News you can use
News you can use
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One of my friends asked me how I felt when I came back to the Rancho and my old home sat there empty of any aspect of myself. That’s a hard question to answer. For one thing, I’ve been so busy, focused on creating my new home, that I have little space in my head for my old home. Until I find a buyer, my old home is still my home. Maybe all the ties are not cut. The good memories and all the love that place has given me will never be erased. I hope a new owner someday will feel...
I will be home in time for Christmas. It’s always a little hard to leave Mexico, and leaving right before the holidays is perhaps the hardest. The giant Christmas tree just went up in front of the church last night. Thousands of handmade tin stars hang over the streets, embedded with colored glass beads and lit from within. The poinsettias (or “nochebuenas”) decorate the windowsills. There is a concert every night of the week. It is hard to leave, in the middle of all this...
“They” let me out at night. What a revelation! It was the night of the Christmas Parade in the Plaza at Oconahua. The “they” who let me out is that part of myself which has kept me a recluse these past years. Note that I had not been out after dark in five or six years. I had taken on the self-imposed role of recluse due to pain, surgery, the pandemic, habit. With a good life in my own back yard, I felt no need to spice it up with outside entertainment. My mind does it all:...
Montana hospitals depend on payments from Medicare and Medicaid to stay afloat. Rural hospitals are especially reliant on payment from Medicaid and Medicare. In Dillon, Barrett Hospital provides services for a 60+ mile radius. About 60% of Barrett’s patients use Medicaid. Medicare provides services to more than 67 million people over 65 and some younger people with disabilities. It is a federal program that does not generate a profit. Medicaid is income based and funded jointly by state and federal governments. For e...
With the holiday season in full swing, many of us juggle the excitement of festive celebrations with the reality of financial strain. The costs of gifts, travel, and meals can quickly add up, creating stress that lingers long after the New Year. This time of year is also Open Enrollment, our annual opportunity to sign up for health insurance. While it’s easy to focus on the season’s immediate demands, the security and peace of mind that comes with having health insurance can make a significant difference beyond the hol...
During this holiday season of both thanks and giving, I am reminded of how fortunate we are to live in this wonderful Hi-Line community and that we get to call Montana — the Last Best Place — home. Especially during this time of year, I count my blessings and remind myself of the many positive attributes of being able to call Havre and northern Montana home. I am very thankful for the continued support I have received from the residents of Havre and Hill County to represent our community in the Montana House of Rep...
In the third week in my new casa just up the road a ways from my old casa, I am making home. In ways this is like baking a cake. It is not a one-step process. It is not a box mix. The moving van (non-existent) does not pull up, put boxes in marked rooms, and roll on down the highway while I make the bed and go to sleep. Oh, if only it were so simple. Bit by bit though, this cake batter of a home is coming together. While there is still a lot to do, let’s call this a complicate...
In this month's installment of Pony Posts, I would like to touch base on a few areas that Havre Public Schools is excelling in. First, a report came out at the end of November from the Office of Public Instruction that talks about declining enrollment across our state. The state is using a six-year trend to examine enrollment throughout the state. In the past six years student enrollment across the state has dropped from 148,198 students to 145, 650 students. These figures...
It is an unusual living situation, in many ways. My husband, Peter, and I spend almost half the year down in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We had a terrible experience in another town (an absentee American owner with a filthy rental) and we came running back to San Miguel, desperate to find a place to stay — any place that was clean and halfway affordable. And that is how Jorge found us. “I have an apartment on Loreto that is available for the month,” he wrote, in respo...
The first step to fixing a problem is to recognize it exists. That’s a life lesson most of us have learned that also applies to the political world. Regretfully, Montana faces a steadfast denial by the 2023 GOP legislative super majority and the governor that they created a gigantic homeowners’ property tax disaster. So many Montanans remember late 2023 when they got their shocking tax notices. It was headline news all over the state. A politically slanted interim committee, created by the 2023 legislature, is about to pas...
I am living in my new home in Oconahua these few days, surrounded with decisions, mind changes, piles and stacks of books, dishes, food, turning in circles, where to put, what to do, which next. For this I am Thankful. I’m not brilliant, but I’m not stupid. When I get crowded into this corner, I know what to do. I go outside to my patio shady spot and sit and watch the hummingbirds, birds I cannot identify, ever-present vultures overhead, let the breeze clear my head. For thi...
My husband, Peter, told me about the unlikely friendship. When we stay in Mexico, Peter walks the same route up to the environmental preserve every day. It’s a steep climb to the park, which is filled with wildlife and rare plants. Because Peter walks the same streets daily, he has gotten to know a lot of the people who have homes on the way up. The whole thing started with Reacher, an exuberant 75-pound Belgian Malinois, and his American expat owner, Anita. The Belgian M...
“I don’t know many words about teeth,” I told the dentist. Since my husband, Peter, and I spend time in Mexico, it makes sense to get dental work done while we’re here, and I had been putting off going to the dentist. I knew I needed to get work done where my gums had receded, and the enamel no longer covered what it was supposed to. I’ve been told that over-exuberant toothbrushing contributes to this condition, so I’ve been trying to ease off. But I don’t really think...
It hung in the kitchen in the house in which we lived, on a farm outside New Winchester, Indiana, the first telephone of my memory, a wooden oak box which hung rather high on the wall. My Dad took down the ear piece which hung onto the right side of the box, connected by a short cord and leaned toward the black Bakelite cone and shouted into the mouthpiece in the center front. He turned the handle on the right a few turns. A grinding noise alerted the operator that somebody...
It’s been an honor serving as chair of the Hill County Democratic Party over the last 2.5 years. This election cycle saw many ups and downs, but for Hill County, it was mostly ups. Last summer the Hill County Democrats hosted a “We Love the Montana Constitution” Rally in Pepin Park featuring an impassioned and educational presentation by Mae Nan Ellingson, the youngest delegate to attend the 1972 Constitutional Convention. This June we hosted over 250 people from across the state at the Montana Democratic Party Platf...
Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, there lived a beautiful princess. Oh, wait, wrong story. Start again. Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, a factory dedicated to producing the best umbrella clotheslines in the world, meticulously began to piece together the very Prince of All Clotheslines. Disclosure: Parts of this story have been fictionalized. However the main thread of the story is absolute...
There will be monks here tomorrow morning,” is what I figured Jorge was telling me. In Spanish, “monks” sounds like “monkeys” in English. But I was pretty sure we were not having monkeys over for breakfast. Jorge is my landlord here in Mexico, and he speaks only Spanish to me. He will speak some English when my husband, Peter, is around. But if it’s just me, he’ll stick to Spanish, and I am fine with that, but it doesn’t mean I get 100% of what he says. “Very good!” I...
My friends, I don’t have a story for today. Instead, I’ll send a poem. It is raw, fresh and flawed, but I no longer care about flaws. I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Remember how we used to say “Make love, not war”? Today my chant would be, “Make love, not hate”. Love is difficult, takes careful consideration, time, decisions. That’s my experience. I’m so fortunate to have known and to know so much love. I’m human. I get angry, frustrated, irritated at my friends, but...
So I’m doing a show after all. The problem with me (and I might not be alone in this) is that I have a hard time imagining anything between close to perfect and nothing at all. I’d been planning to do a first show featuring material from my columns, and it was overwhelming. A fully realized show involves a lot of preparation and getting every detail down all at once. A close-to-perfect show requires a ton of rehearsal and usually a lot of help from others to make it hap...
I am quick to criticize other people’s luxuries. “Buying a latte every day?” I say. “What a waste!” But, of course, I have Peter making me coffee, and I can have it exactly the way I like it. (Lots of milk, not too much coffee.) I think sailboats and horses are crazy expensive, but campers and RVs make sense — because that’s what I grew up with. “Economics don’t count when you are talking about campers!” my father has repeatedly told me. My father is a frugal man. He live...
In each life it seems there might be one or two individuals with whom, no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot communicate. We usually marry them. Seriously, if nothing else, we surround ourselves with people of like mind. We act together in ways beneficial to both parties. We are on the same track, click-clacking to the same destination. However, now and then we encounter a person with whom out tongue jumps the track, derails, stops at the wrong station, or otherwise...
It has been the honor of a lifetime to represent Havre and Hill County in the Montana Legislature. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to assure our special part of rural Montana has a seat at the table in Helena. My commitment to the residents of House District 27 has never been stronger. But there’s also a lot more work to do. I want to take my experience with me to the upcoming session to assure the priorities of Havre, Hill County and the Hi-Line get the attention they deserve. Over the past several months, our c...
You may not have had occasion to know what the Clerk of the Montana Supreme does, or how important the office and this election are. The present Clerk is Bowen Greenwood, a Republican and former political director. His opponent, Erin Farris-Olsen, is an experienced attorney with an impeccable reputation for hard work, honesty and integrity. Based on the facts that follow, permit me to recommend, to every Montana voter, that you cast your vote for Erin Farris-Olsen. The duties of the Clerk are administrative and ministerial....
Over the weekend, Felix met his three other mothers. Felix is our cat, and we adopted him from Mexico. We are now back in Mexico for the first time since we adopted him and, of course, Felix is with us. When my husband, Peter, and I first discussed adopting a cat, I had in mind some needy little creature who would cuddle on my lap when I read. Instead, we got Felix. Felix was a street cat for two years before he was scooped up by his foster mothers. He was very skinny when...
For months, I have been bedeviled by a TV ad with a handsome young couple meeting with their “wealth advisor.” The couple stirs from their daydreams about going on safari for their honeymoon when their advisor asks what they would like to invest their money in. They reply that they would like to buy a ranch, with horses, in Montana. Now I know, from a lifetime as part of the agricultural sector and 24 years in the State Senate, that the best farms and ranches, the greatest pillars of their communities, for multiple gen...
