A week of transition

This feels like a week of transition, as we move out of summer and into the start of school and beyond the primary election into the buildup for the November general election.
There weren’t too many surprises in Tuesday’s voting, especially here in Big Horn County.  We just aren’t accustomed to seeing only one candidate vying for our House district and for the Big Horn County Commission.
In fact, none of us can recall that ever happening.  Dalton Banks and Bruce Jolley should have enjoyed a good night’s sleep on Tuesday.  A little further south, incumbent lawmakers went 3-for-3.
And it was just a warmup in our municipal elections.  We’ll do it again in November, when turnout will no doubt be much higher than it was this week.
On Tuesday, 515 votes were cast in Greybull.  In the general election of 2020 — the last time our nation elected a president — Greybull’s precinct processed 1,154 votes.  That’s quite a difference. We look forward to seeing how the rest of you feel in a few months.
On another election topic, if you’re wrestling with whether to file for a special district seat, you have until the end of the business day on Monday, Aug. 26 to do so. The worst thing that could happen is you lose your bid, except you don’t really lose.  Anyone who has the courage to run for public office and give back is a winner in our view.  So give it a shot!
• Folks in this town can and probably will argue about the way the town went about building the swimming pool after voters twice rejected it at the ballot box.  
But my goodness, what a scene it was on Friday night during the end-of-the-year pool party.  I’ve never seen that many kids in the pool at one time.  It was a beautiful night, which helped.  
As I walked around looking for feature shots, I thought to myself, this was the vision. On a Friday night in August, kids laughing and having a great time with their friends, their parents looking on and visiting on the deck, music playing, a barbecue going on across the street.
What else would those kids have been doing if we didn’t have a pool?  It hit home even more in an interview with Garrett Thomas, who is trying to get archery going in our community.  When he was a kid, this town had a paintball field and other alternatives.  No longer.  His point was that there simply isn’t a lot for kids to do in this town.
Says here we’re lucky to have the pool.
•  All of us at the newspaper were saddened to learn of the passing of Don Amend, our colleague and friend for many years.
Newspapering wasn’t Don’s first career, of course.  He made his living as a teacher, spending many years at Greybull High School, and as you may have seen in his obituary, his contributions to the community went far beyond his work in the classroom.   Don did a little bit of everything.
As a journalist, Don’s specialty was politics and covering meetings.  He was very well read and fearless in tackling tough topics in his column, “The Amend Corner,” which often left right-leaning readership shaking their heads in frustration.  He loved to mix it up that way.
Long story short, the newspaper industry lost a good one last weekend. We’ll miss Don’s good-natured ways and his passion for our industry.  And for the way he made us think about things. Our sympathies to his wife Karen, their children Josh and Erica and their families.
— Nathan Oster