Thumbs up to Tuesday’s Empty Bowls fundraiser, and to the students, faculty and staff at Northwest College who worked diligently to hand-craft 476 ceramic bowls for the event, each a unique work of art. 

Members of the public each searched for a bowl that “spoke” to him or her. Then people lined up, bowls in hand, to have them filled with soup by staff from Chartwells, the foodservice company at the college, which donated the soup and the rolls to go with it.

On Tuesday, the event was so well attended, and there were so many bowls, that the soup ran out before the bowls did. 

The warmth of the event took the chill out of the autumn evening, and the fundraiser took a bite out of hunger as well. 

Proceeds raised through the Empty Bowls event will be donated to Loaves and Fishes, the local food pantry, to help people who find it difficult to put food on their tables. 

Empty Bowls was a great prelude to Thanksgiving, and it helped us appreciate the bounty we are able to share with our neighbors. 

Sample the Season, the traditional kickoff to the holiday season, takes place downtown on Friday, giving the Powell community another opportunity to gather over food and friendship.

Thumbs up to a plan to create a monument honoring war dogs, to be placed in the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Park in Cody. We regret the recent and tragic death of Michael, who served two tours of duty as a bomb-sniffing dog in Iraq with his handler Matthew Bessler, and we applaud the effort to honor his service and that of many other war dogs. These dogs serve willingly out of devotion to their handlers, and their attention to duty saves countless lives. It is appropriate that we recognize the service and sacrifices provided by these canine soldiers.

Thumbs up to a successful sugar beet harvest that was both aided and challenged by unusually warm weather this fall. 

The average crop yield was 28.9 tons per acre this year, up from about 28 tons last year, and the sugar content increased as well. This is good news for area farmers, and for our local economy. 

We hope the weather continues to be good for beet storage and sugar processing goes well through the winter to bring the agricultural year to an unusually successful close. 

Thumbs down to Wyoming’s increasingly gloomy economic outlook for the foreseeable future. The Consensus Revenue Estimating Group’s annual report paints a dismal picture of declines in state revenue over the next several years due to decreases in oil and mineral prices and lower income from sales tax. 

The bright spot is interest income on the Permanent Wyoming Mineral Trust Fund, which, for the first time, is expected to provide the largest share of the state’s revenue for the 2017 fiscal year and beyond. The fund was created to level out the lows during the state’s boom-and-bust cycles, and the Wyoming Legislature increased its deposits into the fund when mineral revenue was strong. That is paying off now. 

Still, there are challenges, such as nagging infrastructure needs for cities, towns and counties, which some say went unfunded because of the Legislature’s push to put more money into permanent savings.

Wyoming also has seen some success in diversifying its economy in recent decades, particularly in the southeastern part of the state, and tourism has picked up in other areas of the state, such as Yellowstone National Park. 

We encourage state and local leaders to continue to diversify the economy and strengthen tourism to help pick up the slack created by the expected deficits in mineral income.  

Thumbs up to several successful cultural programs at Northwest College in the last few weeks, such as the annual Buffalo Feast, Japanese Night, global education discussions and and other events and programs. They remind us that diversity can bring us together rather than tearing us apart, and, regardless of our differences, we have more things in common. 

This is especially important to remember in the wake of last week’s bombings and attacks in Beirut and Paris and other recent acts of terrorism. Our government and others must collectively do all they reasonably can to protect us from the evil that threatens our safety, security and stability. 

But we, as world citizens, must remember to keep our minds open to those people who, regardless of cultural differences, value peace and live lives of integrity. They have the same rights to dignity and freedom from fear as we desire for ourselves and our families.