Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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My family has a love for old things, and I must admit we are almost running out of room for all of our treasures. Just the other day my husband and daughter retrieve some glass canning jars from one of his childhood homes. Many of these jars have a Ball emblem on them, so I assume they were definitely canning jars, but—the opening is smaller than our present day “regular mouth” jars. Of course this is not the first time I have seen them and have to admit that I even have lids somewhere that fit them, but the question is, what might have been pr...
This past week my husband and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. Those 49 years have saw lots of ups and downs. We've been through losing our house twice to fire. I say house rather than home because I've always held that a house is a bulding but a home is where your heart is. When our first house burned down and I called my brother to tell him, he said, "You lost your home to fire?" My answer was "No. We lost our house, not our home. None of us were injured so we still have our home, we just don't have a house to put it in." Raising...
The ESA is broken. So what can we do to fix it? Ideally, privately owned lands should be removed from all applications of the Act. However, this would take an act of Congress. Good luck! The Constitution of the United States Amendment V stated, “nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” The questions are what constitutes private property and what is a ‘taking’? Is preventing a landowner from performing a certain act (i.e. plowing, building a fence or road, etc.) on their private property a taking? The dra...
Over the past week, I’ve taken time to notice little things that have made me smile or make me feel blessed or thankful. such as my 6-year-old granddaughter telling me she has six loose teeth. When I commented that with that many loose teeth, the tooth fairy would run out of money. Her answer was, “Oh, no, Grandma. My teeth are just loose. They haven’t fell out yet.” While watching a nature documentary, one part of it showed a very small light blue bird that lives on an island off the coast of Mexico. The narrator said that the adult bird’s...
Editor’s note: We occasionally run letters of apology here at the Courier. These typically arise through our relationship with the courts as the newspaper of record for Valley County. In other words, these apologies are usually ordered by a judge. The letter below was neither solicited, nor mandated, and was submitted voluntarily. “My name is Cinnamon. I am an addict. My addiction began when I was 13 years old, long before I even knew what addiction was. Back then, using was a way of survival, a way of life, and I used off and on until 199...
What a hornet’s nest has been stirred by the column submitted by Mary Honrud ["The Brouhaha," Sept. 27]. Sorry Jim that you could not find anyone that was willing to pen a note representing the “other side of the question” as this has proven to be quite a read on social media. I will admit that I was rather taken aback when I read the article and promptly decided it was my duty to respond, although I am sure there are others much more qualified than I. I hate trying to do research on any given controversial subject. I have even resorted to Sn...
“Kiwanis is a global organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the world, one child and one community at a time.” That is the defining statement for Kiwanis International, and, at our local Glasgow Chapter, we strive to carry it through. Want to learn more? Join the Glasgow Kiwanis Club at our weekly meeting this Wednesday, October 4. We’ll be convening in the parking lot of the Glasgow Middle School at 5:15 p.m. before taking a group trip through their new fitness trail. With several members present, it’ll be your chance to learn a...
Most people agree. The Endangered Species Act (Act or ESA) is broken. The concerns and issues originally addressed by the Act were real and its goals were very popular. The intent of the Act was valid but problems have arisen with the implementation. Unfortunately, the Act did not differentiate between federal and state-owned and/or managed lands and vested private property. This omission has given state and federal agencies considerable power to regulate actions and land uses on private lands. They have used this power, goaded on by...
During the past week, I was blessed with several column submissions about our President’s words and the rights of NFL players to freely express themselves in their professional lives (See Mary Honrud on this page). None of the submissions were from local Conservatives. Now, I like an argument to have two sides, at least, so I tried reaching out to local Republicans. No takers. In point of fact, I came close to begging a few of the usual Conservative suspects to chime in. Still no takers. Why not? Doesn’t anyone want to defend the Commander in...
In the inspirational movie “Field of Dreams,” a struggling Iowa farmer named Ray hears a mystical voice encouraging him to build a baseball field in the middle of his Iowa corn field. Ray embarks on a journey which carries him across the country where he meets old men who dreamed of playing major league baseball, but whose destinies took them down other paths. In the end, those lost dreams are fulfilled as the old players regain their youth when they walk onto Ray’s unlikely field and play the sport they love. I have found another field of dr...
This past week was an unusually busy one for me. I was on the go from Wednesday through Sunday. It started out by me having chemo and bone strengthening treatments on Wednesday, followed the same day by a visit with my primary doctor, which ended up in a change in one prescription and receiving two new prescriptions. The day came to an end with a stop at the grocery store to stock up the fridge and pantry with necessary foods. On Thursday, we went to the Glasgow airport to pick up my brother, Steve, who lives in southeast Iowa. He and I try to...
I cannot remember a year like this. I do know that weather records indicate that we have not seen this before, however I do know that our ancestors suffered major droughts during the dust bowl days. I think of all the old homestead sites located in our area. All of the hopes and dreams of those people. Almost all of those sites of course were located on or near a water source, but even so there had to be times there was no water. Maybe there was underground water, but no electricity for pumps, no solar energy, or generators to be used, just...
The controversy raised by Colin Kaepernick had been resurrected by none other than our president, who had suggested those protesting are not the children of morally upright mothers, and that their right to protest injustice is not legitimate. I would point out that the President swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It would seem he is not doing that at all. Instead, what he is doing is dividing us rather than uniting us, and seemingly claiming that some of our citizens do not possess the rights our...
Two years ago, lawmakers in Montana passed groundbreaking legislation to open new doors for people with disabilities and their families. This new law has now been fully implemented and made available to help change the lives of thousands of Montanans. Senate Bill 399, passed in the 2015 Legislative session, allows eligible individuals with disabilities to establish “ABLE accounts’’ that resemble the tuition programs that have long existed under the tax code. The new ABLE accounts will allow more autonomy and control over personal saving decis...
According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the leading cause of accidental death in 2015 was drug overdose. The life toll from the drug epidemic has been consistently growing over the past couple of years with opiate addiction and overdose being one of the lead causes. Each year, more people use drugs for the first time and wind up addicted. Right now, the highest number of opiate overdoses are in the Northeast. The problem originally started with heroin as the main contributor, however newer drugs have begun to escalate the...
I was most pleasantly surprised the other week when Donald Trump struck a deal raising the debt ceiling in return for Harvey disaster relief. It was a rare feeling, what with the hurricanes, the beating of war drums, and the countless other apocalyptic heralding scenes gracing our social media feeds and news broadcasts near daily. I was almost taken aback by the news headline “Trump Makes Deal With Democrats,” not that I was shocked he would leave behind his party leadership, for which I know he has no loyalty nor does he share any ide...
Not long ago, I heard of a friend who had to be placed in a nursing home because he has Alzheimer’s and it was no longer possible for the family to care for him at home. How difficult this decision had to be for his family. And how heartbreaking his diagnosis. A conversation overheard several months ago between two women, was about a friend of theirs who had been diagnosed with a seldom-heard-of disease, was about her being taken to a nursing home where she could also receive physical therapy in the hopes she could possibly return to her h...
On Sept. 17, America watched the Hollywood elite pat themselves on the back for their brave, selfless and virtuous work being celebrated at the 69th annual Emmys broadcast. Let me rephrase, no one watched the 69th Emmys. It was the lowest-rated broadcast in Emmy’s history. Spearheaded by the talented Stephen Colbert, lost in the political fog of war, he preferred to compare Trump supporters to Nazis and push skewed political agenda rather than host a genuinely comedic show for all. Recently, conservatives feel like second-class citizens w...
The Philosophy of Life...Don’t have one? Everyone has a philosophy. For example, the one that says, “That’s yours but I will take it.” That’s going on all over the world. Most likely you have encountered that; I certainly have. It happened 40 years ago, but I remember it as vividly as yesterday. My husband announced one morning that all of our 20-plus chicken friers were GONE! The door was closed so they hadn’t flown the coop. Nope, no fried chicken for our large family nor did the thieves invite us to dinner of our chickens! No siree ... o...
Montana’s crisis isn’t too much water or hurricanes – it’s fire. It’s smoke filling Big Sky Country and filling our lungs, communities being evacuated, structures lost and tons of fuels just lying on the forest floor waiting for a spark to ignite. In this year alone, over 1,600 fires have burned over 1 million acres in Montana - that’s nearly equivalent to the entirety of the state of Delaware being on fire. We are tired of being told that others know better than us while we watch our forests and grasslands burn every summer, our mills close, o...
Just want to say how much I enjoy Elizabeth Shipstead’s column [“Rural Sisterhood,” Hi-Line Farm & Ranch]. While she obviously tries to think positively, we all know the ag life can be a challenge, to say the least....
I have concern over the fact that a group from Helena is looking into getting Amtrak to stop the northern Empire Builder route along the Hi-Line and diverting the train on a southern route through the state to get more “tourists” to Helena. I would like this group to take my following remarks into consideration before they proceed. The Hi-Line, especially eastern Montana, is the most remote area in the state. We do not have access to interstate highway without considerable travel. We do not have access to bus lines. Our essential air ser...
I’m writing because I can’t sit silent while radical Republicans in DC rip away the safety net supporting working people. As a caregiver, I care for the sick and elderly, helping them live day to day. Because of my low wages and changing hours, I also rely on the SNAP program to make my budget stretch. I get $80 a month for food stamps. It’s a small amount but that helps offset my water bill. We were on TANF for a couple years to support two young kids, before my husband was able to move into a full time position, and I found a full time job a...
So I am usually kind of proud of how we as a state have to keep a balanced budget, and cannot over spend our capability pay. It is a fruitful endeavor for sure when applied with the logic and foresight of a well-crafted budget. What I do not support, however, is the arbitrary and hardship inducing budget cuts that loom in our state’s near future. As of this month, the state is ordering 10 percent budget cuts across the board from all its state agencies. That means that MDT, DOJ, DMA, and every other agency will share in cuts arbitrarily a...
On Labor Day this year, we attended the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Lauckner Farm. There were 120 people who signed the guestbook. Those who were there exchanged memories of the Lauckner family from over the years. It may have even been the first time some of these memories were discussed. As we were on our way home, I marveled at the number of 100th anniversaries that have and are planned to take place in this area. Last year, Wagner Farms celebrated 100 years. Several years ago so did Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Nashua. Th...
