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The weekend before Christmas, visitors to Pep's were treated to a special helping of holiday cheer when Nona Danruther spent Friday and Saturday evenings playing Christmas music on the piano. Her performance was prompted by a simple desire to play: "I have all this Christmas music that I've played for 40 years; I've collected for 40 years. They're arrangements that I change, and there's nowhere to play them. I can't play them at the Medical Center, because they are locked down. And there is a...
Visitors to FE Miley Elementary School this Christmas season encounter an unusual Christmas Decoration as they walk in the front entrance. The Mitten Tree placed by the local 4-H group is a different sort of Holiday decoration. The tree itself is decorated with hats and gloves for students in need of warm weather gear. The Mitten Tree service project was the brainchild of Hope Gasvoda, who presented the idea to the club three years ago. Kristie Rutledge, who serves as an organizational leader with the local group, explains: “We try to do s...
The Big Sandy Education Foundation, has been quietly working to improve our local schools and help students for nearly five years. The less well known foundation has given over $25,000 to classroom projects at the schools and over $8,000 in scholarships in the last five years. Brad Moore, the chairman of the foundation board, explained some of the recent projects the foundation has undertaken: “A couple of our bigger projects that we helped with... we gave $5,000 to the lighting project in the auditorium. The latest one, we just gave another $...
Many of the town's Christmas celebrations have been cancelled this year due to the pandemic. However, the show must go on, and so music teacher TJ Bond and FE Miley Elementary Elementary have put on the annual Christmas concert with a creative twist. Due to safety considerations, the concert was not performed for a live audience. Instead, the show was streamed online where it can be viewed by parents, families, and the community. "I wish we could do the real thing! But what a great solution in...
When I was in college, I had a comic strip hanging up in my dorm room. The single panel was from the nationally syndicated “Pluggers” comic. The text of the comic was simple: “An ounce of work is worth a pound of meetings.” I have long held this opinion and think back to the motto often. The fact of the matter is that 10 minutes of work will generally outproduce hours worth of meetings. This morning, I have found myself reflecting on this idea and applying it to a different subject altogether. In the past few weeks, I have had several people...
“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 longer than any of the other current organ...
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 circumstances. Later in the letter, he explains his reas...
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 guy was on his way to his ex-wife’s house. Her power...
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 sort of thing we expect people to do when we read...
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 kids hide their bags to keep the two of us from eat...
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 don’t blame my employer, and I was happy to fill 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 issued a new set of guidelines for handling Covid in...
"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, economic dangers, and a million other things. It seems...
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...