Custer County Chronicle

We appreciate our teachers

Published by admin on Wed, 05/15/2024 - 12:40pm

May 6–10 was Teacher Appreciation Week, a time to celebrate our educators and thank them for everything they do for our students.
But there’s an ongoing problem in South Dakota – teacher salaries have not kept up with increased funding to education. In fact, teacher pay lags far behind the 26.3 percent increase in funding to K-12 education since I have been governor. Our teachers deserve better—so we’re giving them better.

Chronicle catches strays on sewer flap

Published by admin on Wed, 05/08/2024 - 2:46pm

If you read last week’s issue of the Chronicle, you saw the story across the top of the front page written by John Hult of South Dakota Searchlight that told of how the Preserve French Creek group took its opposition to the City of Custer’s plan to discharge city effluent into French Creek to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

What does your algorithm say?

Published by admin on Wed, 05/08/2024 - 2:43pm

I am always appalled when my iPhone tells me how much time I spent on my phone per day during any given week, and I vow that I’m not going to just mindlessly pick up my phone and scroll and scroll anymore.

Can’t sweep border issue under the rug

Published by admin on Wed, 05/01/2024 - 11:06am

For the 22nd time in American history, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached a federal official: U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The House put forward serious charges regarding the secretary’s actions as a chief architect of the Biden administration’s lax border security regime. The case deserved to be heard and decided on the merits, but the Senate was not given a chance to do so. Instead, Senate Democrats chose to rush to dismiss the charges without a trial.

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.