News you can use
News you can use
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The three most importand tools in my barn are duct tape, bailing twine and WD-40. The first two on the list are in a constant battle for Top Tool, the primary go-to solution in any farming-ranching or equine handling emergency. For problems that are mechanical or generally metal in nature, WD-40 has been invaluable. It pitches in doing everything from starting an engine to breaking free a rusty bolt, and one time I used it as rattle snake repellent which, strictly speaking...
New Hampshire legislators prove it’s not just Montana senators who feel it’s their elected and sworn duty to crush children’s dreams. A group of Bozeman elementary kids and their learned presenters went before the Montana Senate with a detailed and researched proposal that Scobey soil be declared the state soil, and the bill sponsor, JP Pomnichowski, D-Bozeman, explained that the soil helps grow Montana’s $4.7 billion agriculture industry, said an article by The Associa...
Despite my long, sordid history of being unable to snap out of my obsessive obsession with, well, random obsessive things, I had fully planned on writing this week about something besides my house project. It would’ve happened, too, if I hadn’t suddenly realized that I am doomed. Duh-ooomed, I tell you. I could have written about any number of disasters, weird news items or politics, or the trifecta of disastrously weird politics, or even weirdly disastrous politics, whi...
Today’s column is brought to you by anxiety, a wholly owned subsidiary of deep dilemma, which is on a mission to provide my every thought a bumpy ride on the worry bus to crazy town. The problem is that thoughts are like seeds, like billowing fluffy-bottomed seeds off a cottonwood tree. Our brains produce these cottony seeds by the millions. They float around aimlessly, getting sucked into your lungs, drug into the house and mashed into the carpet. They pile up in drifts and,...
Last week I explored, in part, the idea of who knows me better: the people doing the health screening who said I’m now short and fat, or my Chinese Zodiac which says I’m “vain and high tempered” and the boar is my enemy. This week, I’m giving the Internet pop-quiz crowd a chance to tell you: Who is the real Pam Burke? These quizzes are one of the latest rages on the Internet. Working off your answers to a few simple questions, they tell you really important things like: Wha...
Health screenings are meant to tell you, and others, important things about yourself, but really, I’m more than just a list of numbers on a page. Why just this week I took a 12-question quiz and found out that I am an “enlightened grammarian,” which means that I know proper grammar, but am accepting of the fact that language evolves with the times. I have “balanced the standardization of language with the practical usage.” That made my inner nerd feel awesome. Then came the...
Hill County Scale Association met at noon at Wolfer’s Diner Feb. 18 for the organization’s annual winter meeting with the biggest news being that the scale has no big news. 2014 went smoothly for the association was the report from the secretary and the scale manager. Finances for the scale remain steady, said Monica Goldhahn, secretary for the association. The group also gained three new members in 2014. Memberships are all lifetime memberships that can be transferred to dir...
I think that because my typical day starts before most people’s does, before the noise of civilization in motion, it’s the sounds of morning that captivate me most. I am used to the beloved sounds of home, which, on a Friday in February, start around 4 a.m. There's the squeak and groan of our home's old floorboards, the quiet padding of dog feet, horses nickering in anticipation of food, the cat's faint “mroww, mroww, mroww” growing steadily louder as he announces his approac...
When you suffer from what I like to call random obsessive compulsive disorder, as I do, there’s no telling what idea, concept, image, worry, question or song your brain is going to take hold of and run with — whether it’s actually important or not. Plumbing, the conduit which allows for the safe passage of both potable and waste waters, that’s important, right? I mean, if you are old enough to be reading this, you are old enough to be living as a potty-trained human individ...
The Montana legislative Judicial Committee quickly shot down an indecency law referendum proposed this session. In this display of infinite wisdom, it has also shot down my chance at a job upgrade. Thanks for sucking the joy out of my life Congress. House Bill 365, sponsored by Rep. David Moore, a Republican from Missoula, proposed to the House Wednesday that the state’s indecency law be changed from practical language about criminal deviancy to, well, totally awesome language...
Because we have now reached a critical point in the aging process of our white trash mansion, my husband and I are now considering the possibility of looking into maybe sometime soon upgrading, or “swapping out,” our living accommodations. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a commitment, but we do have some time before our current home starts to actually decompose. Months and months, at least — or possibly May when the temperature rises. Even then, it will just be the beg...
Cognitive dissonance is just fancy talk for the brain hurt you get from thinking two conflicting thoughts at the same time. I think by natural design I would have no problem with this occurring because A) I’m not that deep of a thinker and B) I am instinctively a self-centered person, so naturally the only thought I would have in my brain is about me and my needs. Of course, my parents had to mess that up. Technically, I am well beyond the age that I should be affected by a...
I recently took a trip to visit friends, “those” friends, the kind of married friends who get along — even while installing plumbing. It’s sick and a measure of my capacity for tolerance that I like them anyway. When walking through their house and seeing all the remodeling projects they’ve mastered, it’s beyond my comprehension to think of the genuinely reasonable discussion and negotiation skills they demonstrate to complete these projects amicably — without intervention...
It’s no secret. I’ve discussed this openly, even here in my column: One of the great ironies in the history of the world, or my own life — whichever is greater — is that I have to read the news every weekday morning. That is so depressing. You just don’t know. I’m forced to do it, actually, for a paycheck. It’s like I’ve prostituted myself — figuratively speaking, because if I had to earn a living as, you know, an employee of the oldest profession, I would go broke and starve...
Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to love horses — sure, it sounds like a catchy country tune, but really, don’t. Just don’t. Horse people say things about loving horses — how they’re passionate about them, or how horses speak to their soul — but really it’s an illness, an addiction without a ribbon to help garner awareness or support for this tragic disorder of character. Given the least chance, horse people talk about horses almost as much as they think about them: inces...
The Universe will have its balance, if not through blood sacrifice, then through humiliation. A few weeks ago I wrote a column about how a friend from way back found me through the magic of the Internet — and the miracle of my name and column being out there in cyberspace. I felt a little bit like a celebrity that she could do a Google search and find me. I mean, really, this is me we’re talking about. Who am I compared to the price of tea in China? Very minor in value and...
You live with someone for a few decades and you know everything about them. You’re like “this,” and by “this” I mean the intertwined fingers of oneness — which looks a lot like the crossed fingers used to ward off any bad juju from false promises, but isn’t that “this” this time. It’s for real oneness. Yeah, that’s my husband and me. There we were several months ago, going through life like one person, when I noticed that John usually had a light green towel hanging in his spo...
Dear my column, I would like to apologize without sarcasm and thank you sincerely. I am sorry for not having more class and composure the first time someone recognized me in public as the writer of you. Yes, I know, my voice is even less attractive when it rises four octaves to say thank you. I was startled by her friendliness. I am sorry that when I was recognized the second time I did a sort of maniacal laugh. I know it was my fault that the woman walked away with a less than favorable impression of us. I’m sorry for the t...
I hate to say “I told you so.” Life’s too short to waste so many words on vindictiveness. It’s so much more uplifting to just point your finger and laugh, which is exactly my response every time someone says they’re going to try snowshoeing or cross-country skiing for the first time and they come back sore, exhausted and disheartened. Not that I’m against either winter activity in theory because the theory behind them is that they give humans a way to more easily travel across winter snow so we are better able to commune wit...
I’ve always said that I don’t wear dresses because, when I do, I feel as if I am not fully prepared for an emergency. What if I had to run through tall weeds, brush, deep snow or a nonmigrating flock of mosquitoes? What if the emergency called for fighting fire or high winds or blood-thirsty porcupines? What if it’s 20-below zero? I’d frostbite my legs. What if it’s 105 above? I already have a farmer’s tan on my arms, do I really need an Armani tan on my legs? What if I h...
The following is a sampling of news items and information bites that we , the ever-vigilant here in the Pamville Newsroom, felt compelled to share — and comment on: News agencies in the San Fransisco Bay area are reporting that a semitrailer overturned on the freeway, spilling more than 25,000 pounds of frozen turkeys onto the pavement. Though the turkeys were still contained in their shipping boxes, federal regulations prohibit stores from selling foods which have been in maj...
I am what could be called an indiscriminate eater because I enjoy eating, will try most anything and have favorite foods categories from cuisine and to gut bomb. I can be equally happy with a hot meal that’s taken hours to prepare or courses to serve and, on the flip side, pulling leftovers out of the fridge and eating them cold from the container just to kill my hunger pangs. I think of it as an asset to be so versatile, and in my youth my family called me a garbage gut. They were fond of calling us kids affectionate pet n...
Lacking most signs of those qualities commonly referred to as feminine, I have been content to go through life as I started it, as a tomboy. Life would be a jean-clad and dirty finger-nailed slice of heaven if this were the end of the story. However, my constant companion, Irony, not being one to leave well-enough alone, did give me a few feminine traits, and chief among those is body image issues that plague primarily females. This problem is also called “imagined ugliness,” though I and everyone else with the problem would...
I’m not saying my childhood was any more awesomer than anyone else’s — certainly it had its share of dark points and failures, many of these self-induced — but my childhood had its amazing highlights that others would be hard pressed to equal or exceed. Specifically, I got to raise, care for and see up close a wide variety of wild animals. Did you get to raise black bear cubs and take them to second-grade show and tell? I think not. Even though one of them peed on a classmate’s desk, I still had plenty of playgroun...
Americans, like humans everywhere, love holiday traditions, and a college town in New Hampshire has started a new Halloween tradition to rival any All Hallow’s Eve custom as college students and unwitting townsfolk rioted the Samhain out of the Keene Pumpkin Festival last weekend. Keene, New Hampshire, is home of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, Keene State University, and the Keene police department and their military-style armored vehicle, as well as a guy named Steven who apparently doesn’t understand the U.S. Con...
