Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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Last week my husband and I celebrated our 48th anniversary. I remember thinking years ago that anyone who had been married 50 years was amazing. Now I hear about couples who have been married not only 50 years but 60 or 70, even 80 years. My husband’s parents were married 65 years and he has a brother who has been wed for 63 years. When you commit yourself to a marriage, your intentions are, as said in the marriage vows, until death do you part. But for some, a marriage can end for other reasons. However, my thoughts this past week centered aro...
I am shocked at the hesitation people feel when confronted by the idea of Indigenous Peoples' Day. Ignoring the basic corruptions of the Spanish conquest, Columbus wasn’t an explorer as much as he was a merchant captain attempting to shorten his trip to the Indies for the reasons of profiting from shorter shipping routes. Miscalculating his position and finding the Caribbean did not make him the first European to set foot in the Americas. Lief Ericson holds that distinction. Furthermore, the idea that Columbus discovered America is p...
Living on the Milk River bottom all my life, something you learn to expect and accept as part of life are the floods. I don’t think you ever really get used to them, as each presents a different challenge. I have memories back to grade school days of the floods – the enjoyment of getting to stay home from school for a few days until it became apparent the water was not going to recede quickly. Dad and Uncle Lee walked the distance of the road under water and staked the sides so you knew where you were on the road. They then went through the wat...
Do you remember when all baby portraits, boy or girl, were taken with the child wearing a dress? Of course that was the day before colored photographs, but I have often wondered if those garments were colored or white. My thought is that the dress might have been worn for baptism and was white. Thinking of the generation, it might well have been used for every baby in the family, unless you happened to have multiple births. Both my husband and I come from a family of savers and I have had the occasion to see these delicate white dresses. The...
What are the memories that warm the heart after the years have swept past? Is it not the simple things? . . . and so it is with the Kientz family. Fifty years ago, the town of Shelby, Mont., was rolling out the red carpet in preparation for the World’s Heavyweight Championship fight between Gibbons and Dempsey. The main road, which is the route of Highway 2 now, was experiencing muddy conditions, so the traffic was rerouted north. The sparsely-traveled Frenchman Creek Road became a bypass road for many travelers en route to the fight and the K...
It’s getting on to election time. Are you ready? Have you heard enough about the candidates for the next POTUS? Do you believe most of the trash both candidates are talking? Is the Trump fortune enough to sway your good judgment to his side? Is the fact that Hillary is a woman enough for you to cast your vote her way? Here’s the way I see it. Stay tuned for this important message from your friendly ambulance chasers at Dewey, Chasem and Howe, 666 Faked ‘em Lane, Thoeny, MT 592 and a half. We’re back, thanks for sticking around. Now here’s the r...
Several weeks ago we took a trip to Boulder to visit my husband’s brother for a few days. As we drove along, I noticed quite a few cottonwood trees whose leaves were turning yellow. On a day trip to Butte, I saw a few places in the mountains where a lone bright yellow cottonwood stood alone amidst the dark green pine trees. Seeing them brought back memories of the woods where I grew up. Hillsides would be covered in trees robed in gold, green, brown, tan, rust and crimson. The picture they created was impossible to duplicate. With the turning o...
Valley County is a large county, over 3 million acres with nearly half of that being BLM, CMR, Corps of Engineers, and State of Montana lands. The policies and plans of these agencies can have either positive or negative effects on our economy and our future. Last week I attended the “Coordination” training held at the Malta library. “Coordination” refers to the requirement that Federal agencies coordinate with local governments in developing and implementing plans and management activities. The training was primarily attended by County...
The Kienitz family now numbered four: Otto, Lizzie and their two lively daughters, blond Leona, nicknamed “Toots,” and the dark-haired Luella, who is known as “Babe.” The members of this family were closely knit and have remained so over the years. Luella, number two daughter, now living in Bremerton, Wash., reminisces about her childhood out on the windswept prairie. “Winter snows brought out the homemade sleds, scoop shovels or toboggan for sliding down the rocky hills. With my long tresses trailing behind and lying flat on the sled, I g...
The furor over Colin Kaepernick’s “lack of respect” has not died down. Other famous people are blasting his actions. Mike Ditka has now declared that he believes if “they don’t like this country” they should “get the hell out.” He did go on to say this is his (Mike’s) “choice, I like this country, I respect our flag, and I don’t see all the atrocities ... I see opportunities if people want to look ...” I’ve seen arguments on both sides of this issue. There are soldiers, active military members, who’ve written and signed a letter saying they...
Yikes, folks I haven’t heard so many unanswered questions, so much evasiveness and so many half truths and outright lies since my last face-to-face with my managing editor. The first lie was uttered by Hillary when she told Donald something like “Donald it’s good to be with you here.” In my opinion The Donald came off as extremely boorish, bullysome and rude to the maximum. I simply cannot see him sitting down with any foreign power without insulting that person and maybe putting a screeching halt to any trade deals he could have made. He cons...
In watching the debate on Monday night I was dismayed by the spectacle. “Is there really a choice?” I asked myself cynically. I felt as though I was watching a deranged and unabashed clown try to entertain the stiff, stuck up, and literal kid in school. You know the kid who corrects your grammar, and smiles awkwardly when someone points out that they, too, make mistakes. That was the scene at Monday night’s debate. Here was the long-winded, overly prepared, untrustworthy and suspect Hillary Clinton taking on the underprepared, pugnacious and j...
I was remembering the other day just what a thrill it was to get to spend time with some friends of my folks. These people lived some distance from town and didn’t have all of the conveniences my family did. Since living without these conveniences wasn’t something I had to do on a daily basis, I considered it an adventure to get to stay there. The first thing was no running water. Now this was not the only home I was in that had a water bucket and dipper located close to the outside door, but I was always in awe. Those were the days when you...
Since one of the three candidates for commissioner will be sitting in my chair, I am very interested in what they are saying to our voters. That said, I have some facts for Mr. Horn and others with those ideas. Mr. Horn is correct; Valley County has better places for our tax dollars than a swimming pool in Glasgow. Our agreement stops there. You cannot fix Skylark Road by simply hauling milling[s] in and dumping them out. “Isn’t going to cost anything?” How about $600,000 (one third of our road budget) to rebuild the base and pave with milli...
We are very fortunate to have FMDH in a community our size here in NE Montana. We have excellent caring employees who take pride in doing things right and for the right reasons, which is why we have such a great hospital. They go out of their way, no matter what their job is, small or large, to make sure their patients are taken care of in the right fashion. When asked to apply for the Board of Directors by many people that I had come in contact with during my two terms on the FMDH Foundation board, I thought for sure my experience on the...
In my campaign to serve as our next Superintendent of Public Instruction, I’ve made it a priority to regularly visit all corners of our state – a commitment that will continue once I am elected. All too often, politicians travel to the vote-rich urban centers of Montana, cruising up and down I-90 and neglecting the more rural parts of the state that are the very heart and soul of Montana. In contrast, I believe our more rural school districts are just as important as those with tens of thousands of students. It was great to be back in Gla...
Sometimes I have a one-track mind when it comes to remembering, so I will continue with more memories of early school days. A lot of you will remember starting the school day by being one of two that had been assigned the duty (or privilege) of raising the flag. Sometimes the assignment was on a daily basis and other times weekly. I know that the students had this privilege rain or shine, freezing cold, or lovely warm sunshine. I am sure that the same students were on duty at the end of the day to lower, fold, and put the flag away until the ne...
I recently attended a meeting of the Charles M. Russell NWR - Community Working Group (CMR-CWG) in Fort Peck. As I was driving home and thinking about all of the brilliant comments I should have made, it struck me that something was very wrong. The more I thought about it, I realized what the problem was. In my opinion, this working group is a non-governmental entity formed to allow stakeholders to brainstorm ways the surrounding communities could benefit ecologically and economically by working with the CMR---and vise versa. Most of us living...
I would like to voice my opinion - keeping it short and sweet - about an issue that could be catastrophic to our Missouri River and the surrounding bodies of water that flow downstream. Many are not aware of a movement that is happening right now to our neighboring state in North Dakota. The Bakken Oil company is now wanting to place a pipeline “black snake” that could run through Standing Rock Indian Reservation on sacred ground and burial sites in North Dakota, which could carry up to 570,000 gallons of crude oil a day downstream. When it doe...
So when I consider the following realities I am overwhelmed by irrational emotions and I tend to overreact but here goes. First, how do we justify paying people wages they can’t live off of? Seriously, how many of you privileged people out there would work 40 hours a week at anything for $8.00 an hour? Trick question… none of you. The second, why do we allow employers to pay so little? If people have jobs and can’t live off their salary, where do they turn? Oh yeah, they turn to Uncle Sam for help. As a result, by allowing employers to not p...
On Board Members and Bobbleheads I know a little bit about boards... There’s the wood kind – a board, a slice of a tree. Then there’s a hole made with a bit or an auger, bored holes; bored people, like some 9th graders in algebra class; and finally, there are church boards or councils, boards for non-profit organizations like some hospitals, charitable foundations, and nursing homes. Oh, how could I forget the school board? They signed my contracts and checks and hired the boss (the superintendent) as well as my colleagues. I felt I neede...
Religion played an important part in the community life of the homesteaders. The Kienitzes belonged to the Lutheran congregation, which met once monthly at the Gus Pehlke home, beginning in 1916. Members would take turns meeting Pastor A. Jordan at Saco, where he arrived by skidoo. Pastor Jordon was stationed at Chinook and was single at this time. He was silent about possible romantic attachments and his congregation might have been in the dark to this day if it hadn’t been for Mark Wright’s sheepherder’s weekly Chinook newspaper. One Sunda...
On September 11, 2001, the world changed forever when nineteen radical Islamic terrorists hijacked commercial jets and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. These cowardly attacks killed 2,977 innocent civilians and hundreds of first responders. In the fifteen years since the attacks, nearly 5,000 troops have made the ultimate sacrifice defending our nation in the Global War on Terror.While America suffered a great loss and was pushed to her limits, we came out stronger as a nation – a nation whose...
School is now back in session for all schools. Remember when school started after Labor Day? Most of us cannot go into detail about the week or days prior to that first day, especially when we were in the early years of school. I remember getting to sit down at the kitchen table with catalogs, Sears, Aldens and Montgomery Wards, going through pages of dresses, trying to make a choice. (Oh, yes, dresses only back then). Mom had a budget amount (dictated by my dad I am sure) that each of us girls could spend. That included any new under-clothes w...
I’ve heard people of all ages say “It’s not my fault” when something goes wrong. I heard it from my own children over the years and my answer was “Well, whose fault was it, then? Sorry but that doesn’t cut it with me. You need to accept the responsibility of your actions and its consequences.” Responsibility for one’s actions should and must begin at an early age. Even a 5-year-old knows what is wrong and right. They know they were the one who broke a vase or took a piece of candy or cookie when they were told not to. Taught properly, they...
