. 1 calendar committee sought to stake out the middle ground when recommending a four-and-a-half-day school schedule for next year. There have been strong opinions voiced on both sides of the debate over a four-day versus five-day school week, …

As we watch the ninth month of this year wind down, locals are noticing the thermometer next to the back door is having a hard time getting much above the 50s and more yellow and gold spots are showing up on the cottonwood trees.

There’s a movement afoot in Western states that would make it easier to transfer federal lands, like those administered by U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, to state control. Proponents say such a transfer could mean big dollars for states. But it would also mean big expense…

Wyoming’s next great museum is under construction and will open next May.

The first days of this week may have seemed like summer, but the weatherman says we’ll get over that sensation this weekend. The trip from shorts to windbreakers is often only one-day long in Wyoming.

There’s good news in Johnson County.

How many old-timers are there in Wyoming these days?

At a recent meal with friends, I was made aware that a few of them get nervous when writing me a text or email. They’re not nervous that I’ll decline an invitation or cancel at the last minute. They’re afraid I’ll correct their grammar.

In Johnson County, where young children walk to school, neighbors smile and wave and serious crimes are few and far between, a dangerous stigma lingers, rooted in our way of life.

If fall isn’t here, there are sure a lot of signs it’s close by . . . cooler night-time temperatures, football games and conversations about elk hunting.

One of the hardest parts of being a reporter is the knowledge that there are times when you will fail at your job.

If anyone wanted to order perfect weather for the Labor Day Weekend, they must have got it done this year.

There are a lot of strong feelings about how the calendar should be structured, based on the number of people who attended and made comments at last week’s school calendar meeting.

The weather looks good for a high school football scrimmage against Worland this weekend. It should be perfect weather for the fans and players alike.

Call it an occupational hazard, but I am constantly in pursuit of a good story. What makes a story “good” varies wildly, but sports heroics are always good, same with someone overcoming long odds. In a small town, our reporters frequently get to tell the stories of ordinary people doing extr…

The recent decision by JOCO First and the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce to collaborate on a variety of outreach programs is both welcome and good business.

The Bench Sitters always win a purple ribbon at the county fair in the “Worrying Pessimist” competition. This year they were bunched up in the shade of the grandstands like a bunch of sheep fighting flies when the conversation took its usual turn.

Headlines across the state continue to illustrate our need to diversify Wyoming’s revenue streams in an attempt to smooth out some of the boom and bust related to our over dependence of the energy sector.

Editor's Note: This column is based on a now retracted Bulletin story. For information on the full story, visit http://www.buffalobulletin.com/news/article_bff6d6c6-c5c3-11e9-b1a5-7fa173607095.html.

The Bench Sitters wanted to point out a few extra reasons all of us who have been blessed to live next to the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming.

For those families preparing to send kids back to school, things are about to get a lot busier.

Next Wednesday, hundreds of Johnson County young people will roll out of bed and ready themselves for a new school year.

By the time this column is published, local kids and teachers will have fewer than two weeks remaining in their summer vacation. As has become my custom at this point in the summer, I need to send out advance apologies to my kids’ teachers at Meadowlark, Cloud Peak and Clear Creek: The Hicks…

We can mark the 2019 Johnson County Fair and Rodeo down as another success. Great parade on Saturday, organizers kept the rodeo running smoothly and everyone had to be pleased with prices at the annual Junior Livestock Sale Saturday evening.

Several times throughout the day, my watch beeps at me and tells me it is “time to stand up.” Unless I am on the phone or doing an interview, I typically oblige. I get up, walk around the office a bit and refill my water bottle before returning to my desk, feeling smug that I have appeased m…

Next to Christmas, the week of the Johnson County Fair and Rodeo is the favorite time of the year for most of the Bench Sitters.

Federal lands in Johnson County, Wyoming and the West are a checkerboard of landlocked, isolated parcels: public lands bounded by private holdings and accessible only by crossing private land.

Last weekend was busy in the village and a lot of the locals claim they “hid-out” during Longmire Days so the visitors would have lots of room to have a good time.

Mmmmmm. Tomato season has just started in my garden, and there is really nothing better than a garden-fresh tomato: juicy, sweet and tender. I grew up believing I didn’t like tomatoes, but it turns out what I don’t like are mealy, mushy, pale grocery-store versions of tomatoes. Since discove…

No single event draws our community together as much as the Johnson County Fair and Rodeo. After a summer of entertaining out-of-towners, the fair week is designed for the enjoyment of locals.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

Every summer is different in Wyoming. We were looking back at a few Sven columns in years past at this time of the summer and learned things were “bone dry” and the fire danger was extreme by mid-July in 2012.