One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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I don’t know if it’s the months of social distancing or simply old age, but I’m barely presentable in public these days. My wife keeps telling me to zip up my pants. Not that I’m embarrassed to be unzipped in front of her, however, I doubt she’s the only to have noticed. I fear I’ll soon be known as that old dude who doesn’t zip up his pants. At least I’ve been keeping to myself. For many years I covered prep and college basketball for the Livingston Enterprise, the Bozeman Chronicle, and the Ph...
We have been experiencing some very hot weather and the weather map looks like it is to continue for at least another week. We did have a little rain last Thursday that cooled it for a very short time. People from away from here had asked about grasshoppers as they have been bad in some places. I had not noticed many here but yesterday while picking raspberries I found lots in the bushes. Hope they do not get too bad before harvests are done. Velyma Broadhead and Dora picked raspberries and...
Does the name “Beavertown” sound familiar? It was one of the booming “h” towns of yesteryear. Located near Beaver Creek (from which, it presumably, was named) it was the nearest town for homesteaders on the Saco divide and the ranches located on Larb Creek. Saco was near but many times Beaver Creek made it impossible to reach Saco due to its flooding. The town boasted a lumberyard, a blacksmith shop, grain elevator, Hotel, bar, post office, grocery store, and school. The school was grand with a lower level that hosted classrooms and a second fl...
Am I the only one who is tired of dirty politics? It is hard to believe that it is August. Happy birthday to all August birthdays, including my son, Mitchell Moore. A late happy birthday to July birthdays I missed including Pat Murdock. They had a nice birthday cake for her birthday. The Phillips County Fair was different this year, due to the virus. Most four age exhibits were in Malta. There were no carnival rides, and the kids missed them. There was a concert and other night activities....
I grow attached to my boats. I still have the Grumman canoe I bought with paper route money when I was 14, but many others have come and gone. The pretty wooden drift boat in which I learned to row is but a memory now. I cashed in a retirement plan to buy that boat and never regretted the decision. The aluminum Smokercraft that Barb and I bought when we first got together is also gone. It took us to dozens of lakes and rivers across Montana. We’ll probably never catch as many fish out of a...
I paused my Facebook account because I am tired of the hatred and fake news that is posted there. You can call me “triggered” but I argue I am less inclined to be such without this branch of social media …or any social media, for that matter (lest we forget that Facebook owns Instagram.) The amount of stupidity, conspiracy theories, and straight out lies on Facebook are the reason I have pulled that trigger. Couple those aspects along with the political ads (most of which are lies regardless of party) and the perfect storm of contentious quarr...
The national coronavirus death toll in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities is shocking and the stories are gut wrenching. More than 56,000 nursing home residents in the U.S. have died – some alone and afraid without a family member by their side. That’s 44% of all national COVID-19 related deaths, yet nursing home residents only make up 1% of the U.S. population. Here in Montana, there have been 13 deaths or 40% of total COVID-19 related deaths from an assisted living facility and most recently, from a memory care unit. As compare...
I’ve spent the past few months as I usually do – fishing and gardening and mowing grass. The tomatoes are coming on, as is the corn. The fish have been biting, and twice I’ve impaled myself with treble hooks. It’s almost life as normal. Almost. My son-in-law Elder is in quarantine after a co-worker at the restaurant in Livingston where he tends bar tested positive for covid. Now he’s out of work, both at the restaurant where he worked part time and at the warehouse where he worked fulltime...
E-gads! What an outcry from the people who refuse to wear masks. I hear ya, the choice is yours…but not really. Last week, Montana Governor Steve Bullock issued a mask mandate for certain counties in the state where there are four or more confirmed cases of COVID-19. Thankfully, and so far, that doesn’t include Phillips County where we do not have any cases at the time I am writing this. There are exemptions, for some, but at the end of the day, a mandate is, by definition, “an official order or commission to do something.” Now, nobody likes t...
As the country celebrates its birth as a nation, one of the most patriotic things Montanans can do is stand up and be counted--in the 2020 Census. Or, more accurately, go online and be counted. Or mail in the census form. Or chat with a census worker. Every 10 years, the country counts how many people live in the United States of America. The stakes are large. Results of the census determine how much money Montana gets from the federal government. That’s about $2 billion a year now. The equation is simple. The more people counted by the c...
I’m concerned. The weather forecast is calling for strong storms this afternoon. Lately, even the slightest chance of inclement weather has produced some scary meteorological events. I used to eagerly anticipate such natural phenomenom, but more often than not the weather that arrived was not nearly as exciting as what was advertised. I’ve never lived anywhere that the sky looks more threatening than it frequently does here in Malta only to just miss us to the south or the north. "Wow, that loo...
Yesterday I heard a jackass bleat. “Baaaahhh… Baaaahhhh.” As I sat in my Jeep with Goose the News Hound riding shotgun, the line behind me started to grow and folks lined up for free COVID-19 virus testing at the Milk River Pavilion last Thursday morning. The Phillips County Health Department and Phillips County Hospital and Family Clinic teamed-up on the day to give anyone who wanted one a test for COVID-19, so I figured what the heck. “Baaaahhh… Baaaahhhh.” There it was again. I looked out my car window and a man I have never seen, met,...
Sympathy to families who lost people due to gun violence in many places. Pat (Ivanovich) Donich who is Sally Austin’s sister, was in Whitewater. She bought dinner at North 40 for Sally A., Dallas, and Ashley Green, Jeanne Green, and myself. Thanks to Pat for dinner and visit. Pat has been in Minnesota for a nursing class reunion. she returned home on Sunday. On July 4, many from the area went to the lake. The Scheffelmaers went camping in the mountians near Zortman. Sally Austin took me to t...
You may recall that I wrote an article a few weeks ago that exposed the attempt by the Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC) to illegally give our ranchers' vested stockwater rights to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Well, we are not alone! I just read an article in the June 20, 2020 Tri-State Livestock News by the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF) that detailed what was happening with stockwater rights in Idaho. First, a bit of history. In 1987 the Idaho Water Court began to adjudicate the Snake River Basin, a sizable piece of...
As a nation, state and society we are living in unprecedented times. As peace officer leaders in the State of Montana, we feel it is our obligation to speak about the unnecessary injuries and deaths, suffered by any persons, at the hands of law enforcement officers who fail or refuse to live by our peace officer code of ethics. We collectively acknowledge that incidents of excessive use of force, violence and misconduct are unacceptable and contradictory to our professional training, ethics, and personal morals. In every community ofMontana,...
A lot of folks up here in north-central Montana seem to think we live on an island, that the threat posed by the pandemic doesn’t concern us. Although I don’t share those thoughts, my wife and I have been living on an island of our own making. Since the middle of March we’ve been staying home, social distancing, avoiding crowds. It’s been harder on Barb than on me. I’m pretty much a hermit anyway, but she sorely misses lunches with her friends, bingo, and author conferences. We’re fortunate t...
Hopefully, everyone had a good Independence Day. Even as a kid, we didn’t make a huge deal of the 4th of July, but one thing was sure; there would be barbeque or grilled meat. Our kids aren’t too big yet, so we keep it simple when we “que”, and this year we bought some baby back ribs. I may or not have sung the Chili’s song, inserting the words “Peezy’s Baby Back Ribs” where Chili’s Baby Back Ribs goes. As far as cooking the ribs went, I tried to ignore them for the most part instead of the ty...
Sympathy to all who have been affected by the C 19 virus. Be aware of it. It's July so happy birthday to all birthdays including my daughter Teresa of Swift Current, Canada, and Gayle Young of Saco. Also, happy anniversary to all having July celebrations. Hope you all had a fun and safe 4th of July. Dixie Stordahl and Lu Besel went to the children's day at the Dinosaur museum in Malta. Lu took Sommer Green along to help. The children enjoyed it all. Bonnie McMullin and Lu Besel and others went...
Sympathy to the family of Barbara (McMullen) Mavencamp, a Whitewater High School graduate. Get well to Jeannie Green, also “glad you are better” to Tana Oyler. She is our Mail carrier and travels to Whitewater from Malta and back. Tana and her family operate the local dairy in Malta. Their specialty is the milk, cream, and cottage cheese. Phillips County and Whitewater areas have mostly beef cattle, but a few still milk by hand. When I grew up, sometimes we had milk cows. I even took turns mil...
I’m not a very fashionable guy. Since leaving the newspaper in Bozeman 14 years ago I’ve pretty much worn the same clothes every day. In particular, the same pants. A good friend who used to work in Yellowstone Park wasn’t allowed to use his national park clothing allowance on the boots he wanted so he’d order extra pants instead and give them to me. He retired a few years ago and now I’m down to my last pair. My wife hates them. She thought the pair I’m wearing now were my last, and was qui...
I originally started writing about social media bickering, but I instead thought that maybe I would share a little of what has been on my mind. Take it or leave it. I don’t expect people to have the same opinion that I do, because they haven’t seen life through my eyes. How can you know a problem exists, if you haven’t experienced it? I may have said this before, but I am appreciative of those who have reached out to myself and Susan about current social issues. It has not been easy. Again...
In a recent U.S. District Court ruling by Judge Brian Morris, the American public heard loud and clear that the federal administration broke the law when it offered leases on public lands in criti-cal sage grouse habitat. This court decision speaks volumes about how public lands should be managed, with certainty, and in a manner that considers true multiple use – including maintaining wildlife populations. The Department of Interior was found to have violated the law by issuing an instructional memorandum that abandoned the bi-partisan p...
Fake news. Those two words have likely created more confusion and distrust of the news media than any other. While it is easy to understand why those of us who work in the news media despise the term, it should also be apparent that the general public has a vested interest in discerning facts from falsehoods. Some of the louder news voices of the past few decades have been the cable news networks that provide news, analysis and opinion. But the opinion side now dominates on CNN, FOX and many of...
It’s not just on Father’s Day that I think of Dad. Quite often lately I think I see him before realizing it’s just the reflection of me in a mirror. I hope the stories I tell my daughters don’t have the same effect on them my father’s stories had on me. Dad told great stories. Some – involving women and alcohol -- I seldom repeat, but have never forgotten. Others I tried to top. I blame him for the time I spent behind bars in Eureka. Dad often talked about hitchhiking around the country bef...
First of all, Happy Birthday to my beautiful wife Susan. Her birthday week always marks a couple of milestones in our lives. First off, on June 21, I moved to Montana as a surprise to Susan. We knew that we would start our life together here, but I moved here months earlier to be with the woman that I love. It has been the greatest eight years of my life. I proposed to my wife one day before her birthday, because I didn’t want her to go into her birthday without knowing that I was 100 percent c...
