Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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Ol’ Norman has been gone a long time, but his stories linger on. The old gent nodded his head toward a man ascending the massive staircase in the county courthouse. “You know who that is, don’t you?” “Yes,” I replied, thinking that a rather unusual question. The distinguished figure with black overcoat and silvery hair was quite recognizable. I knew I was on to one of those tales that only Norm could spin. Norm considered himself a real died-in-the-wool Montanan. His parents of fond memories, homesteaded south of Malta, having arrived pen...
The Boy Scouts of America made what many seemed to think was a controversial announcement this past week. The National Scouting Office said that they would open the Cub Scout and Eagle Scout path to girls. This seemed to shock some and it lifted what has been a long-time barricade for girls in scouting. The announcement had been signaled for some time, and in my opinion is a great thing for scouting, boys and girls. To dampen the scandal scouting has had coed programs since the early seventies with Venturing and Sea Scouts, and in fact the...
Our U.S. Congress is out to give the oil and gas industry a pass –all on the taxpayer’s dime. Earlier this year, the U.S. House attached a pro-waste amendment onto a must-pass bill. Our congressmen are currently attempting to skirt the rules that would require the oil and gas industry take responsibility for what they owe the American people. The rule they are trying to cheat is called the BLM Methane and Waste Prevention rule. The Methane and Waste Prevention rule finalized last November required energy companies to capture methane from fla...
This summer’s catastrophic wildfire season and hazardous, persistent smoke pollution has all Montanans talking. The fires took the lives of two young men, destroyed homes and Sperry Lodge, blew a hole in the state budget, discouraged tourism and other businesses and burned more than 1.2 million acres of Big Sky Country. Fire and smoke throughout our region forced large-scale evacuations and school closures, curtailed outdoor recreation, threatened health, robbed us of our glory days of summer, and was red-flag risky to the chilly end. As f...
Suicide has to be one of the saddest words in the English language. It’s a word you are never ready to hear. Dr. Scott Hahn, professor at Stevensville University spoke of an episode in his life. He was enroute to a speaking engagement when he decided to stop at a nearby house, at the home of a friend, Dave, who he hadn’t visited with for some time. Dave’s mother invited him in while gesturing up the stairs. She mentioned that Dave was in his room and would be delighted to see him. Dave’s parents were divorced. Indeed, Dave was very happy t...
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...
