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Well, in case you didn’t hear, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Groundhog Day which means we have 6 more weeks of winter! Each year, thousands actually descend on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to watch the giant rodent makes this annual weather prediction at dawn. Now, if he didn’t see his shadow, good chance would be that spring would have come early. Phil had more people at his rally than the current acting President ever did! Actual weather data says that Phil has only a 40% accurate prediction status. So he is wrong more...
I’ve been busy getting our paperwork ready for the accountants. It’s tax season, my least favorite. This is a yearly task that I dread, and so I procrastinate. However, I think it’s a necessary evil in order to have public services that benefit us all. And so I do it (also so we can avoid hefty fines and/or prison. No one wants to suffer either option.) Seed catalogs: I’ve started to glance at them - if only to winnow out the duplicates. Just today I tossed the third issue from Burpee, and the second from both Gurney’s and Seeds ‘N Such. They...
Do you remember recycling the core of toilet tissue paper? These card board tubes were used for several things, but I remember that they were often wrapped with decorative yarn or maybe painted and then used to store appliance cords are slip them over your toaster, waffle iron cord, etc for easier storage on the shelf. I still have several that my mother made up and they even have a nicely typed note glued on the tube stating what the cord was for. Do many of use utilize those methods to tidy things up today or do we like to rely on a handy...
Remember the days when you’d have to go to the video store to score a movie for the weekend? The walk to the new releases section to discover no remaining copies of that movie you’ve been waiting months for. Picking out maybe your third and fourth choices, because those are better than having to watch whatever is on TV. You settle down with your microwaved popcorn, throw the tape in the VCR only to realize the previous renter was an absolute sociopath and neglected to rewind it. Cue 4 minutes of silence before hooray! It’s movie night! Altho...
We would like to give our condolences to Greg Pederson and his sister Brenda Ketsdever whose mother Edwina L Schneider passed away on Friday, January 21st after she had been in the hospital for about a week. Greg moved here before Edwina and her husband, to help do work on their building. That is how we met our future son in law. Edwina and her husband moved to Saint Marie in about 2008, about 14 years ago. Condolences also go out to Edwina’s brother, Jerry Williams who resides in Oregon and also condolences to family and friends. Where oh w...
Today is houseplant watering day, so technically I could say I’m tending my “green spaces in rural places” as a former editor termed what has become “my” column. It isn’t really gardening in the traditional sense, but it keeps my hand in. Outdoor “real gardening” is getting closer. I can tell from the number and variety of seed and plant catalogs showing up in our mailbox. So far I haven’t cracked open a single one of them, but I’m also not tossing them into “file 13” where the ones that showed up in December went. One of these days, when the...
Do you remember saving bacon grease? I think every kitchen had a container in the fridg or maybe even on the stove that was used to save bacon grease. Of course bacon was a major breakfast staple and bacon always presented plenty of grease. This was usually kept for frying potatoes or maybe chicken for other meals. I think that bacon grease may have been used for making soap, but then that was before my day, but I do remember being told by persons now deceased that they recalled persons visiting the local café to see if they could get the old...
The internet is something which we’ve come to treat as somewhat of a given in always being available in some capacity. Any outages are typically brief and only affect a single service, so we’re still able to use our other devices to score our social media fix. There exists however a major component of internet connectivity which remains quite fragile, even in this age of near-global satellite and cellular connectivity. Under our oceans, down there in the deep, murky depths, lay thousands of miles of cable. It dutifully handles around 95% of...
Lately, I have been delving into the past family histories again, something I have done for years and have actually been able to find cousin’s that I never even knew existed! Part of my family did settle in the Northeastern Montana area and I was sent some very interesting articles and information about some of them and their lives here in Montana during the mid to late 1800‘s. I thought I would share one story with you all. My Great Great Great Grandmother’s brother was Samuel Russell. He was known in his earlier days as the “Powder River K...
This week I’m fully back into cooking our meals at home again. There’s a LOT of dining out when we’re on vacation. I’m also once again doing the Whole Life Challenge, so I’m using recipes that work for my chosen nutritional level, which remains the most lenient of the choices. I’m not going overboard (full-on vegan, and something in-between that level of craziness and just skipping real sugar and wheat flours). While we were in Florida, we dined at P.F. Chang’s, at Dennis’s request. He loves their Mongolian Beef - go figure. Kim and I share...
Do you remember eating rabbit? I remember eating rabbit for a meal as a child. I also remember my sister crying as we ate as these rabbits were raised and cared for by us. Mom could never convince us that we were eating chicken! I am sure that many homesteaders and others ate rabbit caught in the wild, but there were also many local people that raised rabbits for this purpose. I do remember rabbits being raised locally and taken to Canada for a market. On a recent broadcast of Under the Big Sky, there was a discussion concerning the...
We all love our cellphones. They offer near-limitless freedom in where we choose to communicate, consume media or learn. The cellphone network is one of the triumphs of modern engineering, with 94% of the world’s population having access to a wireless service. The fifth generation of wireless cellular technology, dubbed 5G, has had a rocky start however. This is in spite of 5G being totally revolutionary in its reach and scope to deliver speed, availability and functionality. What does the 5G rollout mean then, and how is it making news by a...
In the very useful miscellaneous information department, my opinion, here is a Saint Marie factoid. We are about 20 miles from Glasgow, Montana. If your vehicle gets 18 miles to the gallon of gas, as ours does, you use, about two gallons of gas getting to and from Glasgow. You say, “so what”! Let me digress for a moment. You get the advertisements from lets say, Reynold’s or Albertson’s, and there is a “SALE” going on. So you depart Saint Marie and go to town to purchase something “ON SALE”. Well, with the price of gasoline being $3.19 and...
We arrived back into Montana from sunny, warm Florida Thursday night, and we were back at home by Friday evening. It just kept getting cooler (I don't dare say colder after you all endured the way-below-zero temps we avoided) and whiter the farther north we went. There's plenty of snow on the ground up here by Opheim. And while we aren't too excited about these conditions, at least there's some much needed moisture in that white layer of yuck. As Dennis said, it's "more than we had last...
Blockchain, which faithful readers will recall is the use of a decentralized public ledger to store data, has enabled some interesting developments in the world of technology. Cryptocurrency being the most famous example of this, of course. Seeing a continued gain in popularity however is something called NFTs, with some examples of such trading for tens of millions of dollars. But what even is an NFT, and how would you sound well-informed about one when the subject came up at a party? Never fear, party animals. I’ve got your back. NFT s...
The other day, we were reminiscing about our days in Hawaii and going to Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 of each year. In 1991 we were honored to meet several of the famous Code Talkers. Originally, in 1942, the U.S. Marine Corp. recruited 29 Navajo men to develop an unbreakable code that would be used across the Pacific during the war and were known as the Navajo Code Talkers. By the end of the war, there were more than 400 Code Talkers that would openly transmit messages by telephone and radio in their native Navajo language, a code that was never...
This week I had planned to write about mangrove trees. We'd been to see the manatees, those huge seal-like mammals that were supposedly mistaken for mermaids by sailors who'd obviously been out to sea much too long. After you've seen live manatees, you really have to wonder about sailors' imaginations or deliriums. Anyway, there are lots of mangrove trees alongside the walkways and creeks and the estuary at the manatee center here in Riverview. I even took photos of some of the mangroves. (The...
In the most general sense, drout is defined as a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time (usually a season or more), resulting in a water shortage. The effects of this deficiency are often called drought impacts. In 2021, Valley County experienced a severe shmiage of water resulting in an estunated 77% loss in production. Did you know? Women have always played a crucial role in agriculture, from the early days of the trailblazing “Women’s Land Army, who fulfilled a crucial agricultural need during World War I, to tod...
If the beard hadn’t made this fact abundantly clear, I’d like to set the record straight: I’m a guy. As a guy and as guy readers of my column will know, there are certain rules we have to follow. Some of these rules pertain to the coolness of things. Noisy things are usually cool, like fireworks and V8s. Things which fly are cool, like helicopters and fighter jets. Flashlights and other things involving LED lights? Super cool. So how about a noisy, LED-laden, noisy thing which also lets a guy use the word “pilot” in a borderline un-ironic...
When children ages 5 to 11 were approved for Pfizer’s lower-dose pediatric covid-19 vaccine in November, Annie Edwards was eager to get her daughter Hannah, then 5, the shot because of underlying health conditions she has stemming from her premature birth. “She was on a ventilator for the first month of her life. Throughout this whole covid ordeal, I just keep thinking of those memories,” Edwards said. Many parents in more urban areas of Montana quickly found the vaccine when it became available. The search was more challenging for Edwar...
Rustin Coleman Albus was born at 11:25 p.m. Dec. 20 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital to parents Kyle and Katarina Albus of Hinsdale. Rustin Weighed in at 7 pounds 2.6 ounces and is 20.5 inches long. The baby's paternal grandparents are Eric and Robyn Albus of Hinsdale. Maternal grandparents are Trent and Laurie Gottlich of Hilger....
Marcel Joseph Anderson was born at 6:05 p.m. Dec. 16 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital to parents Edward and Rebecca Anderson of Glasgow. Marcel weighed in at 6 pounds, 12.8 ounces, and is 18.5 inches long. He joins eight sisters and four brothers The baby's paternal grandparents are The baby's paternal grandparents are Ed Anderson and Ann Taylor. Maternal grandparents are Elaine Erickson (Kamrud).....
Nora Grace Bengochea was born at 6:36 a.m. Nov. 3 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital to parents Griffin and Julia Bengochea of Fort Peck. Nora weighed in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces, and is 19 inches long. The baby’s paternal grandparents are Jon and Erika Bengochea. Maternal grandparents are Lance and Leah Kolstad of Glasgow....
Laine Rose Burgess was born at 1:52 a.m. Jan. 5 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital to parents Brady and Erin Burgess of Glasgow. Laine weighed in at 6 pounds, 6 ounces, and is 17.5 inches long. The baby's paternal grandparents are Rene Mitch Burgess of Gillette, New York. Maternal grandparents are Patti and Todd Cayko of Fairview, MT....
Seeley Marie Kipf was born at 11:06 a.m. Jan. 1 at Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital to parents Clint Kipf and Sarah Law of Glasgow. Kipf weighed in at 7 pounds, 12 ounces, and is 20.5 inches long. The baby's paternal grandparents are Larry Kipf and Merry Alexander of Forsyth. Maternal grandparents are Pam Law of Glasgow....