We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
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The Annual Banquet and Auction to benefit the Blaine County Wildlife Museum in Chinook is set for Saturday, April 7. Festivities start at the museum on Indiana Street with a tour available to banquet ticket holders, then moves to St. Gabriel's Catholic Church. The tour of the museum begins at 6pm and guests can browse the many raffle and auction items from 6:00 -7:00 p.m. at the church's parish hall. Dinner begins at 7:00 p.m. at the church with the auction to follow. This year several items...
First Aid for Parents was held recently at the Blaine County Library. The course is part of the Family Education Series sponsored by the Blaine County Public Health Department. There is no charge for the courses that make up the Family Education Series. Louann Paulsen, RN, taught the program for parents. The objective of the course was to discuss "how to respond to childhood injuries ranging from every day accidents to emergency situations." Jana McPherson-Hauer, RN, is the Blaine County Health...
Miscellany and My Neighbor hosted the Chinook Area Chamber of Commerce first quarterly Business After Hours for 2018 last week. The Business After Hours was changed from a monthly program to a quarterly program starting this New Year. Miscellany is a recently reopened thrift store in downtown Chinook. My Neighbor in Need is a non-profit that seeks to help needy neighbors fill verified needs by neighbors willing to help anonymously. Patricia Hofeldt reopened the thrift store under the new name,...
Like most everything else this winter, the weather had an effect on the Montana Seed Show this year. Show superintendents for pies and breads said they saw numbers of entries down a bit. Show chairman Paul Rasmussen, who also handles the commercial exhibits, said at the last minute he had "several exhibitors call and cancel." All the seed show organizers blamed the fear of encountering blocked roads on the way home as one of the major factors that reduced the numbers of visitors and...
Reporter's note: Dick Edgington, a longtime resident of Chinook, died in the summer of 2016. In 2004, after retiring from the Blaine County Road Department, Edgington bought a set of plans to build a RagWing 4 single engine plane. It was not a kit, he had to locate and buy all the parts and supplies necessary to complete the plane. The plans were based on a popular plane sold as a kit and first available in 1928. I'd heard about the incomplete plane from several people and had asked Dick's son,...
Chinook's My Neighbor in Need (MNIN), a help group that connect people with needs and donors who can fill those needs, is joining with Miscellany, a downtown thrift shop in Chinook, to host the next quarterly Business After Hours. The Chinook Area Chamber sponsored its first Business After Hours in April, 2014. The events let businesses showcase their products and services in a more informal setting outside normal business hours. My Neighbor in Need started in 2014 in Chinook My Neighbor in...
Reporter's note: Locals of a certain age will likely recall the "Pink Apartments" in downtown Chinook on the corner across the street from the Motor Inn and adjacent to Dan's NAPA. The apartments were torn down, along with Dr. Hoon's office and residence, in September, 1987 and the three town lots became the present Centennial Park. The park commemorates the centennial of the town of Chinook as well as Montana, both founded in 1889. Mid-January of this year the Sweet Nursing Home received an...
There were a number of competitions during the annual Montana Seed Show in Harlem. Here is a list of the barebones details—events and winners as listed in the program for the Saturday night banquet. Educational Display Booths: Youth Division Groups: 1st place, Big Flat 4-H; 2nd place, White Pine 4-H and 3rd place, Valley Clovers 4-H and North Harlem Colony School. Individual Division Groups: 1st place, Makayla Renfro; 2nd place, Daniel Rasmussen; 3rd place, Angelina Toth and 4th place, Andrew Rasmussen. Overall Sweepstakes Winner: Big Flat 4...
Reporter's note: About this time last year I read about the St. Uhro's celebration in Butte. St. Uhro's Day is celebrated each March 16 in regions of the U.S. where large numbers of descendants of Finnish immigrants still live. And it's not just coincidence that it's celebrated the day before St. Patrick's Day, which in the U.S. seems to get a lot more play than St. Uhro's. After reading about the celebration in Butte, I wrote a note on my calendar as a reminder to educate myself about St. Uhro'...
Reporter's note: Next Saturday night (March, 10) most of us, if we remember, will be changing our clocks one hour ahead as we "spring forward" into the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) for 2018. It's a ritual observed among some 70 nations including most of North America and Europe and spotty in much of the rest of the world. There are a couple of notable exceptions in the U.S., including Arizona and Hawaii, and one Canadian province, that opted out of implementing DST. Reviewing my notes I f...
No one is sure exactly how long the tradition has been going on, but each year for more than 40 years the Chinook Lions Club has given miniature, desk top American flags to each first grader at Meadowlark Elementary. This year 22 first graders received the miniature flags. Lions Club President Richard Cronk told the students, "Each year around George Washington's birthday celebration we come to give out flags to first graders." He asked the first graders to stand, with him and the other Lions...
Montana's oldest running seed show is set to run March 8-10. The 69th Montana Seed Show begins on Thursday and runs through Saturday evening. The three-day event has ag and non-ag related exhibits, health screenings, competitions of all sorts and a closing banquet with a speaker connected to Montana's biggest economic sector, agriculture. Seed show activities are in and around the Harlem High School. There is a charge for the closing banquet and drug screenings, all other events are open to the...
Reporter's note: The hard winter in north central Montana may not be the only news story, but it is certainly one of the main ones. I wanted to see how folks in a variety of situations are dealing with this winter. This is not a comprehensive list of every "winter of 2018 story." But, it's a sampling of some of the challenges, and interestingly, some of the unanticipated benefits of a hard winter. Here's a brief look at how a few of us are coping this winter. Health and safety: more than normal...
Despite a frigid evening, a decent sized group gathered at the Harlem Senior Center to hear the second Montana Conversation program from Humanities Montana. The presenter, Mark Matthews, did a program called Swinging through American History. It's a short course on the history of dance from the colonial period to modern times. He used videos of vintage dances to illustrate how famous dances developed. Matthews has done the history of American dance presentations for about four years. A friend...
Before its regular February meeting the Chinook Council heard the first presentation of a Preliminary Engineering Report (PER) that addresses issues with the city's water distribution system. The PER serves as a planning document to help the council prioritize work to be done on the distribution system. A PER is required to successfully apply for grants to finance the upgrade. Two years ago the city began the process and submitted its first grant application which was not funded. The regular mon...
I grew up in southern Illinois. By the time February rolled around most folks in that region were already sick of winter with the its grey skies and gloomy weather. The bright spot about February in southern Illinois, however, was three holidays that kids in school could enjoy. I would guess just about every grade school class, back in the 1950’s, had some sort of Valentine exchange and, if they were lucky, the “room mothers” would provide special treats for an in-classroom party. And way before the 1950’s most schools celebrated George...
The Montana State University Pesticide Education Program (PEP) is coordinating regional private applicator initial certification training across Montana. The seven hour training opportunity is designed for individuals desiring to learn more about pesticides, while simultaneously qualifying for a Montana private applicator license. A private applicator license allows individuals to apply restricted use pesticides on land they own, rent or lease. A pesticide training session is scheduled to be hel...
One month ago I wrote a story for the paper titled "Finally, warmer weather allows locals to 'dig out.'" Readers may recall we had a brief warmup in mid-January, of a couple of days, and snow removal and clean up began in earnest. Before my story about the warm up could run in the paper, the bottom fell out as far as weather and we plunged back into frigid temperatures and more snow, snow and snow ad nauseum. I had to scrap that story and hope for another warmup. The recent spring-like day on...
Thirty local Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers spent a recent Sunday learning new protocols and skills, practicing and refining existing skills and participating in a Megacode simulation. The class members represented Blaine County ambulance crews from Chinook, Harlem and Turner/Hogeland and Hill County. Other medical personnel who interact with the ambulance crews, including Indian Health Services at Fort Belknap, Sweet Medical Center and Sweet Memorial Nursing Home, also participated....
The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's (DNRC) Northeast Land Office and volunteer fire departments in Blaine County recently sponsored a training program to help non-trained volunteers who work with fire departments during wildfires. Don Pyrah, DNRC's Fire Management Officer out of Lewistown, presented the four-hour program at Bear Paw School. The day before the program for farmers and ranchers, Pyrah presented a program to Blaine County Road Department employees to demon...
The Blaine County Fair Foundation was notified last week that it was awarded a $22,000 Montana Tourism grant to be used toward construction of a proposed indoor event center at the county fairgrounds. Each year the Montana Office of Tourism awards about $750,000 through a competitive process "to develop and enhance tourism and recreation." This year 27 grant applications were funded. Tourism is a major economic force in the state and according to tourism officials, generates about $3 billion in...
Reporter's note: Many locals will likely remember John "Sanitary John" Herndon who served as the Blaine County Sanitarian from April, 1953 to February, 1983. His tenure was just a couple months short of thirty years in the position. John now lives in Virginia, near his daughter Lucia. In September John celebrated his 100th birthday. Last October, on my way to our fall job at the pumpkin patch in Washington state, I got a call from L.G. Stewart. He's a former resident of Chinook who now lives in...
Last week's fair was the 50th anniversary of the Fort Belknap Mid Winter Fair. The annual winter event was first staged in 1967. Ed Doney, who's been actively involved with the fair since 1987, wrote about 'why' the winter fair was organized. In a visit about the Fair he explained, "Some folks who had jobs that involved calling on people in their homes, discovered how much original native art was being done but no one ever got to see the art." Early on the Fair was a way to showcase the variety...
About 25 locals came to hear the first program of a four-part series being jointly presented by the Harlem Library and the Little Rockies Senior Center in Harlem. Colleen Brommer, Library Director, said there would be four such programs, all part of Humanities Montana's offerings available to communities. The quarterly presentations will alternate between the library and the senior center. Brommer introduced Arch Ellwein who would be presenting as Theodore Roosevelt. Ellwein didn't really need i...
The 2018 officers to the Board of Directors for the Chinook Area Chamber of Commerce were introduced at the chamber's annual banquet: They include Dana Davis, Secretary; Daniel Dahl, Vice President; Sarah Pratt, President; Hayley Yost, Treasurer and Dawn Colby, Reporter - Parliamentarian. Brandon Nissen, the new Executive Director for the Chinook Chamber, was not present. President Pratt, speaking of some upcoming changes for the chamber, said Brandon Nissen would soon be starting his duties as...
