Custer County Chronicle

Remember the rain

Published by admin on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 11:04am

What a springtime we have had! As I write this, a gentle rain is falling outside on a world becoming almost too green to look at. I love watching the animals in a rain like this. Unconcerned, unbothered, unflapped. They don’t seek shelter or hump up their backs against it, but just let it fall and go about their business. The grass seems to double its height every day, and I think I could sit and watch my garden grow. The pastures are vivid beneath last year’s cured grasses, and the hayfield is slowly coming back to life after being stripped by hail last summer.

Protect the work of local journalists

Published by admin on Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:32am

A reader of the Chronicle sent us an interesting editorial that ran in the Rapid City Journal last week. We would have eventually seen the editorial on our own, as we are subscribers to the Journal, but are a tad behind reading it due to our recent busy schedules, as in the Progress Edition that we put out last week.

Learning from Badger Clark

Published by admin on Wed, 04/24/2024 - 10:27am

Growing up in or around Custer, you’re bound to hear about Badger Clark before long. For me, it was some time in elementary school, and I’ve been a Badger Clark admirer ever since.
If you think I’m talking about an actual badger, think again. Charles “Badger” Clark became one of Custer’s most memorable and widely-known residents when he became South Dakota’s very first poet laureate in 1937. Today he is widely regarded as the father of the cowboy poetry genre, and some of his poems have even been put to music by many famous musicians.

No lack of things to read this issue

Published by admin on Wed, 04/17/2024 - 9:07am

“There’s nothing in the paper.”
It’s a phrase that makes anybody working at a newspaper cringe, because the person saying it is not only overlooking the 12-to-16 pages of content we put out in the newspaper each week, but is also overlooking the hours the staff at the Custer County Chronicle puts in each week to produce our weekly newspaper. Luckily for us, we rarely hear this phrase, so we think we are doing something right.

I like my freedom

Published by admin on Wed, 04/17/2024 - 9:03am

We recently launched round three of the most successful workforce recruitment campaign in South Dakota history – Freedom Works Here. We kicked it off with a brand-new ad. In this ad, which we’re calling “Building in America,” I get to be a homebuilder.

Let’s all pitch in for fireworks

Published by admin on Wed, 04/10/2024 - 4:48pm

If you picked up this issue of the Custer County Chronicle you saw the front page long before you got to this page, so you know that the City of Custer’s annual fireworks show is in danger of going away due to lack of funding. Simply put, we cannot allow this to happen.

Getting involved hasn’t killed me

Published by admin on Wed, 04/10/2024 - 4:45pm

I work long, odd hours. I’m not saying this to garner sympathy, but rather, I’m parroting an excuse I have used most of my adult life to do next to nothing outside of work. This isn’t to say I don’t hang out with friends or partake in my hobbies (few as they are) in my spare time, it’s to say I have never been big on volunteering, doing city functions, etc.
I love hanging out with friends, but have not been really comfortable hanging out with acquaintances. I’m also fiercely protective of my free time, as I don’t have a lot.

Property taxes a complicated issue

Published by admin on Wed, 04/03/2024 - 10:46am

In this day and age when people can agree on next to nothing, there is one subject that unites people from every corner of Custer County: property valuations and the staggering increases in said valuations that are driving property values greatly upward and threatening to tax some people out of their homes.

Cow-calling

Published by admin on Wed, 04/03/2024 - 10:43am

The miracle of life is front and center during calving season. It is amazing to watch a heifer birth her first baby, looking in vague confusion at the squirming, slimy creature that made its sudden, un-asked-for appearance, and then, prompted by God-given instinct, begin to clean the baby off. The baby is up off the ground in a matter of minutes, his little legs wobbly and knock-kneed, and then he finds the life-giving udder and his little tail goes to wagging, just like a dog. What a sight to see.

Property tax to be studied this summer

Published by admin on Wed, 04/03/2024 - 9:26am
So, we put the finishing touches on the 99th Legislative Session on Monday, March 25, which was scheduled as veto day, the day when legislators come back together to deal with the bills that the legislature passed through both chambers and sent to the governor for her signature in order to become law but she declined to sign.