Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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On Tuesday, the 9th of May, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, was dismissed without warning by President Trump. The coined phrase, “you’re fired” is back. Forty-three years ago on an October night, the then under investigation President Nixon ordered the firing of the special prosecutor of the Watergate scandal but it was denied by the attorney general, who immediately resigned; and then denied by the deputy attorney general, who also immediately resigned. This short cycle of concurrent events was dubbed the S...
The House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act on May 4, and began the process of implementing the American Health Care Act (AHCA). Republicans had tried to get a similar bill passed earlier this year, but the language of the bill split the party in half, with hyper-conservatives (Freedom Caucus) and moderate conservatives at odds. That bill didn’t get a vote. An amendment addressing pre-existing conditions ultimately helped pass the bill. Everyone, even our President, can admit that healthcare is a complicated beast. One major change has b...
The direction of our country will be decided in the coming months and I’m committed to making sure Montana’s voice is heard in Washington. I’m running to be Montana’s next Congressman because Montanans deserve a champion who will stand strong for our values and our way of life. I’m thankful to have built a life, started a small business, and raised a family in Montana. I fell in love with Montana more than 40 years ago on a class trip backpacking in the Beartooth Mountains. 24 years ago, my wife, Susan, and I chose Montana to raise our four...
It’s a bits and pieces week again. I hope all the mothers in our area had a really nice Mother’s Day. I was fotunate to have three of my children with me, five of my grandchildren, and to receive a phone call from my fourth child. Besides my children, we also had some special guests, including one of my daughter-in-law's mother, join us for dinner. Besides celebrating Mother’s Day, the day also included an early birthday celebration for my husband. So it was a grand day indeed. For quite a while now, the Great Falls television stations have...
Fake news would love for you to, poetically and with a decent helping of moral superiority, believe that you can forget the party lines separating Greg Gianforte and Rob Quist in this upcoming special election. Supposing a Democrat that endorsed Bernie Sanders and a Republican in support of Trump wouldn’t have any major differences, the idea of bleeding hearts coming together in unity sounds novel. The media has attempted to cast Greg Gianforte’s opponent as center-right in an attempt to win the previously Republican seat in Congress. To aid...
And so it was I found myself hating the Billionaire Tech Mogul who wants to hoard the world for his own benefit, and laughing at the thought of voting for the Cowboy Troubadour Poet going to fight consequential battles in Washington D.C. with a guitar and love first attitude. Neither candidate was appealing to me in anyway. I was beginning to despair that I would have to vote for the Montana Donald Trump or the aloof artist who can’t stand by his own views and commitments, but I digress. It wasn’t until I was reminded of the Libertarian can...
If you’ve watched television lately you might have seen the attack ads against Rob Quist, the Cut Bank man who is running for Congress in the upcoming special election. I remember when I was little, campaign ads like that would come on TV and both of my parents would mutter in disgust – not at the content, but at their existence. The red screen and dark voice missed the mark. Out here we learned respect from childhood. Some men still take their cowboy hats off when they shake a lady’s hand. You don’t know when you’ll have to call someone t...
Life can change in the blink of an eye. I sure found that out at 12:50 a.m. on April 29. I had gotten up to find the lotion I use on my hands because they were itching so badly. I reached out to pull the light cord on the ceiling fan and lost my balance. Down I went. A trip to the ER and X-rays revealed I had fractured both the radius and ulna in my right arm. And yes, I am right handed. When you read this I will have had a cast put on my arm. Now on to my column. Everywhere I look I see the bright green of new grass peppered with the bright...
Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Sierra Holt’s paper, “Reinterpreting the 1882 Bison Population Collapse.” The full text was presented at the 2017 Winter Grazing Seminar in Glasgow. Many sources indicate large bison numbers. Lewis and Clark are popular (Moulton, 1987); others include J. Bradbury in 1810, Edwin James in 1820, Jacob Fowler in 1822 (Hart, 2001), James A. Fisk in 1862, Captai Grant Marsh, Captain William T. Twining in 1874, and Lt. G. C. Doane (Koucky, 1983). For example: [Clark, Aug. 29, 1806] “I must have Seen...
The nation is watching Montana as one of the first weathervanes in a post Trump-coming-to-power world. A special runoff election for the sole congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives is the 25th of this month with a kickoff of mail-out ballots hitting your mailbox this week. Competing to replace the respected Ryan Zinke, now our Secretary of the Interior and first Montanan in a cabinet position, will the Democrats be able to generate a pushback to the Trump-style Americana that has taken over the nation or will the Republicans...
Today I visited Pass Creek School, a one-room schoolhouse north of Bozeman with eight kids. We talked about Montana artists and did an art project together. Most of them drew pictures of horses, or of moving cows, or their 4-H pigs. They were smart and polite and well-spoken. For work, I visit all kinds of schools. I’ve visited a middle school with 500 kids in Bozeman and a schoolhouse with six kids in Yaak. I’ve been to Hutterite colonies and St. Labre Indian Catholic School. My favorite, though, are the one-room country schools. The kids are...
I am writing this on May Day. Do you remember making May Day baskets out of construction paper and working on the project for a couple of days before May 1? I think that we might have gotten to make some of these baskets as our art project in school, and of course Mom was always a good resource. I think that they were supposed to be filled with flowers and given to someone, but if my memory serves me correctly, some baskets may have been filled with treats to be hung on the door knob, or left on the door step of a person you loved. Some place...
We rely on innovation to change our lives, but we tend to think about what it means for phones or the Internet, not farmland. Just as we rely on innovation to help us meet our future needs, we should also look towards innovation to help our agricultural communities keep up with changing demands. Historically, we have prevented issues such as potato blight, increased the nutritional value of rice and other grains, and met consumers’ constantly evolving needs through the use of science and innovation. As we face new challenges in feeding the w...
Growing up in Cut Bank, one of the most important life-changing memories from my youth was my time in a Boy Scout Troop led by an incredible Scoutmaster, my Uncle Bob Anderson. We would take 100-mile trips up in the mountains and this is where I came to love Montana’s wild and beautiful wide open spaces. Our outdoor way of life is what makes Montanans who we are. It doesn’t matter if you’re from the Eastern or Western side of the state and it doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or Libertarian--this is a common va...
The Environmental Protection Agency is asking for public comments “on regulations that may be appropriate for repeal, replacement, or modification.” That is a misguided effort if there ever was one. With pipelines leaking, tires burning, polluted waste being dumped into wetlands, plastics floating in our waters, fracking causing earthquakes, obsolete coal-fired plants releasing pollution into the air, pollution increasing carbon in the atmosphere, and global temperatures rising, the EPA’s resources should be directed at more research, more...
While preparing Easter Sunday dinner, my thoughts drifted back to an Easter some years ago that definitely has been unforgettable. We always hosted Easter Sunday dinner because of calving season. This particular year, Easter also fell on my birthday. One of my husband’s brothers and his wife and family had come to visit his parents. So, of course, they were on the guest list for dinner, as was my husband’s parents and one of his uncles. We had also invited our parish priest to have dinner with us. A given thing during calving season was the sma...
The Missouri River Reservoir System is the largest reservoir system in North America. Management of the system is complicated by multiple and diverse interest groups and applicable laws. Interest groups represent irrigation, flood risk, hydropower, recreation, water supply, navigation, fish and wildlife, cultural resources, and commercial sand and gravel dredging. One of the applicable laws is the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which provides for the conservation of threatened or endangered species and their habitats. The U.S. Fish and...
This is a more recent memory. Do you remember when community Easter Egg hunts featured real eggs? It does not seem like so many years ago that various organizations in communities got together an evening or so before the big Easter Egg Hunt and spent the evening cooking and dyeing eggs. Yes, real eggs. I am sure it turned out to be a fun event, dyeing all of those eggs. But that was all there was to it. You didn’t have to open each plastic egg and stuff candy, a toy or something in it before it was ready for hiding. Of course like now, they sti...
Open Letter on Public Lands Dear Governor Bullock, There has been a lot said and written about retaining public lands in Montana. Most folks come out strongly in favor of this. I am writing you about what I think to be something wrong or unfair about Montana State Land ownership. I hope you and the legislature can change this unfairness. I am a County Commissioner in Daniels County. We have 24 percent State Land ownership in our county. The enclosed colored map [not pictured] from the upcoming State Oil & Gas Lease Sale illustrates the...
Dear Mr. Fenton [FEMA Administrator]: I understand the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will soon be facilitating a number of listening sessions with tribal governments to solicit Indian tribes’ input in updating the agency’s tribal consultation policy. As you prepare that schedule ahead of the finalization of the renewed policy by August 2017, I ask that you hold at least one of those sessions, if not more, in Montana to ensure Montana tribes’ voices are heard in this process. Montana tribes are all too familiar with natural disas...
Of all the misguided items in the current proposed federal budget, the threat to end Amtrak’s long-distance routes, including the venerable Empire Builder line across Montana, could have the roughest immediate impact on the people, businesses and communities of the Hi-Line. Yes, the President’s proposed budget includes cuts to the nation’s passenger rail system that would probably mean the end of the line in Montana, after more than a century of service. This is a terrible thing for the Hi-Line. We all benefit from the route, which runs from...
This week has started out with joy, laughter and thankfulness. On Sunday, our son, Joe, and his wife, Crystal, and their family hosted a famly dinner at their home. My husband and I were blessed with having all four of our children present. It was a really great day for us. Monday, a long-time friend stopped by to give me a handmade fleece quilt made by the ladies of the Fort Peck Lutheran Church. The woman who brought it to me said, “We read your article about providing blankets for chemo patients and we’ve been doing that for quite a whi...
Do you remember the old wooden (probably oak) telephones that hung on the wall? I vaguely remember seeing one or two of these hanging in grocery or general stores of my early days, and later at auctions (maybe auctions or items of those very fore mentioned stores). These phones had two probably brass ring mechanisms and a mouth piece on the front, the receiver was a separate piece that hung on one side and the other side featured a crank that was cranked to connect you to the operator. I do know that there were other antique style phones, but...
As current and former Justices of the Montana Supreme Court, we write to express our deep concern with the proposal to eliminate funding for the Legal Services Corporation and the Corporation for National and Community Service. These programs are critical partners in ensuring that the Montana justice system meets the Constitution’s command to “establish Justice . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty” to all Montanans. For 50 years, the Montana Legal Services Association (MLSA) has provided civil legal aid to Montanans with basic human needs....
With only 3 days left until the Glasgow prom, my son's date, a senior student from Opheim, was informed that my son couldn't escort her this year because he is home-schooled. Apparently, GHS policy states that only students enrolled in a "public" high school are allowed to go. That is a very untimely notice as we have already ordered and paid for a tux, and I am sure the girl doesn't want to find another date. They were signed up over a month ago. Who would have thought that the school policy would need to be checked as a home-schooled friend...
