Sorted by date Results 480 - 504 of 713
“Coronavirus hated Christmas! The whole Christmas season! Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason...” After a long year of cancelled school, cancelled homecoming, cancelled Rotary Banquet, and cancelled Chili Feed; 2020 set its grinchy sights on the last major event of the Big Sandy event calendar. The 2020 Christmas Stroll, which is usually scheduled for the first week of December, has been cancelled. Marlys Myers who has been involved in organizing the Christmas stroll for l...
4 has been a difficult year for many families in the Big Sandy area. Especially during the holidays, the Big Sandy Food Bank has encountered a much higher than normal level of need. For the third consecutive year, they'll be getting some extra help from FE Miley Elementary school in the form of Christmas dinner boxes. The Christmas Dinner Food Drive is organized by Samantha Burns Weaver, the Kindergarten teacher. "I started the food drive three years ago with the thought of doing a project wh...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who spoke out openly against Hitler during WWII. For his public opposition to the Nazis and his involvement in a plot to assassinate the dictator, Bonhoeffer was arrested, kept in a concentration camp for 2 years, then executed. In a letter he wrote to his fiancé from prison, Bonhoeffer reflected on Christmas with the amazing comment that: “I think we were going to have an exceptionally good Christmas.” The statement is a little crazy given his circ...
Montana's second largest agricultural commodity is calf to cow beef production. However, despite being surrounded by cattle ranches, most of the 821 schools in the state serve beef that has been shipped in from out of state. The Montana Beef to School Project is a three year program that aims to change things. Their goal is to make sure that Montana Schools benefit from high quality Montana beef, while supporting local farmers and processors and providing opportunities to educate students about...
"I kinda just fell into this job, But I ended up really loving it, so I stuck with it," Shersteen Cline explained in response to my question about whether or not she'd grown up wanting to be a teacher. The Big Sandy native, daughter of Shane and Ruth Ann Cline, graduated from high school in our town before heading off to Missoula to study Biology. "I really loved science when I was going to High School, so I went in that direction," she explained. She wasn't sure what exactly she would do with...
Many years ago, my wife and I were on our way to a friend’s house for Christmas on a terribly cold and snowy morning in Northern Indiana. While taking a turn in our early 80s LTD, we slid on the ice and got bellied up in the snow on the side of the road. I did my best to shovel us out, but didn’t make a ton of progress. After a bit, a guy came along and helped me get the car loose. We talked for about 10 minutes while we worked. Afterward, I got into the car and explained to my wife that the...
7 families in the Big Sandy area received Angel Baskets on Monday Evening, November 16th. The baskets include turkeys and other fixings to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for the receiving families. The Angel Basket program has been a staple of the Big Sandy Holiday season for 4 years now. It is organized by the Angel Committee, which is a project of the GFWC Fort Benton Women's Club. The Angel Committee also organizes baskets for Christmas and the Angel Tree program in Fort Benton. Terry Grant, wh...
Early in the book of Acts, Peter and John are arrested and put on trial for preaching. The pair refused to back down under pressure from the religious authorities of the time, at least partially because they hadn’t broken any laws. The court ultimately released them but warned them not to preach any more. When they got out, the first thing the two disciples did was go to the rest of the church, relay the message, and then spend time praying. This isn’t all that surprising, because it’s the s...
Several years ago, Heather Wolery read "Pete the Cat's Groovy Guide to Life" during her speech to Big Sandy's graduating class. She chose the book because when she started teaching 3rd grade at FE Miley Elementary School, it was one of the books she read to her class. 9 years later, she was their principal, and she chose to send them off with the same words of wisdom she used to teach them years before. Throughout the talk, she related the tidbits of wisdom and famous quotes to different...
My wife and I discovered Geocaching a little over a decade ago while on a double date with a friend from work and his wife. We went to a local park and with our GPS-enabled cell phones in hand, raced around looking for buried treasures. We found a half dozen hidden treasure boxes our first afternoon. The fun is in the searching. Geocaches are often hidden in ingenious locations, sometimes disguised and sitting in plain sight. In the years since, we have gone searching for geocaches on dates,...
Halloween was two weeks ago. On Halloween night, my kids trick or treated for several hours and accumulated a treasure trove of candy that has been sitting in my pantry since. The problem with this arrangement is that I tend to head to the kitchen for a snack, consider my healthy options, and then eat 3 or 4 of the higher quality candy options from their bags. I do my best to steal their candy evenly, so that I am not taking too much from one or the other. This weekend, my wife finally had the k...
Anyone in the last 13 years who has had reason to call or visit the elementary school has been greeted by the warm and cheerful voice of Cinda Pearson. Cinda is the school secretary at FE Miley Elementary School, though the kids have all sorts of job titles they call her by including "doctor" because she hands out bandaids. She wears many hats in the course of her day, which suits her just fine. "My favorite part of the job is the variety," she explained. "I'm not a sitting in my office and...
Before coming to Big Sandy, the organization I worked for was struggling. As a result, my job had stretched to cover work left undone by folks who had been laid off or whose hours had been cut. I was often working six and seven day weeks. At times, I worked 12 hour days. Because I was a salaried employee, I could fill in gaps where needed. This persisted for months. I eventually reached a point where I was always tired and all of my hobbies and outside of work activities fell to the wayside. I...
The pandemic in Montana is entering its ninth month and the Big Sandy Grocery Store has been serving our community throughout the whole ordeal. This time of unusual stress has brought with it challenges for the local business. "In the beginning, it was a bit overwhelming. We were fortunate to have really good help that muscled through it," explains Debra Louvar the proprietor. At the beginning of the pandemic, the store saw runs on supplies as locals stocked up for the coming lockdowns. The...
After 43 years of teaching in Big Sandy, Larry and Chris Brumwell are retiring. The couple came to Big Sandy in 1978, right out of college and have served our town for their entire careers. Chris pointed out that Big Sandy was both their first and last teaching job. The pair came to Big Sandy specifically because the school was looking for a Special Education teacher. As Chris explains: "They wanted Larry; they were looking for a Special Ed teacher for the High School. There was no Special...
The 2019-2020 school year ended in an unusual manner when the pandemic triggered national lockdowns. Big Sandy Schools shifted to a distance learning model for the last few months of the school year, while the the community went into lockdown. With the recent rise in Covid cases in the state, and the appearance of cases in Big Sandy, many people are worried that the schools will be forced to close down again to fight the spread of the virus. Last week, the Choteau County Health Department...
"I thank God daily for having a job like this. It's wonderful. To be able to work with inquisitive minds is truly a blessing," was the reply I got from Demrece Keller when I asked how she liked teaching at F.E. Miley Elementary School. "Over the past 17 years, I have taught with some wonderful people. I have learned a lot, but my most favorite thing about teaching is the students... I refer to them as my kids sometimes. They are very near and dear to my heart. To me that's my most favorite part...
"...Having someone new in your life does not mean that there is less love, but in fact, there is more. Having a Bonus Mom means having Bonus Love." This is one of the main messages in Bonus Love: A Children's Book for Blended Families by local author Jessica Ophus. Jessica recently came to Montana as a travel nurse. While in the area, she met Big Sandy's own Mason Ophus. The pair became friends, eventually started dating, and recently got married. As the couple prepared for their wedding day,...
“Worry is like a rocking chair. It’ll keep you busy, but you won’t get anywhere doing it.” I first heard this line from a 16-year old kid in a rehab program I was working with. I’ve repeated it hundreds of times because a great deal of the stress and anxiety we experience in life is related to things we have very little actual control over. In the current season of our lives, constant anxiety is easy to spot. Folks are worried about the pandemic, the election, instability in our cities, e...
A few weeks ago, I ordered dinner for the family from Pep's. When I walked in the door with the pizza box and 3 styrofoam to-go containers my kids dug into the pizza with gusto, each eating as quick as they could to ensure they'd get a little more than the other two kids. When my wife and I finished our sandwiches, I opened the last container to reveal four slices of cheesecake. The kids are normally excited to get Pep's for dinner, and my family each has their favorites from Josh's menu. The...
Throughout elementary school, junior high, high school, and college, I was a poor student. I had brief spurts where I’d manage to bring my grades up to decent levels, but for the most part I did my best to not drop below C’s. I was a poor note taker, struggled to pay attention in class, and found homework to be unbearably dull. I was such a difficult student that one of my teachers suggested that my IQ was too low for regular classes. School was miserable for me. All of this changed when I wen...
Last year, my fifth grader came home and told us about how his teacher had create a point system for students to earn privileges. Many of the requirements of the students, like that they call her "Queen Shelbi," made my wife and I laugh. As our student navigated through the point system, we figured out that it was related to the lessons on the causes of the American Revolution and the idea of "taxation without representation." The creative teacher who came up with this unique method of...
One day, James and John, two of Jesus’ disciples, came to him and asked for a place of honor in Heaven. It was a lofty request that Jesus denied by explaining that the Father decides who will be where in eternity. When the rest of the disciples heard about this, they began to grumble and get angry at James and John because each of them thought they deserved more honor than the others. Jesus called them all together and told his followers something revolutionary. “You know that the rulers of the...
"It's an adventure every day. You learn something new whether you plan for it or not," Samantha Burns Weaver said, explaining her love for teaching kindergarten. "There's a lot of growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, and knowing you had a part in that is incredibly rewarding. It's a little bit of a struggle getting to that point because in the beginning of the year, it's a lot of modeling, reteaching, and repeating yourself. The end goal is incredibly rewarding." Mrs....
"It all started with my dad being in the Air Force," Deputy Jeremy Echols explained in response to my question about why he got into law enforcement. "As we were growing up, he kinda raised me and my brothers being that we live in a free country, we should do something to give back, whether that be service in the military or some kind of public service to help maintain the freedoms we are afforded. I didn't feel like the military was what I wanted to do with my life, and I kinda always wanted...