Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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Dr. Mirich, We Need You Three years ago, my daughter injured her knee and needed emergency surgery. It was a very hard time as she wasn’t immediately diagnosed. Fortunately she was able to get in to see Dr. Mirich and got the surgery she needed, thanks to this outstanding doctor. I have often thought how extremely fortunate we were to have him here locally, and would try to visualize the nightmare it would have been if we would have had to go to Billings. I know he is and has been such a blessing to this community and our story is by far not t...
Mary Honrud’s common sense commentary, “A Return To Founding Values,” provided a valuable reminder of the efforts of the framers of the Constitution to specifically avoid the repressiveness associated with creating any kind of religious nation, “Christian Nation” or otherwise. She effectively demonstrated that they understood that no religion has a lock on the truth so they drafted the religion clauses in the First Amendment to ensure freedom of belief, and therefore tolerance of diversity. I’m not a liberal, nor a conservative, (or atheist...
I am a rock enthusiast of sorts. I like flat rocks and character rocks, and my sense of character may be entirely different from anyone else. This interest in rocks brings to mind the many hours that farmers have spent clearing ground of rocks in order to till the ground. I am sure there are some who remember rocks being removed from areas using a team of horses pulling a sled-type thing, which was called a “stone boat.” Imagine the backbreaking work this was, and I am pretty sure it involved the whole family. As you travel the highways or rur...
This week, the Lifestyles page (8A) features an intensely personal account of the life and writing struggles of one of my favorite Montana writers, Jenny Siler (aka Alex Carr). She and I have some history that’s worth mentioning. Many years ago (I don’t care to admit just how many), I read Siler’s debut effort Easy Money, a blisteringly straightforward thriller featuring a strong female lead that earned the following praise from Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review: “Once in a blue moon, a new writer speaks up in a voice that ge...
The concept of "innocent until proven guilty” is one of the touchstones of our legal system. We are not to lock people away in jail/prison simply upon supposition and innuendo. They must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. However, there are many in the media who thrive and gain great financial and personal advantages by trying people in the public forum. These people seem to delight in pillorying those they’ve deemed guilty of some crime without the benefit of ever seeing any evidence of culpability. They are not imp...
When I was young, I used to get around by hitchhiking, whether a few miles into town to work or across the entire country and up and down both coasts. It was not the most convenient way to travel, but it was certainly the cheapest, and I, like most anybody, was willing to sacrifice convenience for low cost; in fact, I had to. I remember spending a couple of hours in a snowstorm, cold and hungry, and hoping I’d get a ride before I got hit; hours in the desert heat near Yuma, Ariz., hot and thirsty; a full night and day trying to get a ride o...
Each year in the United States, there are an average of 7,100 weather related vehicle fatalities, accounting for 24 percent of all vehicle fatalities. This is more than all other weather related deaths combined. Winter storms also claim dozens of lives in non-vehicle related accidents, and cause hundreds of millions in damages and resources to handle the snow event. In Montana, cold weather exposure and automobile accidents are the main causes of winter weather related deaths. Now is the time to make sure you are ready for winter weather....
Reflections on the value of movie criticism in general and their necessity to newspapers in particular could fill volumes, and do. The answer to the question “Why run film reviews?” is short, however. It’s a sad truth that there is little good film writing these days. Staff movie reviewers have been dismissed from their posts across the nation, and those who remain are granted less and less space. The Internet seems ruled by a lynch mob mentality, as shown in the online pileup that purported to be rational comment on the second season of True...
I would like to expand a little on last week’s piece. This is not a rebuttal, as I wrote this before last week’s Courier was sent out. I hope you noted that I did not say we weren’t a Christian people. However, we are not a specifically Christian nation. We have many religions in this country, many of which do not acknowledge Jesus Christ. This is our right, granted in our founding document, the Constitution. The founders of this country framed our founding documents specifically to avoid endorsing any one religion. They were free think...
Imagine you are a twenty-something single male (I’ll call you Ken) with two children and a girlfriend. You make enough money to enable you to purchase a house. The American Dream, right? Well, follow along and this is where it gets real good. A feller named John Tabb came up with this formula for pursuing the New American Way Of Life. It’s been proven to work for tens of thousands, if not millions, of Americans and we are the only country on planet earth where it works. You should always use your mother’s address for your mail. You still live...
This past week I travelled across eastern Montana visiting local Job Service offices and updating staff about the exciting programs we are rolling out for Montana’s workforce. It is always wonderful to visit Glasgow and discuss how important your local Job Service is to your community and the workers who visit the office to not only find a job, but to also improve their skills to seek a position with a higher wage. Montana has a robust and productive economy right now. In the last year, Montana businesses and industries had exceptional g...
When I am at a community gathering, I like to admire the men around me. I am of the opinion that an adult man should be clean-shaven, wear a cowboy hat and Wranglers, and boast a belt buckle. Most of the men in this area meet these expectations very nicely. Call me old-fashioned, but nothing offends me more than when a full-grown man has the gall to grow a full mustache and cover up the face that I, as a single young woman, have a right to see and enjoy! Now, grow out your underarms, let your secret garden grow wild, but leave that sun-beaten...
The Tenth “Sunshine Week” ended about six months ago, on March 21. This annual celebration of open government was created by the American Society of News Editors with a grant from the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation. Now co-sponsored by ASNE and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Sunshine Week is intended to highlight the importance of open government around the country. All indications pointed to the fact that this year’s Sunshine Week was one of the best yet. In Washington, DC and throughout the country, people found...
Recently, my older sister posted this on social media: “So I just got an email from the RNC. Some chick in Florida wants me to donate so she can help return this country to the conservative values it was founded on. I don’t think she knows our history at all or she’d realize that we were founded on extremely radical values. You know, all that about all men created equal, no monarchy, no religious litmus test to hold office, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a government of the people, for the people, and about the peopl...
In 1964, Congress enacted the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to set aside a portion of federal revenues from offshore oil and gas development to pay for parks, wildlife habitat, and other natural areas. In other words, the money the federal government makes from developing public resources is dedicated back into conserving other public resources. LWCF provides a simple, common-sense way to offset some of the impacts of oil and gas drilling and support much-needed land conservation without using taxpayer dollars. It’s no wonder that L...
First, a big thanks to the Courier’s editor, James Walling, for agreeing to provide a forum for the start of this conversation. While the Q&A format has its limits, it has allowed us to get a good feel for the kinds of misinformation that is shaping opinions of our organization in Glasgow. And, wow, is there a lot of misinformation out there! For starters, you can rest assured that there is absolutely zero truth to statements from opinion pieces on these pages that APR received any kind of preferential treatment from any state or federal a...
We’re taking a break from Probing the Project this week to collect our thoughts, consider and reconsider reactions from the public, and recalibrate our approach to investigating the American Prairie Reserve and their plans for bison release and grasslands restoration. If anything, this pause reflects an attitude of seriousness from our staff, concerned community members, and APR representative Hilary Parker, who has graciously played along with the press despite hostile and skeptical attitudes about her organization’s goals from residents of...
I have two subjects this week for your reading and or listening enjoyment. Controversial both but not too bad. One is this facial piercing craze and the other is the infamous four day school week. I’ll start right off with the facial piercing thing. Being born in late 1942 I recall pictures in the National Geographic of African women with bare upper bodies, images that have fascinated me through my infancy, my puberty and into my adultry. The images I’m referring to aren’t the bosoms. It was the pictures of the body and facial piercings that...
Leave ‘em laughing I like the Op Ed page of any newspaper, but our own Glasgow Courier’s keeps getting better, yet Virgil is still my fave! Mary Honrud’s garden articles aren’t on this page but I sure enjoy them. Sandy Laumeyer tells of things that take me down my memory lane as well. Her last week’s “Just the Facts” column was typically Sandy: upbeat and positive in spite of the crisis she’s facing. And last but not least, Gwen’s piece reminded me of the custom combiners that came up north to Richland where I grew up. The time frame was ci...
Remember when most livestock was transported using pickups and stock racks? This was the usual method of getting horses to pasture for moving cattle, and it was likely you would see many pickups with stock racks at rodeos. If you had a couple of cows, bulls, or pigs to move to market this was the transportation mode. Trucks (the western terminology of truck) with stock racks were also quite commonly seen at the local sales yard. Then it became quite common to see a single or double horse trailer used for this means of moving a few head of...
On Burr and Vaupel A while back I was tempted to write with a niggling complaint about Patrick Burr's reporting on a city council meeting. At that time I was left wondering if he was reporting the news or writing a novel. The wording was too ornate and confusing for what should have been a "just the facts, ma'am" report. I'm glad I didn't, as he's shaping up quite nicely. His reporting is much clearer, with fewer $10 words and flowery phrases. His latest report, about the mural at the post office, did revert a bit to that, but it was a delight...
I don’t remember a lot about custom combining. I remember that many of them arrived in my hometown about the time school started. Maybe there were some young boys on the crews that accounted for the notice of arrival, but likely it was all of the equipment parked along the outskirts of town. Did they have specific farms on their schedule or did customers come to them? Our community also had local people who put together crews and headed south to custom combine. The string of equipment lined up, ready to leave looked quite different from the p...
Being the eternal optimist that I am, I initially hoped that the Glasgow Courier’s Probing the Project column would finally help to open up communication between the American Prairie Reserve (APR) and the local community along the Hi Line. Based off of the APR’s responses to various questions, it seems like the APR lacks the capability to answer difficult questions with any hard data or substance and even evaded questions all together. What I did learn is that the APR is unwilling to devote funds directed towards public relations in our loc...
That’s the question I have asked the folks at the American Prairie Reserve but have as yet failed to receive an answer I could swallow. Yeah, I know. “Why” is a question a three-year-old would ask. Again and again. And the tot will usually get an answer to his “Why” very similar to what I get when I ask “Why.” When I ask “Why Montana?” the APR’s stock answer is something like this: The northeastern portion of Montana was chosen because for its lack of human population, making it easier to acquire properties. One rancher or one hundred, these...
Some years ago there was a program on television called Dragnet. One of the detectives in the show would say “Just the facts, ma’am.” So, here are the facts. In October of 2014 I was told my cancer had metastasized to my bones. A malignant tumor had been found in my right hip. Since then I’ve had six radiation treatments and they have helped considerably with my pain. About two months ago, I began having pain in my right hip, along the top of my right thigh, and in the lower part of my pelvis . . . the sit bones. I made a call to the radiati...
