Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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Do you recall rodeos from generations past? I have had on occasion to travel Hwy. 2 a couple of times this last month and have noticed many pickups and horse trailers heading down the road. This made me think of earlier days. I am not going too far back when I ask, if you remember cars pulling a single horse trailer, headed for the weekend rodeo. If you looked into the trunk of many of these cars, you would find bareback riggings, rope cans, etc. If you were successful, and rodeo was truly your event, you might even upgrade to a four-horse...
Two Concerns Dear Editor, I would like to thank the Long Term Care Task Force for coming to Lustre to share their concerns and possible solutions. I would like to support this effort. There are two concerns that were not addressed with clarity: 1. Will the election of new board members to Valley View Home Board be open to the public and will it be able to address sloppy management quickly? Non-profit boards have a reputation of doing well for a short period of time and then quickly moving to sloppiness. This situation will happen again. 2. The...
In Northeastern Montana, over 50,000 acres of prairie, farming and ranch land are ablaze. Additionally, throughout the state, hundreds of thousands of acres are combating growing wildfire daily. Stakes are rising and funding is dropping in a race against the clock to halt Montana’s most pre-eminent natural disaster. The perfect kindling was piled up late last year for the current predicament; not for a cozy fire but for an unstoppable, costly blaze. Governor Steve Bullock proposed cutting 25 million dollars from the state’s wildfire fund. Thi...
By a prior agreement, Wednesdays are our special days together, right here in familiar surroundings. Most of the time I choose enticing things for the agenda such as bread making; grinding the homegrown wheat into fluffy beige flour. When Kelcie, my little granddaughter, gets a little older she will add the flour into the milk, which has already been mixed with the yeast, salt and sweetener, just as her sisters did ahead of her. Her part of the bread-making operation consists of cutting and shaping the resilient dough into whatever Kelcie’s h...
This year’s fair is now a memory captured in photos, ribbons and souvenirs. A change in medication made it possible for me to attend this year’s Cancer Survivor ride. Being able to participate in this event is truly an honor and fills my heart to overflowing with gratitude to all the doctors, nurses and researchers for their care, and to the local Relay For Life and businesses for their sponsorship. The other highlight of the fair for me was getting to see all the projects our grandchildren entered and the awards they received. That is alw...
For some time now my wife and I have planned to see the solar eclipse on Aug. 21, in Wyoming where the sun will be covered in its totality. My reasoning was that this was an awesome chance for our children to experience something entirely unique and pretty rare. Secretly, though, I was overly excited to experience the natural phenomenon first hand, which I have wanted to see after experiencing a partial solar eclipse at the age of five as a child. I thought it was a no brainer that everyone would want to see such a thing in its entirety and...
Editor's Note: The following letter arrived in my inbox on June 28. The delay was unintentional. I was struck by a paragraph in the Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Glasgow Courier (Pg. 2A A Regular Guy’s Money Problems). “With the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument suddenly in danger of being privatized, we need a representative in Congress who values our public lands. He has spoken out against land grabs and trusts Montana farmers and ranchers to know what’s best for our land.” I find this paragraph striking, because sentence one is in diametrica...
Being the bad Montanans that we are, my mom and I went to Glacier National Park for the first time ever only a few weeks ago. Over our depressingly short three days in the park, we hiked until we could physically go no further, practically crawling back to our car every night, yet absolutely gleeful about our adventure. Our routes took us to literally breathtaking glacial overlooks, through meadows of alpine wildflowers, alongside a family of bighorn sheep, to the source of exquisitely raging waterfalls, and through a honest-to-God fairy...
It comes as a surprise to me when I find that people I know and trust support the current state of the country. I try to pry information as to why, what things have been accomplished, and what goods have been done? But I honestly never get a straight answer. Mostly I get agitation that I don’t see it. I hear constantly that this is better than the previous eight years, but I don’t see how. The Republican administration has pursued a hated health care policy to failing ends. They looked petty and fool-hearted the entire time. Especially whi...
The absence of a telephone didn’t bother our family, at least as I recall. We were a letter-writing group, especially during World War II with two brothers in the military awaiting news from home. People walked not for the exercise but to their place of employment, shopping, visiting their friends, library, post office, school, church, you name it, we arrived by foot power. The sidewalks were constantly used and well maintained. Cars were visible but actually not many on the streets. Wartime gasoline rationing made a real difference. Early o...
Do you remember before bottled water? Can you even imagine what our parents and grandparents would have had to say if anyone would have mentioned a business of bottled water! Of course, if it was a business, there would have to be a charge for it and just who in their right mind would pay for a glass of water? I am sure that plastic bottles were unheard of, and if you did have bottled water, it would have had to have been in glass containers. And my question is, would glass bottles be better than plastic? Would there be more recycling with...
Generations of Montanans have cultivated the land and passed family farms and ranches down to their children. Their work has built Montana’s economy and preserved a way of life that still defines our state today. But with the ground cracking underneath us, we are reminded of how fragile this way of life is. As our number one economic driver, Montana agriculture has supported our economy through seasons of plenty and seasons of drought, including physical drought and unseasonable rains. In Montana, we’ve seen them both and our farmers and ranche...
One day when I was in a chat room on the internet - one of my favorite places to go - the topic of conversation was centered around shopping. Not surprising since at that time everyone in the room was female. When a comment was made about going to a large department store, I said I didn’t often get to a store of that chain. “How far are you from that store?” I was asked. “Oh, about 130 miles one way,” I replied. “What?! How do you live without going to that store every day?!” came the question. “Actually, quite well. If I can’t find what...
Online the other day, someone commented on how stressful it can be to travel with children when they can't have their electronics along. I remember the first time we transported a grandchild for a distance. Being “old generation,” we refused the parents’ offer of taking their DVD for entertainment. It is surprising what you can entertain a youngster with. The first thing that comes to my mind is my sisters and I singing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” I am sure this absolutely drove my mom and dad nuts, but they did endure it for quite a w...
In 2014, I bought my first “adult” car. It was a beautiful four-door Ford pickup, which, to me, signaled that I had finally made it from adolescence to the age and independent man. Not only was I proud of my freshly acquired vehicle but I also thought it would be funny to make the license plate read, “GBUSH” after one of my political heroes and the president of my youth. Sadly, I recently traded in my pickup for a new vehicle and not to be outdone by my previous purchase, along with a healthy admiration of politics, I opted for another politic...
As I jog around Glasgow, one of the songs that rotates through my iPod is Katy Perry's "Firework." This is hard for a 50-year-old raised on classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Van Halen to admit, but the opening riffs of that fluffy pop song never fail to inspire hopeful emotions in me. I love that silly, dramatic song with lyrics that almost, but don't quite, rhyme. "Boom, boom, boom! Even brighter than the moon, moon, moon..." A song sure to appeal to middle school girls, but not so much to middle-aged joggers. When our family moved to...
The discussions around health care and cuts to Medicaid have been reduced to faceless statistics. For community mental health, and the people who rely upon our services, it’s a double whammy. The state of Montana also has announced that cuts are very probable due to reduced revenue estimates. This is on the heels of the Legislature reducing sentences with the promise that mental health and addictions treatment would solve our problems. Who are these nameless, faceless statistics? They are portrayed by some as slackers who should get a job a...
My parents have always loved to camp, so naturally, we did a lot of camping when my siblings and I were younger. At first I was the biggest weenie. I had a fear of wind, lightening, the dark, out houses, pretty much everything that makes the camping experience authentic. To be honest, I didn’t exactly relish those early family trips. As I got older though, those things became less scary and repulsive until one summer I realized that I actually couldn’t wait for my parents to haul out our mammoth blue tent and whisk us off somewhere nat...
Lately, I’ve been watching documentaries on wildlife from around the world. One documentary was about wildlife in the Rocky Mountains, which peaked my curiosity. Is there one about eastern Montana? About prairie dogs, gophers (the Richardson squirrel), antelope, deer, geese, ducks, game birds, aquatic species in Fort Peck Lake and the rivers that feed into it, etc? These documentaries brought to mind the stories I heard when I first moved here. About how thick the gophers were and the measures homesteaders had to take in order to protect t...
The only thing that comes to my mind today is [that it’s] hot and dry and we are all depressed enough about that, so I am trying to think of other things. I recently made a trip to the Western part of our state, getting to see some family and friends. I am a flat land driver and do not like curves well at all, however making the drive did make me think of days gone by. I can remember making a journey or two during my younger days when living at home. The cars of the 50s: no air conditioning, but big and comfortable. Then my mind went to what t...
Last fall, during the tail end of my cross country season, I started feeling an aching soreness in my left hip. Instead of just being sore from lifting, like I had originally thought, it turned out to be an avulsion fracture. I was absolutely devastated. Just two days before, I had ran my personal best 8K time at our regional cross country meet and now I was being told that I had six weeks of crutches in my future. I had to keep reminding myself that it could have been much worse and to be thankful that it wouldn’t require surgery. However, f...
On July 5, Children’s Hospital in Minnesota and an insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, decided to terminate their relationship. By terminating this relationship, numerous families have to decide where else to obtain the quality care they need or incur a financial burden, as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota will be out-of-network when using Children’s Hospital as a provider. After reading news-article-after-news-article about this termination, one thing that is never mentioned in the press releases from these com...
Governor Steve Bullock signed four bills on July 10 aimed to better protect victims of sexual assault. Senate Bills 22 and 26, sponsored by Senator Sue Malek and SBs 29 and 30, sponsored by Senator Diane Sands, provide a process for terminating rights of parents who committed rape, as well as making revisions to the requirements of registeration for sexual and violent offenses. Also accomplished was the elimination of the requirement that sexual assault involve force for it to legally be defined as rape, and an increased statute of limitations...
Recently, I’ve seen an article on social media quite a few times that is very disturbing, to say the least, not to mention downright disgusting. Apparently, New Hampshire State Rep. Josh Moore once stated [in a Facebook post archived by the online magazine Slate] that if he sees a woman breastfeeding in public he has the right to grab her breasts. Where does he supposedly get this right? I seriously doubt his parents told him this. From his photo it appears he is in his late 30s or, more likely, in his 40s. I wonder if he is married and if so,...
July 4th is the 241st birthday of our great country. This is a celebration worth embracing. For 241 years the United States has been a beacon of freedom, liberty, and the “American Dream.” The United States has grown from an upstart pest to the greatest country the world has ever known. However, we cannot rest on our laurels. We have issues that need addressing. Issues headed up by a burgeoning debt, which is now nearly 20 trillion dollars, or $61,364 for every person in the United States, and $165,928 for every tax payer in the United Sta...
