MSN February March 343

VOL 34 # 3 • FEBRUARY // MARCH

INFORMING • ENTERTAINING • EMPOWERING

HELENA’S

NEW MAYOR, MAKING

HISTORY SEE THE FULL STORY ON PAGE 38

2018

MONTANASENIORNEWS.COM

PAGE 2

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

ABOUT US

Contributing Writers

Robert B. Hunt, Publisher

MAILING ADDRESS PO Box 3363 • Great Falls, MT 59403 PHONE 406-761-0305 or 800-672-8477 WEB montanaseniornews.com EMAIL info@montanaseniornews.com Published six times per year, our paper exists to serve our mature readers. We encouraged our readers to contribute interesting material. As such, any views expressed in editorial are not necessarily the views of the publisher. Likewise, this publication does not endorse any particular product or service shown in the advertisements appearing in this paper.

Janet Hunt.......................... Chief Financial Officer Kathleen McGregor........... Advertising Sales Sherrie Smith..................... Production Assistant Jonathan Rimmel............... General Manager

Graphic Designer Webmaster Nann Parrett...................... Managing Editor Peter Thornburg................ Distribution Carol Blodgett.................... Advertising Sales

Digital Specialist Ruth Hunt........................... Social Media Manager

Natalie Bartley Holly Endersby Laura Friedman Steve Heikkila Ella Mae Howard Gail Jokerst Bernice Karnop Elizabeth Larch

Jack McNeel Aaron Parrett Jonathan Rimmel Russell Rowland Carrie Stensrud Dianna Troyer Suzanne Waring

© 2018

All copy appearing in this publication is copyright protected and may be reprinted only with written permission of the publisher.

Contents Letters to the Editor......................3

Dining Guide.................................. 32

Nutrition......................................... 64

Brain Games.................................. 4

Recreation...................................... 34

Fitness............................................ 68

Comics............................................ 7

Feature Story................................. 38

Answers to Brain Games..............72

Modern Senior.............................. 8

South Central MT..........................42

Travel.............................................. 74

Home & Lifestyle........................... 12

Senior Discounts........................... 44

Photography.................................. 78

Inspiration...................................... 20

Money Matters.............................. 50

All About Montana........................81

Fluffy Critters................................. 24

Health Care.................................... 54

Entertainment............................... 26

Caregiving...................................... 60

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

PAGE 3

Letters to the Editor QUESTIONS•COMMENTS•PRAISES•SUGGESTIONS

HELLO! I have been reading your publication for years, and have noticed that something has changed this month—or perhaps it was in October?

The paper is of slightly better quality and the ink is different. Slicker. Yet, the lonely hearts column is missing. Why? It is doubtful that everyone has found someone and more unlikely that some other magazine in Montana has picked it up?

Please keep in mind that many of your readers are too far gone to be able to SHOP for anything, and someone brings the new installment of incontinent supplies to them.

MONEY MATTERS , but not when you are 70 or 80 and above. A few gentle jokes, or stories we tell on ourselves are far more applicable and appreciated.

It is nice that they press wine in Washington, but how about the good folks that give sleigh rides (if we have snow) to seniors? Not too long. Just long enough to re-engage the old brains with memories.

Try to stay local with a certain percentage of your stories. And yes, there are a few 50-year-olds among us. Most still have a decade or more to work.

Most of us can still laugh and even cry.

We loved the old paper. Please don’t take its best features away from us. Slick (literally)

local mags are a dime a dozen (or less). But ho-hum.

Thanks for listening. You can go ahead and print my letter.

—Karen in Billings

Dear Karen, To begin, we have been working hard to implement our paper’s new design, but the actual type of paper we use is still the same. We are thrilled that now we have color capabilities throughout the entire publication.

You are not the only reader who is disappointed that we are no longer running Cupid’s Corner. We opted to drop it because of obvious liability issues when matching two unvetted people through an anonymous blind box. Population growth and longevity have fostered many more creeps than many of our readers grew up with, so we’ve decided to let online dating sites handle this task.

Regarding our wine column, we do keep it regionally local—the Northwestern U.S.—and we do have a good number of wine connoisseurs in our readership base that the column appeals to. As well, we aim to keep a local flair to our stories and will continue to do so. We also realize, however, the importance of including stories of regional/national interest or relevance. It’s a delicate balance.

Last, you raise some interesting points about the ages of our readership. It’s a broad spectrum:

many seniors are working well into their golden years, are physically able to shop for themselves, and have the mental capacity to make informed decisions about their personal finances. In other words, we take the approach that 70 is the new 50, and we intend to deliver informational pieces that are relevant to their lives.

Along the same lines, we acknowledge that a portion of our readership is comprised of individuals who may be, as you say, “too far gone” to shop for anything themselves and would be better served with light-hearted, inspirational pieces.

Your comments don’t fall on deaf ears: note Ella Mae Howard’s Calving Season piece and Gail Jokerst’s inspiring article on Never Letting the Romance Fade, to name just a couple of articles from our pool of local writers appearing in this issue. Thanks for your letter.

COLORFUL The color adds so much to MSN as do the puzzles. I miss the little funny stories, though. There is so much to learn, to enjoy in each issue of MSN, that I start looking for the next issue as soon as I have completed one.

Keep up the good work.

—Elva Pilling, Great Falls.

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Brain Games

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Brain Games

PAGE 5

New device stops a cold

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New research shows you can one as a gift and called it “one of stop a cold in its tracks if you take the best presents ever. This little one simple step with a new device jewel really works.” Many people when you feel a cold coming on. say they have completely stopped Colds start when cold viruses getting colds. get in your nose. Viruses multiply People often use CopperZap for fast. If you don’t stop them ear- prevention, before cold signs aply, they spread and cause misery.

But scientists have found a quick way to kill a virus. Touch it with copper. Researchers at labs and universities agree, copper is “antimicrobial.” It kills microbes, such as viruses and New research: Copper stops colds if used early. bacteria, just by touch. pear. Karen Gauci, who flies often That’s why ancient Greeks and for her job, used to get colds after Egyptians used copper to puri- crowded flights. Though skeptical, fy water and heal wounds. That’s she tried it several times a day on why Hippocrates used copper to travel days for 2 months. “Sixteen heal skin ulcers, and why Civil War flights and not a sniffle!” doctors used it to prevent infection Businesswoman Rosaleen says of battlefield wounds. They didn’t when people are sick around her know about viruses and bacteria, she uses CopperZap morning and but now we do. night. “It saved me last holidays,” Researchers say microbe cells she said. “The kids had colds going have a tiny internal electric charge round and round, but not me.” across the membrane surrounding Some users say it also helps the cell. The high conductance of with sinuses. Attorney Donna copper short-circuits this charge Blight had a 2-day sinus headache. and pops holes in the membrane. When her CopperZap arrived, she This immediately stops the mi- tried it. “I am shocked!” she said. crobe from reproducing and de- “My head cleared, no more headstroys it in seconds. ache, no more congestion.”

Tests by the Environmental ProOne man had suffered seasonal tection Agency (EPA) show that sinus problem for years. It was so copper surfaces kill germs that bad it ruined family vacations and get on them. That way the next even dinners out with friends. His person to touch that surface does wife Judy bought CopperZaps for not spread the germ. As a result of both of them. He was so skeptithis new knowledge, some hospi- cal he said, “Oh Judy, you are such tals switched to copper for various a whack job!” But he finally tried “touch surfaces”, like faucets, be- it and, to his surprise, the copper drails, and doorknobs. This cut the cleared up his sinuses right away. spread of MRSA and other illness- Judy and their daughter both said, es in those hospitals by over half, “It has changed our lives!” and saved lives.

Some users say copper stops The strong scientific evidence nighttime stuffiness, too, if they gave inventor Doug Cornell an use it just before bed. One man idea. When he felt a cold coming said, “Best sleep I’ve had in years.” on he fashioned a smooth copper Some users have recently tried probe and rubbed it gently in his it on cold sores at the first tingle in nose for 60 seconds. the lip, and report complete suc“It worked!” he exclaimed. “The cess in preventing ugly outbreaks. cold went away completely.” It One family reports it has worked worked again every time he felt a to eliminate warts as well. cold coming on. He reports he has The handle is sculptured to fit never had a cold since. the hand and finely textured to He asked relatives and friends improve contact. Tests show it to try it. They said it worked for kills germs on fingers to help you them, too, every time. So he pat- stay well and not spread illness to ented CopperZap™ and put it on your family. Rubbing it gently on the market. wounds, cuts, and abrasions can Soon hundreds of people had reduce or stop infections. tried it and given feedback. Nearly Copper may even help stop flu 100 percent said the copper stops if used early and for several days. their colds if used within 3 hours In a lab test, scientists placed 25 of the first sign. Even up to 2 days, million live flu viruses on a Copperif they still get the cold it is milder Zap. No viruses were found alive than usual and they feel better. soon after.

Users wrote things like, “It The EPA says the natural color stopped my cold right away,” and change of copper does not reduce “Is it supposed to work that fast?” its ability to kill germs.

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Brain Games

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

Doodle Puzzle

Ahhh, winter in Montana....or is it spring? Our transitions through the seasons can be rather fitful: one day’s sub-arctic temps are chased in by the next day’s banana-belt breezes, teasing the lilacs into thinking its budding time and convincing the birds (and the bees?) it’s time to get busy.

In honor of all the animals springing into action on these occasional balmy days, we’ve decided to present you with a fun little animal quiz to stretch your brain and mull over.

And while you think, you can color on the accompanying Doodle page.

Thanks to all who participated in our Doodle Puzzle contest for the December/January 2017-18 issue. The winner of the $25 prize for submitting the correct answers is Kathy Sweatt of Ronan, Mont.

A $25 cash prize is awarded from each issue of the Montana Senior News to the person who submits the winning answers along with the prettiest Doodle coloring from the previous issue.

Please mail your entires for all contests to the Montana Senior News, 1985 McMannamy Draw, Kalispell, MT 59901, or email to info@ montanaseniornews.com by March 15, 2018 for this edition.

This is a two part contest. Answer the following questions and send in with the colored page below.

1. What kind of animals live in an apiary?

2. What was Tarzan’s chimpanzee’s name?

3. Celeste was the wife of which fictional animal?

4. What were the names of the two bears that lived in Jellystone park?

5. What is the name for a collection of frogs?

6. Which animal is the fastest, a hare, greyhound, or horse?

7. What type of animal produces gossamer?

8. Lupus is the Latin name for what animal?

9. An earthworm has how many hearts?

10. What type of insect has the best eyesight?

11. A cow’s stomach has how many chambers?

12. What kind of animal is the source of mohair?

13. Who are the queen bee’s closest servants in a beehive?

14. Which animal has rectangular pupils?

15. What kind of animal mates only once for 12 hours and can sleep for three years?

16. A typical mayfly lives for how many days?

17. What is a fox’s den called?

18. Which animal has the longest lifespan in captivity?

19. The study of birds eggs is called what?

20. What land mammal other than man has the longest lifespan?

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

PAGE 7

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Modern Senior

TECHNOLOGY•SCIENCE•KNOWLEDGE•COMPUTERS•MOBILE

Is That My Echo?

BY DICK WOLFSIE (Senior Wire) I’m not tech savvy, so when I received the Echo my brother-in-law Tom sent me for a gift, I was hesitant to open the box. This gadget works like the computer that Captain Kirk talked to on Star Trek. You can pose a question (Who was the 13th president?), request a song, or ask it to call someone. Your wish is her command.

The person selling these kinds of products always claims something like, “It’s so easy to use. Just plug it in.” This is never true, although I got my new desk lamp working in under an hour.

When using the Echo, you must begin your command with her name, Alexa. I learned the hard way the importance of being precise when addressing her. A few days after I thought I had mastered my new toy, I said, “Alexa, play today’s phone messages.”

When she sucCAPITAL TRANSIT M–F Except Holidays cessfully completed Office Hours: 8am–12pm & 1pm–5pm the task, I said, Origin to Destination: 6:30am–5:30pm “Alexa, now play EAST VALLEY HELENA RED/BLUE ROUTES yesterday’s,” which 7am–11am resulted in her playing 7am–6pm 1pm–5pm the Beatles’ 1962 hit.

Then I said, “Alexie, 1415 NORTH MONTANA AVE | 406.447.8080 RIDETHECAPITALT.ORG | WHEEL CHAIR ACCESSIBLE stop the music.”

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Photo © Andrey Suslov, Bigstock.com

“Alexie, shut up!” “Alexie, play something else.” Nothing worked.

Finally, I ripped the plug out of the wall, realizing I would have to reset the darn thing. Unlike Paul McCartney’s, my troubles did not seem so far away. I was going to have to pester my son again to reload all the apps necessary to make the Echo work.

I was saying Alexie instead of Alexa. The lady in the cylinder is very particular about this kind of thing, like when I mistakenly call my wife Shirley instead of Mary Ellen.

Mary Ellen read an article that said if the device is plugged in, it is on and always listening to what you say anywhere in the house.

So for the last two weeks, every time I’ve mentioned our finances, vacation plans or medical conditions, my wife shushes me. This has put a crimp in our conversations, not to mention any romance I had anticipated on New Year’s Eve. Yesterday I got in the car (this is true) and when I plugged in my smart phone, I overheard two people—two complete strangers—on their Echo, having a love squabble. I can’t tell you much about the conversation, because I only listened for 15 minutes. I called my brother-in-law for a technical explanation for what I experienced, and he nailed it: “Wow,” he said, “that is creepy.”

By the way, I think Mary Ellen is getting a bit jealous of Alexa. When I wake up, I say, “Alexa, Good Morning!” In a very cheery voice, I get a return greeting and then a brief synopsis of something that happened on the same date in history. This pithy exchange of fascinating trivia is not something my wife or I expect from each other at 8 a.m. after 35 years of marriage.

“Mary Ellen, Good Morning!” “Dick, on this day every week, they pick up the garbage. I hear the truck. Get out of bed and take our can to the curb!”

Despite all of this, my wife wants her own Echo. But being the lady she is, she told me that it will be hard to tell Alexa to “Shut up!” Well, it worked effectively on me any time I tried to talk during “Downton Abbey.” ISI

iPhone Battery Woes, Battery Apps, Retire a Smartphone

BY BOB DELAURENTIS (Senior Wire) When it comes to the battery strength, your smartphone “lies” to you all the time.

At first glance, the battery-level icon seems to work like a gas tank. The first gallon of gas in the tank is as powerful as the last. The dashboard gauge shows a good estimate of how much gas remains.

This simple metaphor works reasonably well when the battery is young.

But as a lithium-ion battery ages, the little white lies told by the battery icon become Pinocchio-sized tall tales.

For complex reasons, batteries are nothing like fuel tanks. Batteries behave more like animals. They need sleep to recharge, extreme temperatures sap their energy, and sometimes they bite you unexpectedly.

As they age, several factors weigh on a battery’s ability to make it through the day.

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

Photo © Poravute Siriphiroon, Bigstock.com

No simple gauge can communicate all that in a glance. So phones use different methods to make a guess as to how much power remains.

The older the phone, the less accurate the guess. These “lies” are not evil-minded, they are the natural result of battery chemistry.

Given the number of factors involved, the whole approach works reasonably well. Right up until it breaks down.

Recently the iPhone battery has been the center of attention in news headlines. Most of the stories I have read miss the point.

Here are the facts you need to know: as any phone ages, its performance slowly declines.

This decline is noticeable in some cases, but not always. In my experience, phones have a solid two- to three-year life span before there is a noticeable performance degradation. My

MODERN SENIOR

family has two iPhones that have been in daily use for over four years, and the batteries still work fine.

Apple has announced they will release an update that provides a clearer picture of the battery’s overall health. They have also begun to discount battery replacement fees on some models. Once the update is available, you should be able to make an informed choice if a replacement is right for you.

If your phone is frustratingly slow, seek help to fix it. There are many reasons why phones slow down, and most have remedies. They do not have to be a daily source of frustration.

BATTERY APPS Measuring battery health is a complex and imperfect science. A good site to explain some of the nuances you will need to know is Battery University. I have added the link in the Wander the Web section below.

A search on any app store will reveal countless battery apps, but it’s hard to tell which ones provide the info you need. The best apps keep watch over a number of charge cycles and aggregate the data. Here are two excellent choices: On Android, look for an app called AccuBattery, at accubatteryapp.com.

On iOS, the best option is a Macintosh app called Coconut Battery. The app tests iOS devices and Mac laptop batteries. To test a phone, run the app while the phone is plugged into your computer. More info can be found for it at coconut-flavour.com.

Both of these apps are helpful, but I expect given recent criticism, manufacturers will be beefing up built-in battery health reports.

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PREPARING YOUR PHONE FOR RETIREMENT You need to prepare your smartphone before you give it away to someone else.

First, and most important, back everything up.

With the current state of cloud services, backup has never been easier. Learn how it works on your specific device, and turn it on.

Then before you give the phone away, double check to make sure it has backed up all your pictures and favorite apps and so on.

Step two is to erase your personal data.

Again, the specifics depend on the device, but the most basic way to accomplish this is to perform a so-called “factory reset.”

On most Android phones, go to Settings and choose Personal > Backup > Reset. From here you can backup, reset, and erase everything.

On iPhones, go to Settings and tap on your name, then choose iCloud > iCloud Backup > Back Up Now. Once finished, return to the Settings app, choose General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings.

The final step is to remove the SIM card if it is removable.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

MODERN SENIOR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 9

WANDER THE WEB Here are my latest picks for browsing: Battery University—This site will teach you everything you ever needed to know about how to get the most from rechargeable batteries and when to replace them. Although any accurate discussion of batteries quickly fills up with technical jargon, Battery University

does a great job of making the topic accessible.

batteryuniversity.com

How Electricity Works—The fact we depend on electricity everywhere in our daily lives is obvious. Far less obvious is how this invisible stuff performs its magic. This link explains the science behind the magic. howstuffworks.com/electricity.htm iPhone Battery and Performance—The latest technical details from Apple on their

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A tech enthusiast his entire life, Bob DeLaurentis is currently developing an educational software project.

When not writing, he is in the kitchen cooking up something unusual, or outside with a camera. He can be contacted at techtalk@bobdel.com.

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phone batteries. It explains how performance degrades as batteries age over time and, specifically, which functions are affected. MSN

their computers. Strange things happened when I would walk by. I never had any desire to even own one of my own back then, but as (Senior Wire) About a month ago, I was time went on I gave in to the temptation of mentioning to a technology and traded friend that I probmy soul for a laptop. ably spent (and My computer guru wasted) way too told me that it could much time on the indeed be a power surge computer. Within a of sorts, and maybe it few days, my lapwas indeed my energy. top crashed in the He’s a rare breed, a middle of a long techie with a spiritual and tedious Word background. Whatever document. the case, I had to face Being Italian the painful possibility and Portuguese, I that I had lost all of my still have a bit of a data again. temper even though I wondered if my I think the years words a few days prior have mellowed me had reverberated across Photo © VLADGRIN, Bigstock.com some. My hand just Cyberia and my statemight have smacked ment about wasting the keyboard when this happened. Mercury time was answered with a retort from an wasn’t in retrograde, etheric elf or laptop leprechaun somewhere and as I sat helplessly who nonchalantly pushed a button, grinned and watched all of my sardonically, and said, “There, we’ll fix that desktop icons fade to for you right now.” black, one by one, I A friend once told me that sometimes a wondered if this had banana was just a banana, and not everything something to do with was connected or had a deeper meaning or me and my energy significance. I begged to differ. (and perhaps my I have spent my life enjoying the syntemper.) This was chronicities of life and the magical and often the third time in the unexpected ways that this Universe responds last two years that to our words and intent. something like this After my ailing laptop was inspected, there had happened. was good news. All of my data was still on my Twenty-some hard drive, but it would need to be replaced. years ago when I And bad news. The cost would almost be as worked in the high much as getting another laptop, so I bought tech industry, no one a new one. wanted me around

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS In the meantime, I looked for that deeper meaning. Oddly enough, I didn’t seem to miss all of that time on the Internet. I seemed to have a lack of affect about it all. Of course, I did have an iPad and phone, but I took this as a clue and a cue to recluse myself from it all.

When I had lost all of my data, photos, and memories when my computers crashed before, it was like starting over and being forced to let go of the past and the details I

MODERN SENIOR

deemed so important. Gone were the selfies, the precious links, the bookmarks, and the videos, not to mention a lot of my work. Oh, how attached we become.

In a way, my personal operating system had been wiped clean, just in time for a new start for the new year.

I wondered if it might be the same when we (you know) expire here. Are we like data that disappears without a trace? Is anything

left on our hard drive? Are we rebooted in another form?

I’ll never stop looking for answers in the cosmic breadcrumbs of this life. As I ponder the bits, the bytes, and the bananas, I can clearly see the correlation. My friend would be scrunching up his face right about now, but I am absolutely sure that a banana is never JUST a banana. ISI

Wireless Tips for Boomers (StatePoint) There are currently more than 93 million Americans in the U.S. over age 55, according to Census data, and the vast majority (74 percent) of them have a smartphone.

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In addition, Baby Boomers spend an average of 149 minutes a day on their smartphones­— about as much as smart-

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phone-obsessed Millennials at 171 minutes per day.

Despite these figures, and the fact that members of this generation were the inventors of the wireless industry, many mobile plans for Americans aged 55 plus are still designed for a time before the Internet. They come with limited minutes, and no data.

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“Unfortunately, many carriers and plans treat these generations like they’re stuck in the past.”

But even without the dumbed down “senior” plans, empty nesters aren’t given great options. When kids leave the house and are off the family plan, most major carriers raise the per-line cost by almost 60 percent, costing customers a hefty sum when it’s time to pay the bill each month.

So how can you find the best deal for your needs? When looking for a plan, consider the following.

How many lines do you need? Virtually every wireless provider has a lower per line cost for four lines instead of two. So, if you only need two lines, look for a plan that won’t penalize you for not having four.

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How much do you use your mobile phone?

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The Great Texas Chili Project concoction made from dried chili peppers I was married once to a vegetarian hippie (ground into a powder, or reconstituted in hot

BY STEVE HEIKKILA gal. In that era I made vegetarian three-bean water and pureed) and beef, slow simmered chili. It had a lot of allspice and cider vinegar until it’s melt-in-your-mouth tender. That’s in it, and it was fantastic. No self-respecting Texas chili is the stuff of legend. Some chili at its essence.

Texan would call this stuff chili, either. people refer to it as chili con carne, but in Surely, it also has a few other herbs and Texas, it’s just called “chili.” The “con carne” I’ve sampled chili here and there over the spices (amounts and types varying recipe years all over the country, and I’ve found the part is a given. quality to vary from disgusting For that matter, the “Texas” qualifier (that runny, greasy ground beef is redundant as well. Texans proudly refuse glop they slather on “chili dogs,” to entertain the idea that other styles exist.

Given that chili was invented in San Antonio, which is technically chili con carne), to mediocre (bad Tex-Mex it’s hard to debate them on this point. restaurants), to absolutely subBIRTH OF THE TEXAS CHILI PROJECT lime (made by proud chili snobs).

Like most Americans, I grew up eating A few years ago, I decided I chili. It was sort of a meaty stew made with ground beef, canned tomatoes, kidney beans, probably ought to figure out how to make it like they do in Texas. and lots of “chili powder” that came in a tin or I researched and experimented jar from the spice section of the grocery store.

This was, I would later realize, quintessential and made a lot of chili until I setMid-Western-style chili. tled on the recipe I’m sharing with you here. Before we get to that No self-respecting Texan would recognize though, let’s look into this chili this hearty stew as chili.

Cooking from scratch is what distinguishes cooking as an art form stuff conceptually, culturally, and from “throwing something together for dinner.” PHOTO BY STEVE historically.

HEIKKILA. MECHANICAL TEXAS CHILI: WHAT IT IS CONTRACTORS AND WHAT IT ISN’T to recipe), probably some onion and garAn entire culture and ethos exists around lic, maybe an acid (vinegar) or a sweetener chili that is in many ways similar to barbecue (brown sugar), and perhaps (although not culture. There are rules, methods, arguments 406-728-1515 necessarily) even a bit of tomato product or about what makes it great, and closely guarded 4GPlumbing.com 5641 W Harrier, Missoula a pinch of masa as a thickening agent. That’s secrets. Chili masters compete fiercely in conpretty much it. tests for first-place bragging rights in much Of course it’s the infinite variability of the same way that these ingredients that complicates the game. barbecue pit masters Notice that beans are conspicuously misscompete. ing from the list. That’s right, hippies. No Conceptually, it’s beans. This is actually a big deal, which brings a simple dish: a kind to mind a favorite Texas pastime: when they of thick stew-like aren’t remembering the Alamo, or talking about how much bigger stuff is where they Convenient Downtown Location Within Walk ing Distance live, Texans absolutely love to act horrified by to Shopping, Doctor/Hospital Facilities, the suggestion that it’s somehow acceptable Theatres, Restaurants, and Churches to put beans in chili.

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HOME & LIFESTYLE

PAGE 13

And while we’re at it, you don’t eat chili over spaghetti with cheddar some people grew up with it, and it has a nostalgia associated with it. cheese and raw onions, like the folks do in Cincinnati (unless, of I recommend skipping it. course, you’re in Cincinnati).

The Matter of “Dumps”—I’ve also noticed that the timing of THE HISTORY OF CHILI adding certain ingredients appears to be significant, at least to the Cooking with chiles, meat, and herbs was certainly not unknown competition chili cook. All of those spice mixes and chili powders are to Inca, Aztec, and Mayan culture. However, from what I’ve been able divided into “dumps,” which are added at various stages of the cooking. to discover, the dish we know as chili con carne originates with the I read one explanation stating that ingredients like coriander or “chili queens” who served it food-cart style to working men in San CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 Antonio’s Military Plaza as early as the 1860s.

Eventually, chili caught on as a popular cattle trail food, and cowboys spread the chili gospel until “chili joints” serving up a “bowl of Enjoy senior living red” popped up all over the American Southwest.

It was the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago (i.e., The World’s Fair), where Texas operated an extremely popular San Antonio Chili Stand that helped introduce chili to other parts of the U.S. Located in beautiful Great Falls, Soon people were putting it on hot dogs, hamburgers, French fries, we pair fine comfort and omelettes, and spaghetti, substituting tomatoes for the chilies, and yes, hospitality with exceptional sometimes even adding beans and elbow macaroni (chili mac). Over service and accomodations. the course of the 20th century, chili took on all of the weird regional variations we know today.

See for yourself why our community SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TEXAS CHILI RECIPES is such an exceptional place to live.

In my quest to develop a decent, authentic Texas chili recipe, I’ve CALL (406) 727-0447 noticed a few things that are…disappointing. This is the section where I probably stick my foot in my mouth and get in trouble with certain Brookdale Great Falls Texan chili aficionados.

Independent Living brookdale.com Hamburger—First, I was curious to find out what cut of beef was 1104 Sixth Avenue North popular in Texas chili. It could have been brisket for all I knew (some Great Falls, MT 59401 folks do use brisket). Most recipes I see, however, are made with BROOKDALE® is a trademark of Brookdale Senior Living, Inc. Nashville, TN, USA 06/15 sirloin or chuck roast or tri-tip roast, or a roast I’ve never even heard of called a “blade” roast. But here is where it gets strange.

While some chili recipes council cutting the meat into small cubes (the size varying according to the preferences and logic of the author), I’ve noticed that a lot of chili recipes begin with ground beef.

Granted, they stipulate “chili grind,“ which differentiates itself from ‘hamburger’ by being a coarser grind. Maybe this is a Texas chili faux pas, but this just seems wrong to me. I don’t care if it’s “chili grind;” you’re making hamburger soup. I’d rather have a chili with a slightly more stew-like texture. Granted, it’s more labor intensive to dice three or four pounds of beef with a knife, but I think it’s worth it.

Packaged or processed ingredients—I’ve noticed that some award winning chili recipes are made from various packets of purchased and prepared chili powders and spices mixed into a pile of hamburger meat. I’m thinking here primarily of CASI (Chili Appreciation Society International) competition chilies.

While I’m sure some people who know their chili produce these concoctions, I just don’t think dumping a mixture of store-bought powders into a pot is really cooking. Where’s the mortar and pestle?

Where’s the knife and cutting board? Where are the dried chilies?

I can appreciate that this is largely a complex chemistry experiment, and getting the blend and amount of packet ingredients takes a lot of patience and meticulous trial and error. But just like the “chili grind” hamburger, this just seems wrong. I’m a “from scratch” kind of guy, because I think the artistry, care, and attention You may qualify for FREE assistive telephone equipment through the to detail are reflected in the quality of the end Montana Telecommunications Access Program! product. You can taste the love. Cooking from scratch is what distinguishes cooking as an art form from “throwing something together (MTAP) Montana Telecommu- Equipment available for dinner.” nications Access Program through MTAP includes: This being the case, I’d prefer to roast and provides FREE assistive • Amplified telephones grind my own spices when I can. And instead telephone equipment to those • Captioned telephones of chili powders, I prefer to buy whole dried who qualify, making it easier to chili pods, stem and seed them, re-hydrate use the phone to do business • Loud bell ringers TTYs or keep in touch with family • Artificial Larynxes them, and grind them into a paste. This is • And much, much more! and friends. cooking, right?

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Goya Sazón—I’ve noticed a lot of chili recipes have Goya Sazón in them, which is a seasoning bouillon cube that reputedly imparts a “Latin American” quality to foods (whatever that means). It consists mainly of MSG and also has coriander, annatto, garlic, salt, and tricalcium phosphate. It pops up in recipe after recipe.

I tried it in a batch and didn’t care for it.

It adds a metallic, chemical aftertaste to the chili. In fact, it’s really awful. I expect that

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

HOME & LIFESTYLE

when adding eye of newt and Wolf’s Bane to a cauldron of witches’ brew.

I did hold back the sugar and the acids until later, but I didn’t obsess too much about the timing of ingredients.

In the end, I learned that “competition chili,” with its refined packaged powders and

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13

cinnamon can burn, so you want to add them later. That makes a certain amount of sense, I guess. But some of these dump divisions seemed like alchemy to me, like something a Shakespearean witch would find important

aversion to fat (not kidding) that might pool in the surface and offend a judge, just doesn’t fit my more rustic, scratch-cooking ethos. So the chili I’m sharing here reflects that ethos.

I hope you enjoy it. MSN

TEXAS CHILI INGREDIENTS << 1 quart of water << 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil << 1 medium yellow onion, diced << 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced << 2 ounces dried New Mexico chiles << 2 ounces dried ancho chiles << 2 ounces dried chile de árbol << 4 dried habanero chiles (optional if you like it HOT!) << 4 pound chuck roast, cut into ¼-inch cubes << 1-½ teaspoons kosher salt << 1 can (8 fluid ounces) beef consommé << ½ teaspoon fresh ground black pepper << 1 cinnamon stick << 1 tablespoon dried coriander seed << 1 tablespoon dried cumin seed << 1 teaspoon allspice berries << 1 teaspoon brown sugar << ½ cup apple cider vinegar

PHOTO BY STEVE HEIKKILA.

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DIRECTIONS Bring the water to a gentle simmer in a large pot. Remove stems from the chiles. RipTEXAS CHILI them open, and shake out the seeds while they’re still dry. Add chiles to INGREDIENTS the pot of simmering water and simmer until the chiles<< 1 quart of water are soft—about 5 minutes. < < 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive Transfer the chiles to a blender, reserving the liquid. Puree oil until smooth, adding sim< < 1 medium yellow onion, diced mering liquid as needed to make a thin paste.

Puree it well, so<< 3 cloves garlic, peeled andno bits and pieces of chile skin appear in minced the final soup. Set aside.

Gently sauté<< 2 ounces dried New Mexicoonion in olive oil in a large, lidded pot until chiles tender. Add garlic. Cook until

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garlic is fragrant and onions are translucent, but be careful not to burn the garlic (about 15 minutes).

Add the pureed chiles, the beef consommé, the beef, the salt, and the ground pepper. Simmer, covered, over low heat for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, toast the spices in a dry skillet until fragrant and just beginning to brown. Be careful not to burn them.

Grind the cumin, coriander, and allspice in a mortar and pestle. The cinnamon is difficult to grind in a mortar and pestle, so use a coffee grinder if you have one, or just simmer the whole piece of cinnamon bark in the stock.

After the first hour has passed, taste the chili, and adjust the seasoning (it may require a bit more salt). Add the remaining ingredients. Simmer gently on the stove top, covered, stirring occasionally, until the beef is very tender—about

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

HOME & LIFESTYLE

PAGE 15

Simple Home Modifications Can Help Seniors Age in Place

BY JIM MILLER

EASIER LIVING To help make a kitchen easier to use, organize cabinets so items used most often are within easy reach without a lot of stooping or using a step stool. Also, consider installing

If an aging mother wants to stay in her own home for as long as possible, but she doesn’t have the money for any big renovations, there are dozens of small adjustments and simple modifications to make a home fit for aging-in-place.

And it won’t cost much, if anything at all.

ELIMINATE TRIP-ANDSLIP HAZARDS Since falls are the leading cause of home injury among seniors, a good place to start is by arranging or moving furniture to clear pathways.

Position any electrical or phone cords along the wall, so they won’t be a tripping hazard.

Remove throw rugs, or use carpet tacks or double-sided Photo © mavoimages, Bigstock.com tape to secure them.

And pick up items on the floor that could pullout shelves beneath the counter and Lazy cause a person to trip like papers, shoes Susans in corner cabinets for easier access. or clothes.

Get a kitchen stool for sitting while working.

In the bathroom, buy some non-skid rugs For easier and safer bathing in the bathfor the floors and a rubber mat or adhesive room consider purchasing a shower chair, and nonslip strips for the floor of the tub or install a hand-held shower for bathing from shower, to prevent slipping. Have a carpenter a seated position. install grab bars in and around the tub or ACCESSIBILITY SOLUTIONS shower and near the toilet for support.

If a person uses a walker or wheelchair, IMPROVE LIGHTING you can adapt a house by installing ramps on Good lighting is very important for safe entrance steps and mini-ramps to go over aging-in-place, so check the wattage ratings high thresholds. You can also install “swinglamps and light fixtures. I install the brightest away” or “swing-clear” hinges on her doors, bulbs allowed. Purchase some nightlights for to add two inches of width for easier access. the bathroom and in the hallways that are used SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS after dark. Consider adding under-cabinet To keep an aging person safe, set the hot task lighting in the kitchen and motion-senwater heater to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or sor lights outside the front and back doors and below, to prevent scalds. Put handrails on both in the driveway. sides of a staircase or stairwell. Also, install HAND HELPERS smoke and carbon monoxide detectors on all If a person has hand arthritis or problems gripping, install lever-style door handles (or doorknob lever adapters), which are easier to use than doorknobs. The same goes for twistknob kitchen or bathroom faucets, which you can replace with a single lever, touch, or sensor-style faucet. Consider replacing knobs on cabinets and drawers with easier-to-grip, D-shaped handles.

levels of the house, and place a lightweight, easy-to-use ABC-rated fire extinguisher in an easily accessible location in the kitchen.

For more tips, get a copy of AARP’s “HomeFit Guide” that’s filled with dozens of aging-in-place recommendations. You can access it at AARP.org/homefit, or call 888-687-2277 and ask them to mail you a free copy.

Also note that all the previously mentioned products can be purchased either in local retail stores, home improvement stores, pharmacies or medical supply stores, or online at Amazon.com. MSN Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of the book, The Savvy Senior

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

HOME & LIFESTYLE

Some Things Just Don’t Mix in the Kitchen

BY GAIL JOKERST My husband often uses an expression he learned from his grandmother and that recently surfaced from memory. It goes something like this: “If you are half as smart as you think you are, you won’t do that again.”

It seems I’ve been granted many opportunities to relearn lessons I wish had been mastered the first time around. This is especially true when I multi-task in the kitchen because I’m fussing over how long a particular task takes. That approach usually lands me in the Monopoly equivalent of going directly to Jail without passing GO or collecting $200.

My latest reminder of the virtues of staying single-focused came unpredictably in the form of granola. I make it from scratch, tossing in whatever dried fruits, nuts, and seeds that currently reside in my refrigerator.

It’s simple enough to prepare, but it does require patience.

The baking process is slow, taking about 90 minutes in 300-degree heat, to avoid burning the almonds and coconut while the moistened oats dry out.

In the past, I never attempted to bake anything else while the granola crisped in the

oven. Occasionally stirring the mixture held in two large pans and rotating the pans between two shelves has always kept me busy enough.

However, this one evening, I thought I could save time and let my oven do double duty. Instead of making only granola, I decided to also bake a five-hour beef stew simultaneously.

Since the two recipes called for the same temperature, I considered this a dandy idea.

Why waste electricity? Why not use the third oven shelf? Why bake the granola later?

Why, indeed!

As I pondered whether this was really such a smart move, a certain memory niggled at my thought. Years ago, friends bought a few groceries for me, including chocolate croissants and cumin from the bulk spice section of a natural-foods store 160 miles away. They enjoyed a three-hour scenic drive home on a warm summer’s day with the croissants nestled in a paper bag and the cumin, in a plastic bag, cozied up next to it.

The next morning when I bit into a croissant, I surprised my taste buds with an unexpected flavor sensation.

To my dismay, the pungent scent of cumin had usurped the sweet taste of chocolate with a seasoning I prefer to enjoy in chili and

hummus rather than in a breakfast treat.

This may have occurred 20 years ago but— trust me on this—a cumin-laced chocolate croissant is something you don’t forget.

And even before that, another opportunity to imbibe the lesson of dueling flavors came my way while touring an herbal tea factory.

When our guide walked us past the peppermint room, she explained how quickly they learned that peppermint needed to be stored in a separate space. Nothing short of a concrete-walled room, minus any ventilation, could keep the potent odor from infiltrating the other seasonings used in their special blends.

So there I stood by the stove many moons later with two gustatory case histories to ignore at my peril.

If you have ever fixed a pot of beef stew or eaten a bowlful, you know that beef, carrots, celery, and potatoes are key ingredients, plus another item I should have paid more attention to—onions.

As I discovered, onions possess the same permeating ability as cumin and mint. Despite being encased in a hefty cast-iron Dutch oven with a secure lid, that distinctive aroma escaped its environs. Admittedly, my peeking under the lid to check on the stew several times was not in the granola’s best interest either.

Fortunately, the cereal wasn’t rendered as inedible as those croissants. I can mask the slight hint of onion with maple yogurt to subdue the interloper. But next time around, I won’t be sharing oven space with anything else while baking granola. At least I won’t if I’m half as smart as I think I am. MSN

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HOME & LIFESTYLE

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Copyright Tatiana Volgutova, Bigstock.com Copyright Almaje, Bigstock.com

SLOW-COOKIN’ COUNTRY BEEF STEW

By Gail Jokerst Aside from being a flavorful and satisfying meal, the beauty of this Amish stew is that it’s prepared in one baking dish and doesn’t require browning the meat first. Not only that, you don’t have to stir the stew once you’ve placed it in the oven. This adapted recipe comes from the pages of Cooking from Quilt Country by Marcia Adams.

INGREDIENTS << 2-½ pounds beef stew meat << 3 to 4 potatoes, peeled << 3 to 4 carrots, peeled << 2 ribs celery << 3 small onions << 28-ounce can diced tomatoes << ½ cup water << 5 tablespoons minute tapioca* << 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce << 1 tablespoon brown sugar << 1 teaspoon salt << ½ teaspoon black pepper << ½ teaspoon allspice << ¼ teaspoon dried marjoram << ¼ teaspoon dried thyme << 1 or 2 bay leaves << ½ cup fresh parsley, chopped DIRECTIONS Cut meat into serving pieces. Cut potatoes into pieces slightly larger than the meat. Cut carrots, celery, and onions into 1-inch pieces. Combine all the ingredients (except parsley) in a large Dutch oven or roasting pan. Mix very well, to distribute seasonings and tapioca. Bake covered at 300° for 5 hours. Do not stir while baking. Garnish with parsley before serving. * Because of the tapioca thickener, this stew doesn’t freeze well, so invite company over for dinner when you make this. Plan to eat leftovers for a while, or cut the recipe in half.

MAPLE-NUT GRANOLA

By Gail Jokerst Once you start eating homemade granola, don’t be surprised if you end up forsaking all commercial brands and begin perfecting your own recipe.

Granola is such adaptable breakfast fare, you can toss in any number of different nuts, seeds, and dried fruits to please your own tastes. This adapted recipe is from www.eatingwell.com.

INGREDIENTS << 5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cooking) << 1 cup unsweetened coconut chips or flakes << ½ cup sliced almonds << ½ cup pecans, coarsely chopped << ½ cup brown sugar << ½ cup unsalted raw pumpkin seeds << ½ cup unsalted raw sunflower seeds << ½ cup pure maple syrup << ½ cup water << ¼ cup unflavored vegetable oil (i.e. safflower, corn, canola) << 1 cup dried fruit (Your choice of dried cranberries, cherries, apples, unsweetened banana chips, or raisins. A variety is nice.)

DIRECTIONS Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Combine oats, nuts, brown sugar, and seeds in a large bowl.

Blend together syrup, water, and oil, then pour over oat mixture. Stir until well combined and the oats are moistened. Spread the mixture onto two large, rimmed baking sheets (12-by-15-inch or larger).

Line the pans with silicone baking sheets to keep the granola from sticking, or coat them lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 30 minutes, then stir the granola. Repeat in 30 minutes. During the next 20-30 minutes, watch, so the granola doesn’t brown too deeply. I remove it from the oven when the almond slices and large coconut flakes look golden and are crisp. Place each pan on a cooling rack, and stir ½ cup of the dried fruit mixture into each. Let it cool completely before storing.

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HOME & LIFESTYLE

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

Getting Ready to Get Ready For Next Year’s Garden

gardens in the north for many years are available now. For example, I have tried different kinds of spaghetti squash because I prefer they not be so large when they ripen. Basil has been a huge success. I have started planting several rows of field peas in different garden locations, Serious gardening involves spending time in that pursuit, even to organically build up the soil. in the winter and early spring months. The following tasks demand KEEP A DIARY mostly brain power, and that can be completed in the warmth of your Start a notebook to quickly write with dirty fingers what was home or potting shed on a sunny day. successful and what failed for various reasons. If you don’t do this, RESEARCH FOR IDEAS you will forget and make the same Check out the latest informamistakes year after year. If you tion on gardening through new already have a garden diary, now gardening books, the County is the time to check out what you Extension Service, or the Internet. hastily wrote last summer.

Doing some reading provides tips TEST YOUR OLD SEEDS for both novice and seasoned garGo through your box of old deners. There is always something seeds, and pull out any that you new to learn. might use in the coming season.

MARK YOUR CATALOGS Then test them by putting 10 seeds Pull out several seed catalogs in a damp paper towel, to determine and read about new varieties. Select the percentage that germinate. seed companies located in the same With this procedure, you won’t growing zone as your garden. waste garden space with seeds that Although companies sell seed to won’t grow. one another, they will also grow START EARLY their own locally acclimated seed.

Start seeds that require a longer Mark pages containing information Get an early start on seeds that require a longer growing season than is provided growing season than is provided in on seed you plan to purchase. Next, in your part of the country. They should be large enough to go into the ground as your part of the country. These are determine which catalog has the soon as the outside soil warms up. Photo © juliedeshaies, Bigstock.com plants that should be large enough greatest number of seed types you to go into the ground as soon as the soil warms. Use potting soil in have marked. containers with a hole punched in the bottom for drainage. In addition Try to stay with one or two catalogs, to avoid expensive shipping to melons, I plant tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, and flowers—like and handling costs, then order early to take advantage of dated coupetunias—but you may choose other plants. I put them on a table next pons. Also, this is the time to decide what seed you want to buy locally. to a kitchen window so I can keep the pots moist.

Having seed on hand deters the frustration of not being prepared when CLEAN AND PREP you are ready to plant.

Clean out the potting shed and sharpen tools and lawn mower EXPERIMENT blades. Inventory and purchase, if need be, items such as deer fence, If there’s room FOR OLD FISHING TACKLE & OTHER SPORTING ITEMS chicken wire fencing for peas, trellises for climbing beans, and cages in your garden, Lures - Reels - Rods - Creels - Tackle Boxes - Knives - Guns for tomatoes. experiment with a PLAN YOUR PLOT new plant each year.

CALL RANDY Refer to the previous years’ garden diagram, and decide where you Vegetables previously Cell: 620-704-2737 will plant each vegetable. In addition to generally rotating seeds to unavailable to those Office: 406-295-8910 different garden spots, determine which plants might shade others, of us who have raised which need more sun, which will need to run out the edge of the garden onto the grass, and which will complement others. Make a diagram you can take to the garden when it’s time to plant.

TEST YOUR SOIL You can put various soil samples from your garden plot into a zip-lock bag, to take to your County Extension Service and get tested.

The analysis will determine the types of fertilizer you might add later in the spring.

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

HOME & LIFESTYLE

Get Rid of That Unwanted Stuff

PAGE 19

YOUR GUIDE TO A SUCCESSFUL RUMMAGE SALE

BY KIMBERLY BLAKER Are your garage, basement, and closets overflowing from the heaps of stuff you’ve been saving “just in case?” If so, it may be time to put those languishing piles to good use—in someone else’s home. Rummage sales are a great way to clear out, recycle, and make some extra cash. Follow these suggestions for a successful sale and a clutter-free home.

THE STOREFRONT A garage is usually the best place to hold a sale offering shelter and requiring little daily set up and tear down. If your garage is hard to get to, hidden from view, or contains valuables that can’t easily be hidden, use a covered porch or patio or your yard. Keep plenty of tarps available for protecting your goods from rain and for covering at the end of the day.

ALL IN THE TIMING Typically, the best days to hold sales are Thursdays through Sundays, with Fridays and Saturdays bringing the most traffic. Mornings bring the most significant flow of shoppers, and the earlier, the better. If you open by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m., rummagers will flock.

DISPLAYING YOUR WARES Don’t heap your merchandise on tables or leave it in boxes to be ransacked. While some don’t mind digging through messy stacks, most people won’t bother.

Hang as much clothing as possible. Use a laundry pole or portable closet, or install two support brackets and a closet rod. You can also support a ladder between two stepladders. If you have few clothing items, a clothesline will do.

Plenty of table space is a must. Borrow folding tables, and if you run out, make a table by resting a sheet of plywood over sawhorses, or prop spare planks of wood between chairs. Keep all but big items off the floor for better visibility.

Neatly fold and stack clothing that can’t be hung on tables, and label stacks according to size. Organize good toys and complete sets where parents and grandparents will easily spot them. Set up a ‘guys’ table with hand tools, gadgets, electronics, and home repair items. Place small articles such as jewelry in divider containers or egg cartons, so they are easy to view.

One exception to the disorderly rule is for small toys. Stick all these little goodies in boxes on the ground where young children can dig for treasures to take home. Label

on age and condition. Most used merchandise will bring 5 to 10 percent of replacement cost at best.

ADVERTISING Newspaper classified ads or Craigslist usually bring the best results, unless you live on a main street or a heavily traveled highway.

Include your address and main cross streets, dates and time of your sale, as well as what you’ll be selling. List big items individually and the categories of items you’ll sell, such as “tools” or “toddler clothing.”

Also, post fliers on grocery store or laundromat bulletin boards, and if there are no regulations against doing so, post signs on nearby corners. Don’t forget a bright sign in front of your house and balloons.

TIPS FOR SUCCESS The bigger the sale, the more traffic you’ll get. Go in with family, friends, and neighbors, and hold one big sale rather than several small ones.

Hold a street or subdivision-wide sale.

This will draw people from surrounding areas.

Move big items such as furniture or appliances into the driveway to attract passersby.

MSN

Photo © ennira, Bigstock.com

boxes according to the price per item or allow children to choose one as a prize.

Finally, make sure batteries and electricity are available to show that items are in working condition.

NEXT TO NEW SELLS Appearance plays a big roll in the sale of used goods and how much they can bring.

Wash and dry all clothing and linens, then fold or hang immediately to prevent wrinkles. Wash dust, dirt, and grime from toys, tools, and household items. Repair broken merchandise when feasible.

PRICED TO SELL Don’t overprice, or you’ll wind up packing up nearly as much as you started with. For big items, look through classified ads for average resale prices. Some top quality items in likenew condition can bring 25 to 35 percent of the replacement cost. Occasionally, tools, equipment, and other things in small supply can be priced higher and could sell for 50 to 60 percent of replacement cost, depending

Kimberly Blaker is a lifestyle and parenting freelance writer and blogger. You can visit her blog, The Young Gma’s Guide to Parenting, at: www.theyounggma.com

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PAGE 20

Inspiration

THOUGHTS•PEOPLE•STORIES•PLACES

Never Letting the Romance Fade: Amy and Lowell Jaeger of red roses, elicited smiles and high hopes for

BY GAIL JOKERST the suitor. What happened next, though, made the scene even more special. When the woman To see someone at an airport holding a for whom the sign was meant drew closer, the sign with a person’s name on it is admittedly man lowered a second sign inscribed with just not much of a novelty these days. But to see one word, “Again.” someone holding a sign that reads “Marry The man turned out to be the current Me,” well, that’s another story.

Montana Poet Laureate, Lowell Jaeger. The For deplaning passengers at Glacier Park woman was none other than his wife of 20 International Airport one October night, that years, Amy. very public proposal, complete with a bouquet “My heart was overwhelmed with how sweet this was of him to do,” recalled Amy, who was returning from a trip to Colorado that evening. “I just kissed and hugged him and said, yes, you bet, absolutely!”

A few months prior, the couple had considered renewing their vows in front of friends and family, to celebrate their 20 years together. Fifteen years earlier, they had done that very thing on a Mediterranean cruise and looked forward to a future renewal.

However, unexpected family obligations kept it from happening this time around.

Instead, Lowell did the next best thing. He hand-wrote and decorated two signs, bought some roses, and took them to the airport that evening. And if that wasn’t surprise enough for his wife, chocolate pie and whipped cream awaited her at their Bigfork home.

Aside from being Lowell’s bride and best friend for two decades, Amy is also his partner in adventure. Whether the dream takes them to Mexico for the Monarch Butterfly migration or along Big-sky backroads (also known as Senior Commodity Program or Senior Nutrition) visited more by critters than cars, she’s on board wherever the journey leads. Should they get lost or get You may now find it at Family Service a parking ticket, it 1824 1st Avenue N in Billings matters not to either of them.

“We work together really well. If one of us makes a mistake, we roll with it,” noted Amy. “You don’t want to damage the spirit of someone you love because he made a wrong choice. That Those currently participating in the program are welcome just makes the person feel so much worse. A Monday through Friday 9:00am–4:00pm bad decision isn’t the end of the world.”

If you would like to register for the program or have Another favorany questions concerning the program please ite pastime for the call Stacy Brown at (406) 384-0054.

Jaegers is reading a book aloud at home together or when Lowell is seated behind the steering wheel.

“She reads; I 1824 1st Avenue N in Billings listen; and then we talk,” said Lowell, an English professor

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at Flathead Valley Community College for over 30 years. “There’s a deeper connection through reading aloud than with an audio book. We pay more attention, and it generates conversation. It gets us both involved, for sure. Amy has read us classics like Moby Dick as well as contemporary fiction, such as All The Light We Cannot See. It varies a lot.”

They considered Five Love Languages so enlightening, they want to read it again. It helped them realize that people experience and express love differently. Gift giving and doing acts of kindness are two of those five languages. The former is often Amy’s way of showing affection while Lowell’s is the latter.

“We have learned—and are still learning—to work at never letting romance fade with time. We’ve struggled like everyone,” admitted Lowell.

“You’ve got to keep romance in the forefront of thought of what’s important,” added Amy. “Lowell is definitely a romantic. He cooks me dinner almost every night, lights the candles, and has music playing. He checks to see what level I’m at after coming home from work and thinks about what we might want to do as a couple afterwards.”

While Lowell likes to putter in the kitchen, hand forge gold and silver jewelry, and compose poems that capture significant moments, categorizing the book titles in his library or balancing his checkbook would not be how he’d choose to spend a free afternoon.

“I love to inhabit my airhead space and be wonderfully unstructured,” he confessed.

“That could be chaos, but Amy brings tradition and structure to us. She’s the organizer, planner, and manager of our finances. She remembers anniversary and birthday dates.

I wouldn’t have the space to be myself, the romantic side, if she weren’t caring for all these other things. That’s taking care of you.

And I find that very romantic.”

“We bring opposite strengths to the relationship,” noted Amy, who describes herself as “detail focused and task oriented.”

Undoubtedly, maintaining a sense of order in their home comes more naturally to her than to her husband. An example of their different thought-modes that especially tickles her is a long-ago dinner at Lowell’s home when they began dating.

“He asked me to get a can of green beans from the pantry. It was so full of things, I couldn’t find the beans. I asked Lowell where they were, and he told me the cans were alphabetized,” laughed Amy. “Of course they weren’t. That was something I’d have done, but not him. It was just his sense of humor coming through.”

One axiom this couple understands is that you sometimes have to forsake familiar patterns of behavior that no longer work for you in order for a relationship to grow. As Amy said, “You gain and learn as you do. But you gain nothing if you don’t try.”

Their willingness to take risks stems back to the time when they met, and Amy was one of Lowell’s students. Both had been married previously and knew that getting involved

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

JOIN OUR

might be unwise because of past emotional baggage. In addition, they were each single-parenting young children. But a strong mutual attraction and the ability to talk to each other as equals about most everything overrode any hesitancies they may have felt about their compatibility or age difference.

“She was unusually mature. I was unusually immature,” admitted Lowell. “Being artistic is being a lifelong kid.”

Although he may have perceived childlikeness as a possible weakness, to Amy it was a strength because she had always approached life seriously. Lowell’s sense of playfulness, so obvious in a classroom setting, released a new way of thinking for her.

“He taught me to access my creativity instead of just thinking about work and the future. His teaching style made me focus on what I was doing and not on the grade,” recollected Amy. “I was playing with a whole different part of my brain and loved it.”

Like all couples, the Jaegers have faced their share of challenges, including times when they didn’t communicate especially well with each other. But they have always kept going forward to figure things out, and that has made their bond all the stronger.

“We’ve learned what hurts one another and try not to do those things anymore. We know there will be an opportunity to mend a fence if we’re patient,” said Amy. “It takes the priority of remembering that life without this relationship wouldn’t be as rich as it is with it. You give up something to get something.”

Considering their zest for adventure and willingness to take risks, it makes sense that this twosome would see marriage as the

INSPIRATION

biggest adventure of all.

“Marriage is a learning by doing. It never ends,” stated Lowell. “Relationships require constant effort, but the payoff is worth it. In the end, human relationships are all you’ve got. There is nothing else.” MSN Gail Jokerst is a longtime contributor to Montana Senior News and Idaho Senior Independent. Visit her website at www.gailjokerst.com.

NOW IT’S A HOUSE ALL MY OWN I say, as I watch your tail lights fade and the kids in the backseat wave goodbye. I stare down the empty drive, try to remind myself I should be glad.

Then clear the breakfast leftovers, still warm, your napkin secretly unfolding itself as I carry your plate across the kitchen. Till I spy the lipstick kiss in the creases

PAGE 21

of one man’s mumblings. Or I muse over something you said, the language that passes between us unspoken. Maybe I stop, press to my face the sleeve of your coat where it hangs on its peg in the hallway. Or laugh at myself peeling potatoes at the sink, the sunset burning orange across the lake outside the window, the thought of you standing soon here beside me kindling a glow on my horizon. I light candles. Turn the stereo low and soothing, our favorite Spanish tunes.

Your plate, fork, knife, spoon, and the kids’ and mine each in place.

Your headlights flash up the drive.

Smell the roast bubbling in its juices?

Same wall, floors. Everything’s the same and not, I say.

Now it’s a home.

—Poem by Lowell Jaeger

and I’m tempted by the scent of you to write all this down, the nameless art of lives entwining.

No simple task, and the cause I’ve little else accomplished late in the afternoon...but this promise to tell you how these same walls and floors are not the same when you’re not in the room.

How this house when it’s all my own is lusterless as I am without you.

How I roam kitchen to dining room, upstairs and downstairs, while the furniture fidgets in the uncomfortable silence

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

PAGE 22

A Puppy Love Story

BY SAM BEESON The young boy stood nervously on the stage, aware that everyone was watching him.

“Contemplate.”

“Compemplate.”

He blushed. What was he doing here?

“Contemplate.”

“Conpenplate.”

He began to hear groans and sighs from some of the other students who were all watching this nobody making a fool of himself.

“Contemplate.”

“Comtemplate.”

Dang. Almost had it that time.

The young man thought about what brought him to this point in time standing on his high school’s stage being coached during a rehearsal for the school play on how to say a word that most elementary school kids could utter.

“Conpenplate?” He just couldn’t get it.

The play’s director decided to move on and coach the young man later on how to pronounce simple words.

That young man, was me. Shy for most of my life, when I entered high school I did something that was completely unexpected and out of character, I tried out for the school play. To everyone’s surprise, especially my own, I got a part in the school’s production of

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“Lost Horizons.” But I had to say that word.

And I just couldn’t.

One of the other students watching this spectacle on stage was a young woman. She could say “contemplate,” and couldn’t understand why this freshman simply couldn’t manage it. No doubt, she believed that this would be his one and only play and that he would disappear into the rabble of nameless, faceless others at a large metropolitan high school.

Eventually, with patient coaching from the play’s director, I finally mastered the word, and have rarely screwed it up since.

Furthermore, the experience awakened a part of me that I never even knew existed. A love for the performing arts. I was hooked. From that point on, I spent every hour of free time in the school’s drama department, both on stage and behind the scenes. I became a card carrying member of the theater clique.

I developed a fascination with stage lighting. So I was recruited into running the lighting for various school functions, including choir concerts. One day, I was running the lights for a concert. A friend of mine was in the lighting booth with me. Boys being boys, we decided to rate the best looking girls in each row of the choir. One of the members of the choir was the same young woman, now a casual friend, who thought I was so inept for not being able to say the word “contemplate.”

She would routinely tease me about this and we would both laugh at my awkwardness. But anyway, as we picked the girls we thought were cutest in each row, we got to this young woman’s row. I didn’t pick her.

“What about Jennifer?” My friend asked.

I still remember the moment as if it happened yesterday. I stared for a moment at her, and something strange happened. I fell in love, though I would not admit it for months.

“Yeah. You’re right. It’s Jennifer.”

Jennifer and I developed a close, platonic relationship. At one time, we were both in other relationships that had their typical teenage problems. We would confide in each other. We would talk on the phone nearly every night, telling secrets, sharing stories, and making sure we both understood that we were “just friends.”

It was in my sophomore year, and her junior year, that we both finally realized what our friends already knew. We became a couple (which is a whole ‘nother story for a later time). Not only a couple, we became THE couple. The “power couple” as a friend described us.

When Jennifer was 17, her mother and step father moved out of state, but Jennifer stayed behind living with a sister in order to keep our relationship together. Eventually, her sister moved out of state, and Jennifer was left with no family at all here, but she still stayed.

There was never any doubt that Jennifer and I would someday be married. Rarely was one of our names mentioned without the other close behind. It was destiny, kismet, or sheer chance.

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS You see, we came from completely different backgrounds. In fact, we shared very little in common. But we persevered. Her unique qualities and mine combining to create a couple with a wide variety of interests and passions.

This is not to say there haven’t been bumps.

We certainly had our share. But through it all there was a common denominator. No matter what life threw at us, we would see it through together, and we have.

PAGE 23

As of this writing, we are facing our 34th year of marriage, and our 41st year as a couple.

We recognize that most childhood sweetheart stories do not end like ours. But this should serve to show that some can.

And that love can find and change an awkward boy standing on a stage. And it is never too late, nor too early to find it.

And that is something to contemplate. MSN

Lovers Forever the slots, poker, or blackjack. When I see someone in my age range who is attractive to me, I will smile and say, “You look like you’re dressed to do some real gambling.”

That often sets off a conversation. Sometimes it will lead to a drink, My favorite song when I was a teenager growing up in the green lunch, or dinner. Of course being the gentleman my parents raised, hills of western Pennsylvania in the 1950s and ‘60s was “Time Waits I will pay, even though some women For No One,”’ by Jimmy Sacca and the insist on sharing the bill.

Hilltoppers. I still remember some of the I find that today’s woman loves lyrics: Time waits for no one, it passes humor, but she is also looking for a you by, it flows like a river, going on to man who is sensitive toward who she is the sky... and what interests her. When I talk to In my youthful years, the words someone new, I always take this intowere romantic, conjuring images of a cognizance and try to talk about things lasting love that we all seek, but which that interest her. Women appreciate this seems to come to so few. But now that approach, and I rarely get a rejection I have reached retirement age and my when I use this. hair—what’s left of it—has whitened, I I met an attractive woman in her understand much better what Sacca was late 50s in a restaurant. She was with singing about. her mother waiting in line to be seated Dating when you are over the retirewhen I approached them with a smile ment age is not an easy thing. and said, “It’s always nice to see two The world has changed, women have sisters dining out together.” They burst changed (and guys, too), and relation- Photo © Cartoon Resource, Bigstock.com into laughter, and we ended up seated at ships between men and women have the same table for a very pleasant hour. changed dramatically.

Romance never dies. People grow older, but the love spark remains I have been divorced for over a dozen years. I was brought up by a in them forever. Cherish it, make the flame burn brightly, and you will loving mother who taught me chivalry and to be courteous to membe pleasantly surprised at what it does for your life. bers of the opposite sex. I still enjoy a harmless flirt and despite the I love it when a woman comes back at me with a fast rejoinder when politically correct world many people live in, I don’t think it’s sexist I say something to her. I was in a lounge in Phoenix, Ariz., recently to let a woman know I appreciate how well she has kept herself and when I approached two women seated near the piano bar. that I appreciate the way she looks.

I said to one of them, “What’s the worst pickup line you Since I write for a gambling website in Sydney, Australia, I spend ever heard?” much of my time in casinos and poker rooms, gathering data for my She grinned and replied, “The one you just used.” MSN columns. Quite a few women who are divorced go to the casinos to play

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PAGE 24

Fluffy Critters PET TIPS•BREEDS•CARE•GROOMING

Hazards to Dogs Abound PROTECT YOUR PET FROM THESE HOUSEHOLD ITEMS, DOG TOYS, AND HEAT containers. Then, when you dispose of chip bags, cut them down the sides just in case your dog finds its way into the trash.

BY KIMBERLY BLAKER TOXIC FOODS Many foods that are perfectly healthy for humans are toxic to The last thing any dog owner wants is for their beloved family pet to dogs. Grapes and raisins can cause acute kidney failure and death in experience a life-threatening emergency. Unfortunately, many dangers dogs. Chocolate can to dogs are things be fatal to both cats pet owners least and dogs. Anything expect. During 2016 sweetened with alone, the ASPCA xylitol can cause Animal Poison hypoglycemia, liver Control Center hanfailure, seizures, dled 180,639 calls and death to pets. about pets exposed Salty foods can also to toxins. In addibe a problem and tion, hundreds of can cause sodium thousands of pets ion poisoning as are treated or die well as excessive from a broad varithirst and urination ety of preventable in pets. accidents each year.

HEAT EXHAUSTION The following are a Any dog can few risks to your dog experience heat and what you can do exhaustion, but to protect Fido. certain breeds CHIP BAGS are especially Numerous dogs prone to it. Shortand cats have sufsnouted breeds are focated to death in at increased risk chip and treat bags.

Photo © Javier Brosch, Bigstock.com because of their In many cases, pet shortened breathing system. But even some dogs with longer muzzles owners or their kids have left food bags out within their dog’s reach. are at high risk as well. Be sure to research your breed to determine But in many more instances, dogs have gotten into the trash or even how well it can tolerate heat. cupboards and accessed the bags. Make a habit of storing snack bags Regardless of the breed, dogs should never be left outdoors without in upper cabinets. Better yet, empty snacks into plastic food storage shade during warm weather, nor should they be left in cars when temperatures exceed 40 or 50 degrees outside. In the sun, cars can heat up to 30 to 40 degrees above the outdoor temperature within a brief time. Dog owners should also be careful not to overexercise their dogs and always pay close attention to their dog’s signals of distress.

Comfortable & Affordable Apartments Symptoms of heat exhaustion include heavy panting, a swollen tongue, the tongue hanging out the side of the dog’s mouth, excesNow Accepting Applications for Seniors! 62+ sive drooling, frequently trying to lie down, or an irregular or fast heartbeat. If your dog shows signs of heat exhaustion, it needs to cool down immediately. Try to get your dog into the shade or preferably air conditioning. You can also put your dog in a tub of cool, but not • Income Based Rent, HUD 202 PRAC • On-Site Parking icy, water, or use the hose to cool him off. Another option is to apply • On-Site Community Administrator • Mailboxes on Premises an ice pack to the head, but don’t feed ice to a dog that’s overheated • Service Coordinator to connect • Utilities included as this can be dangerous to your pet. you with resources • Community Room Available LIT CANDLES • Free On-Site Laundry When pets are around, candles are even more dangerous than Call (406) 281-8329 or (800) 253-4091 TTY usual. First, pets can easily knock over a lit candle and cause a fire, 262 Wicks Lane • Billings but dogs, with their rambunctiousness or wagging tails, can also get burned. In addition, burning candles, particularly scented ones, are bad for your pet’s health. Save candle burning for occasions when you can restrict your pet from the room. If nothing else, place candles high enough your pet can’t reach them, but make sure the flame isn’t too close to the ceiling or the underside Our program serves orphaned pets and Legacy of Care of another shelf.

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS LIGHTERS These make interesting little chew toys for dogs of all sizes.

Lighters puncture easily with just a light chomp, causing an explosion in your dog’s mouth. This can cause a serious burn and also force shrapnel to lodge in your dog’s mouth or throat. Keep lighters well out of your dog’s reach.

DANGEROUS PET TOYS Rope tug toys—There are multiple issues with rope-tug toys that make them hazardous both to pets and humans. First, playing tugof-war with dogs is known to increase their aggression. It can also damage your dog’s teeth. Of even greater concern are the strings in these toys. Dog’s are known to unravel or shred these rope toys and ingest the strings, which then get tangled around the dog’s organs.

This is a life-threatening situation that’s required many emergency surgeries and has also led to death.

Rawhide—The first problem with this leather chew toy is that rawhide is treated with chemicals that are harmful to dogs. Plus, dogs can’t digest rawhide. In addition to posing a choking hazard when dogs swallow the rawhide, countless dogs have required surgical removal of the rawhide from their stomachs or intestines.

Squeaky toys—Usually made of soft rubber or cloth, these toys are easy for dogs to chew up or rip apart. This leaves the small round squeakers, which are the perfect size for dogs to swallow and choke on.

Tennis and other small balls—To dogs, tennis balls make great chew toys. Unfortunately, they’re easy to tear apart, posing a choking

FLUFFY CRITTERS

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hazard. If you have a large dog, it doesn’t even have to tear the ball apart for it to be a danger. Large dogs can easily swallow tennis balls, a problem that has caused many dog fatalities.

Kong and other toys with a hole—Rubber toys or balls with a hole large enough for a dog to fit part or all of its tongue into are hazardous.

Such holes are common in Kongs and other similar dog toys that are designed to hold treats. When a dog sticks its tongue into the hole, it creates a vacuum, and the dog’s tongue gets stuck. This causes the dog’s tongue to become engorged, cutting off circulation. Many dogs have required emergency tongue amputations, and some have even died as a result. To prevent the suction from occurring, make sure there’s an additional hole on the other side of the toy large enough, so air can flow through freely.

PLAY IT SAFE This is only a partial list of the many toys that pose hazards to pets.

There are no controls in the dog toy market, and most pet stores sell countless toys that are known to be unsafe. Before investing in a new toy for your dog, research the toy online to make sure it’s safe. MSN Kimberly Blaker is a lifestyle and parenting freelance writer and blogger. You can visit her blog, The Young Gma’s Guide to Parenting, at www.theyounggma.com

Bad Breath Could Be a Sign of Poor Health (StatePoint) If you’ve ever experienced dry mouth, you know how uncomfortable it can be.

Unfortunately, your pet can get dry mouth too, and it can lead to more serious issues down the line and can also be a sign of more serious current health issues.

Dry mouth is a condition where saliva loses its protective benefits and leads to an overgrowth of odor-causing bacteria and plaque accumulation, as well as increases the risk of periodontal disease.

While such diseases as diabetes can contribute to dry mouth in pets, the most common cause is medication. What’s more, it is believed that medications increase the risk of developing complications due to dry mouth by 40 percent. This side effect is far-reaching. Medications for allergies, anxiety, urinary incontinence,

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osteo-arthritis pain, heart conditions, high blood pressure and more can all contribute to dry mouth.

While most pet parents are not aware their furry friends have dry mouth because they may still drool even with the condition, watching out for bad breath can help, as it is often a red flag that something is wrong.

Experts say that you don’t need to wait until this becomes an issue to protect your pet’s health.

“Prevention is always the best medicine,” says Pamela K. Bosco, president of Pet King Brands.

Bosco recommends using oral care products that don’t require brushing. They contain water additives, breath freshening sprays, and brushless toothpaste gels and have enzymes working to replenish what is missing in order to help restore healthy oral flora, as well as destroy odor-causing bacteria and remove plaque biofilm. The products can help prevent complications from dry mouth and will benefit any age of dog or cat, especially those on medications or those pet parents averse to brushing. ISI

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PAGE 26

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Review: Adventures of A Montana Misfit (LYLE MANLEY, SWEETGRASS BOOKS, 2014 [ VOL.1] AND 2016 [VOL.2];

BY AARON PARRETT Between them, the two volumes of Lyle Manley’s memoir, Adventures of a Montana Misfit and More Adventures of a Montana Misfit, run to nearly a thousand pages.

Subtitled “Coming of Age in the 1950s and 60s,” Manley’s books detail with good humor and hard-earned wisdom the experience of moving through the awkward teenage years into adulthood in various parts of Montana.

The entire enterprise is consummately charming, from the black-cover blurb from the author’s mother (“Please buy this book. I’m pretty sure he needs the money.”) to the self-deprecating humor artfully sustained throughout the book.

Manley’s experiences will speak to anyone who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, as he so thoroughly documents his memories and impressions of life in those decades as seen through the eyes of an intelligent, if slightly awkward, young man.

When Manley was 8 years old, his father uprooted the family from the Edenic paradise of southern California and relocated to Pony, Mont. Eventually, the Manley clan settled for a time in Bozeman but then moved to Great Falls, where Lyle graduated from Great Falls High in 1968.

Manley came of age during this migratory transition and seems to have kept extremely detailed notes of his life in those years. You would be hard pressed to find a more thorough reminiscence of a Montana upbringing than this book, which teems in descriptive detail

of what life was like in those years as seen (and felt) by a child transitioning to teenager.

Much of what Manley reflects on are experiences most readers will relate to with some similar experience of their own. Take, for example, this moving memory he shares of being 9 years old and spending time with his grandfather: “As I stayed longer that

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summer at my grandparents’ house, and as I heard the stories, I began to believe that Grandfather was thinking of his youth and young manhood. Perhaps he was thinking of this family that annoyed and delighted him in turn. This place was, maybe, his own, sunny, sage-scented vale with the small creek rushing along its cobbled bed and the old buildings perched on the hillsides and the evergreen trees crowding down and the dusty smell.”

The book contains many such vivid recollections, described in such compelling detail that Manley succeeds in making the reader understand both his own life and the experience of Montana in these years. Part of the success depends on Manley’s refusal to approach himself and his biography with the sort of overwrought self-importance that marks so many memoirs of the West.

He pokes fun of himself and his strange, but commonplace, family at every turn, as willing to catalogue his most embarrassing moments as he is his personal triumphs in love and letters.

Manley envisioned himself as a poet at a young age, noting in his characteristic style, for example, his realization on the kindergarten playground “that all really good poetry contained at least one brief allusion to the Isle of Nantucket—or a male inhabitant thereof—or, perhaps to some of the more obscure tenets of Confucianism.”

Readers will be grateful that, in spite of an intervening career in law and raising a family of his own, Manley returned to his roots and writing talent to deliver this singular biography to Montana letters. MSN

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(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay

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PAGE 27

OTIS REDDING, FEBRUARY 1968

BY RANDAL HILL Sittin’ in the morning sun I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes Otis Redding was at peace—sort of— when he began his best-known creation on a friend’s houseboat in Sausalito, Calif. On one lazy, sunny afternoon in 1967, Redding strummed his acoustic guitar and softly sang whatever lyrics drifted into his head.

He was going somewhere with a tune; he just didn’t know where.

L o o k s l i ke n o t h i n g ’ s g o n na change everything still remains the same Were those lines meant to be ironic? At that point, Redding was really all about change. He had wowed the (overwhelmingly white) crowd

at the recent Monterey Pop Festival. Aretha Franklin had taken his “Respect” to Number One on Billboard’s pop chart. He had been listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. He talked of starting his own record label.

Born in 1941, Redding had grown up in Macon, Ga., the home of Little Richard and James Brown, both early major influences.

Redding left school at age 15 and went on the road to sing with the Upsetters, Little Richard’s former backup group.

Later on, Redding hooked up—as lead singer—with another Macon outfit, Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers. They had scored a regional hit, called “Love Twist,” and Atlantic Records was showing interest.

In October 1962, Atlantic invited Jenkins to do some recording in Memphis. Jenkins didn’t drive, so Redding chauffeured his friend in a borrowed station wagon.

The Memphis house band that day included a future Redding collaborator, guitarist Steve Cropper. The Jenkins session never came

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together, but, in the studio that afternoon, Redding cut an original soul ballad called “These Arms of Mine.” It became the first of 21 hits he would record in his brief lifetime.

On October 4, 1967, Redding met with Cropper in a Memphis recording studio, to polish Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” “We knew we finally had the song that would cross him over to the pop market,” Cropper would say later.

But only Redding and Cropper believed in the future classic. The power people behind Volt Records (Otis’s label) hated what was offered and condemned the song as being too “pop” for Redding’s hard-core fans. Where was that signature Otis Redding soul? And what was with that ad-libbed whistling of Redding’s that showed up at the end?

Three days after finishing recording “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Redding died at age 26, when his small private plane slammed into a Wisconsin lake. He and his five-piece band, the Bar-Kays, had been heading to Madison for a club date. One band member survived the crash.

Steve Cropper ended up tinkering with Redding’s work by adding sound effects of lapping waves. The result was a fine point on what rock historian Dave Marsh once declared being “whole, fully realized and mature.”

Music fans obviously agreed; by the end of the century, “Dock” had earned a phenomenal six million spins on the radio. ISI

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

ENTERTAINMENT

Small Regional Wineries Are Winners

BY HOLLY ENDERSBY While the big-name cellars flourish in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, finding smaller wineries producing great wine at reasonable prices is still a fun challenge. In November, I ventured to the “cork district” in downtown Spokane, to see if we could find some underthe-radar wines that deserve more attention.

We weren’t disappointed.

BARILI CELLARS Barili Cellars is a young winery, producing its first vintage in 2007.

The tasting room is small and usually staffed by one of the owners.

I am a self-avowed red wine drinker, and a white has to be really good to grab my attention. Amazingly, Barili makes two that I found outstanding, both in taste and in price.

The 2016 sauvignon blanc had a luscious aroma, reminding me of

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gooseberries and ripe Niagara grapes of my childhood. This beautifully balanced white is from the Ancient Lakes AVA (American Viticulture Area, which denotes an area producing distinctive wines due to a combination of soil and climate found nowhere else) near Quincy, Wash.

This wine has no cloying sweetness, but instead has a lovely, lingering taste on the tongue that is what I would describe as simply mellow. It would be great with turkey, chicken, a mild white fish dinner, or with a creamy Havarti cheese pre-dinner. At $14 a bottle, this is a steal.

The second white from Barili also had me changing my mind about chardonnay. From the Ancient Lake AVA again, this 2016 offering was superb. It was barrel-fermented, which gave it a light touch of oak (I’m not a fan of heavy oak in a chardonnay, so, if you like that, this wine isn’t for you) and a delicious buttery taste and smooth mouth feel. It has a light bouquet, and the color is a luscious, gleaming gold.

This balanced chardonnay at $15 is something I would serve to the most discerning wine drinkers I know. Lightly seasoned grilled shrimp or smoked oysters would make an outstanding pairing with this wine.

Finally, a Barili red I loved was their $20 Double Barrel Red, a blend of 50 percent cabernet sauvignon and 50 percent syrah. This produces a really wonderfully smooth red, not overly acidic, that would be a terrific wine for people who say they don’t like reds. The blend holds its own and was the first wine Barili produced. Many blends seem nondescript, with no real character or memorable flavors, but that’s not the case here.

The Double Barrel Red is not overly sweet as I find many blends to be, nor is it bland. Rather, it is robust enough to handle beef and venison dishes very well. It has its own character, and I suspect it’s because the wine maker has limited the blend to two outstanding grapes.

I would serve this with a hearty winter elk stew or a selection of robust, red–sauced Italian dishes or a great big marinated beef steak for the grill.

COLTER’S CREEK WINERY Over the border in Idaho, in the tiny town of Julietta, south of Kendrick on Hwy 12, Colter’s Creek Winery has made a name for itself. The restaurant and tasting room in Julietta feature small plates of exceptionally well-prepared food that complement the wines produced from grapes grown in the region.

Named for a well-thought-of member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Colter’s Creek is now in the Lewis-Clark Valley AVA, a designation just assigned by the U.S. Government in 2016. The winery produced its first 300 cases in 2008 and has continued to make excellent wine from every vintage.

On the advice of a friend, a group of us tried the chardonnay, and it did not disappoint us. We had it with grilled wild salmon, and it’s a white that can stand up to the distinctive flavor of salmon without being overwhelming. It has just a touch of oak, but, most important, it

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS has a smooth, yet robust, flavor redolent of light, summer fruits, without any cloying sweetness to diminish this fine white wine.

Serve this chardonnay chilled, but not cold, letting it breathe for several minutes before pouring, and you will be awarded with a wonderful glass of fruit-forward flavor.

In addition to salmon, this wine would complement quiche, goat cheeses, and cream-sauced dishes. On hot summer days, this wine would be fabulous all on its own. With a price around $16, this is a white that is worth every penny.

Our next Colter’s Creek wine was their 2014 syrah, another recommendation from a friend.

Four of us eagerly decanted the bottle, let it tantalize us for about 20 minutes, then poured glasses to accompany smoked wild elk tenderloin.

One of the four of us is absolutely crazy for syrah, and she anointed this “one of the best,

Marble Grandma Is on A Roll

ENTERTAINMENT

no matter the price” of any she’s had. This is a drier red, rich in those wondrous polyphenols that research suggests may inhibit plaque in blood vessels. But most of us don’t drink wine for the potential health benefits: we drink it for the luscious flavors of summer packed into a bottle that can be opened in the dead of winter.

This syrah is redolent of dark fruits, deep, red ripe plums, and just a touch of pepper lingering in the mouth. It has enough character and integrity to age well but is not too young to open right now and enjoy with spicy Italian red sauces or aged, sharp cheeses.

It received a Gold Medal in the 2017 Savor NW Wine Competition and was called “outstanding” in the category of Best Rhones under $30 by Wine Press NW in 2016. We didn’t know this when we bought the bottle for just under $17, but the four of us agreed it was a stand-out wine we’d all buy again. ISI

and any other details that make those little orbs special. So far, she’s totaled 20,824.

Some are special commemorative or themed marbles (such as “Star Trek,” pre-emoji Smiley Faces or NFL, with the 49er logo embedded in the glass). Others look like sparkling gems.

BY DEBBIE ARRINGTON, THE SACRAMENTO BEE Many feature distinctive swirling designs like mini-spheres of Venetian When the grandkids glass. (and now great-grandAs a toy, marbles kids) come to visit, Judy are among the world’s Headley soon has them oldest games, dating on their knees. Along back about 3,000 years. with Grandma, they’re all Ancient Romans and laughing and hooting as Egyptians played marthey play an ancient game. bles. Native Americans “Nobody sits on the enjoyed marble games, couch with their heads too. Medieval folks in buried in their cellphones,” England and German got Headley proclaimed. down on their bellies to “When we get together, shoot little ceramic or we’re all playing marbles. carved stone balls. For Draw a big circle on the centuries, marble-based carpet and let ‘em shoot. games have been beloved “I’m the Marble in India, Africa and China.

Grandma,” she added.

“It’s really kind of “What would you expect?” a fascinating hobby,” Headley, 78, rolls out Headley said. “You learn her vast marble collecall this history.” tion for special occasions.

Judy Headley’s smallest marble is grouped Headley had colOtherwise, she has them among one with a smiley face and two 49er lected other things (most stashed in jars all over marbles in Citrus Heights. PHOTO BY RENEE C. notably vintage kitchen her Citrus Heights house.

BYER, SACRAMENTO BEE—TNS equipment). Her mounColor-coordinated glass tain of marbles all started simply enough during containers packed with marbles decorate the a cross-country trip. bathroom and kitchen. Over-sized “big boys” “In Kansas, I met a woman with a million or “boulders” fill gallon bottles (and almost marbles,” Headley need two people to move). Mason jars hold recalled. “She had so “beauties” and “catseyes” by the thousand. many marbles, she “I keep careful track of them,” she noted. didn’t know what to “You don’t want to lose your marbles.” do with them. They With the help of a tiny “Marble Memo” filled her basement, notebook, Headley recorded every marble she’s probably her whole ever gotten, how she got it, where it came from

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PAGE 29

house. She ended up giving them away to a museum.

“But I thought, marbles are so beautiful!

What a fun thing to collect! And you don’t have to dust marbles.”

So, Headley got her first $1 bag of 100 marbles more than three decades ago, she said, “probably from Toys “R” Us _ it’s before I started my notebook.”

And it just kind of rolled from there.

“I just love marbles,” Headley said. “I love the feel, the color. Obviously, they must be addictive.”

Judy and Mick Headley celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this year. His job, when needed, is to move the marbles around; a jar with 3,000 marbles weighs more than 25 pounds.

“It seems like she’s been collecting them forever,” Mick Headley said. “It doesn’t hurt that she’s living with a former marble champion _ but that was back when I was in grade school.”

While Mick was in the Air Force, the Headleys traveled the world, living in several different CONTINUED ON PAGE 31

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states and overseas. They settled in Citrus Heights about 40 years ago.

Marbles travel well, too, Judy Headley noted. They’re small, durable and easy to pack.

During World War II, marbles ranked among America’s favorite games. But their popularity died out during the 1970s as kids gravitated toward electronic entertainment.

Those early days of her collection were during a time when two grandsons and a daughter, Denise, lived with the Headleys.

“At the time, my sons were 5 and 7,” Denise Headley said. “They’re now 38 and 40 with kids of their own.”

“My grandsons had no idea what to do with them,” Judy recalled. “So, I got down on my knees and showed them; knuckle down, bony tight.”

“Knuckle down, bony tight” is the age-old marble greed. It refers to the proper way to hold a shooter between thumb and forefinger with the first knuckle on the ground.

ENTERTAINMENT

PAGE 31

The Headleys, who now have six great-grandchildren to go with five grandsons, kept up that marble tradition, teaching (closely supervised) youngsters how to shoot as soon as they were big enough to grasp a “peewee.” Due to knee replacements, Judy Headley does her shooting from a low chair. “It’s like riding a bike,” she said. “You never forget.”

Although some marbles can be quite valuable, Headley has spent little on her marble collection. Most of them were gifts or picked up at antique stores by the jarful.

“Everybody used to have marbles,” she said. “Now, they’re kind of hard to find.”

Her rarest marbles are little glazed ceramic spheres, dating back to the Civil War. Many are art marbles, valued by collectors for their colorful glasswork. But most were meant as toys.

“Some people might think I’m crazy,” Headley said, “but I know where all my marbles are.” MSN

Johnny’s Gone to War: Songs of the Civil War RICHARD BAKER, 2017

BY AARON PARRETT The new Old Folks at Home CD, Johnny’s Gone to War: Songs of the Civil War, is a particularly timely album of music for anyone noticing how feverish and polarized our American political situation has become. In some ways, it seems we’re still fighting the Civil War. But as horrific as the actual event was, the

album shows that Baker and his Old Folks at Baker played fiddle, banjo, and guitar, often Home Ensemble are preserving a tradition as doubling as second fiddle and sometimes enduring as the American Republic itself. MSN singing his own harmony vocals. He’s also joined by a few other musicians, including his son Lonnie Baker, who has made a name for himself as a phenomenal Celtic harpist, and drummer Matt Dela Mura.

The selections include Confederate Butte’s Only anthems, such as “Goober Peas,” “Dixie,” Mesquite Grill and “The Bonny Blue Flag,” as well as Union stalwarts, like “John Brown’s Body” and “The Lunch & Dinner Year of Jubilo.”

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That’s in part because Baker is steeped BE INSPIRED AT THE MYRNA LOY in an American musical tradition that hasn’t The Myrna Loy is where you go changed much since the Civil War: the tunes to be inspired, he specializes in—Appalachian old-time enrich your life, fiddle music—spring from a repertoire that make you think, actually can be traced back to the 17th century and lift your soul. and earlier, made up of songs and tunes that World- clas s per f ormanc e s w e e k l y, aw a r d -w i n n i n g f i l m s originated primarily in the British Isles. n i g h t l y, a n d a c o m m u n i t y When those tunes emigrated with their to share them with. players to America, they were transformed Senior Discounts / Everything’s Accessible and influenced by another musical tradition and history, this one belonging to the AfricanAmerican slaves and their descendants.

Part of what makes Americana music like this so richly and fundamentally “American” is that it reflects our multicultural heritage 15 N EWING \ HELENA and the often painful history of cross-cultural 406.443.0287 MYRNALOYCENTER.COM acrimony that gave rise to The Civil War. LOCALLY OWNED SINCE 1975.

It’s no wonder, then, that the Civil War musical repertoire continues to form the musical canon of 21st-century fiddlers.

Organic, Local Fruits & Vegetables Baker learned Organic & Natural Groceries & Dairy from mentors like Bulk Foods, Herbs, Teas & Spices Tommy Jarrell of Montana-Grown Beef, Chicken & Pork Mount Airy, N.C., who Supplements, Vitamins & Natural Remedies learned from fiddlers Award Winning Deli who had actually been DINE HERE OR TAKE OUT in the Civil War. And with its scratchy, 1096 Helena Ave • Helena, MT 59601 STORE HOURS: Monday-Saturday 8-8; Sunday 9-7 but soulful, fiddle (406) 443-5150 and lonesome vocal Menu on line at: www.realfoodstore.com arrangements, this

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liner notes remind us that “the war brought about three good results: It kept the union together, it ended two-and-a-half centuries of slavery, and it left a legacy of great music.”

The Old Folks at Home Ensemble playing this authentic Americana-period music consists of a lot of folks named “Baker”: Richard Bird Baker, Richard B. Baker, Richard Baker, Rich Baker, Rick Baker, Richie Baker, and Dick Baker, to name just three-quarters of the band.

Of course, those who are residents of Great Falls, Mont., where this album was recorded, will probably figure out that those are all aliases of a single man—a fellow whose friends know him as just Richard Baker.

Fans of Richard Baker often celebrate him as the guy who fiddled several times on the Late Show, impersonating David Letterman, to whom he bears an uncanny resemblance, or as the fellow whom Montana State Champion fiddler Michael Williams down in Helena called “the Human Jukebox” because he knows so many tunes and plays so many instruments.

Denizens of Cascade County know him as the guy who plays music with Diane Stinger at the KOA in the summertime—seven nights a week, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. For this engaging, 19-song collection,

LOY

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ENTERTAINMENT

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

Elder Harmony AN AGE OF LOVE

BY MICHAEL MURPHY Recently, I received an ad on my phone, plugging an app for a senior dating service. I honestly did not know such a thing existed so decided to check out a number of online dating sites. I have to say that I was surprised at the scale of this, apparently, burgeoning industry.

No doubt, such a service can come in handy nowadays when a person considers recent statistics that reveal that one out of four over-50 marriages is ending in divorce.

Of course, my interest in senior online dating sites is strictly academic, since I certainly am not having any problems in my marriage.

At least my wife has not told me about any major issues.

Oh, she expresses occasional complaints about some of my obsessions, like closing doors that she leaves open, turning off lights that she leaves on, and constantly unplugging the iron when not in use.

You know, stuff like that.

However, I feel that I have more than made up for such slight indiscretions by occasionally eating tofu for breakfast without one word of complaint. The first thing I noticed on one dating website’s home page was the ominous-sounding proclamation “You don’t have to be alone.” Like this is necessarily a bad thing? Besides, there are lots of cats, dogs, and parakeets out there seeking companionship—and any one of these is a financial bargain, compared to a new human partner.

But if finding a man or woman for companionship is a person’s goal, senior dating websites are full of helpful suggestions on how to get the “soulmate-search” ball rolling. Based on my research, if you compare how older men approach setting up the initial date using senior online dating sites to how women handle the same situation, you will see some pretty clear differences.

For many men, it’s like trick-or-treating. Sort of a “Just throw it in my bag and I’ll check it out when I get home” philosophy. For example, a man might respond to a picture in a woman’s posting like this: “You’re pretty cute; let’s get together.” And he might repeat that reaction to a hundred different women without having actually read any of their profiles.

Women, on the other hand, tend to first carefully read what the male candidates have to say. Once they have narrowed their list, they may go a step further and search the men on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

They’ll even discuss their options with close friends before deciding.

Come to think of it, the contrast in the behavior of these “mature” men and women is quite similar to that of the teenage boys and girls in my high school classes that I taught!

Here’s something to consider while pondering date choices: research shows that 35% of women prefer to date younger men. Now it’s fairly reasonable to guess that a similar percentage of men prefer to date younger women. Soooo. . . doesn’t that pretty much guarantee that the only way those particular folks are ever going to get together

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS is if they lie about their ages? Just wondering.

Once you have chosen someone to date, most sites have suggestions on how to prepare for the big event. Rediscover your inner glow.

I’m not really sure what this is, or that I ever had it to begin with, but if it’s anything like indigestion, I’ve got it covered.

Make a list of what you love about your body. Uh. . . this one is tough. However, I do take great pride in, and am very protective of, the three hairs remaining on my head. Have three “Go to” dating outfits in your closet.

All set here, except I have a heck of a time choosing between my red, green, or brown flannel shirts. Always take a bath or shower

ENTERTAINMENT

before your outing. Dang! This is turning out to be more work than I expected.

Seniors have numerous options on where to go for the first date. Restaurants and coffee houses appear to be the most popular spots mentioned on the dating websites, with the XXX aisle of a video store far down the list.

While out on the first date, one site points out that nerves can result in terse conversations like: Him: How’s your salad?

Her: Good. And yours?

Him: Yeah, really good.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with that

PAGE 33

topic, since it sounds exactly like something that my wife and I discuss nearly every time we go out to eat! I guess that you could liven up the conversation by tossing out some more stirring starter questions like: Who did you vote for in the last election? What went wrong between you and your ex? Have you ever had plastic surgery? And if you are a man with a strong death wish: Are you on a diet? MSN

RV Owners Forge Clubs, Friendships, Snowbird Mini-Communities

BY TREVA LIND, THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW

RV park for a length of time, you form a close-knit community of new friends you get to see every year when our weather turns cold,” Cody said.

Going to year-round events through Inland Empire Explorers is another way RV owners can enjoy the vehicles they purchased, said Jack Cady. He and his wife started going on RV outings about seven years ago with an older motor home. After he retired five years ago,

(TNS) Kennewick, Wash., resident LaDean Stice calls them her winter friends.

For about 17 years now, she and husband Cliff Stice have taken their motor home to an RV park in Yuma, Ariz., from November to March.

They look forward to seeing their snowbird neighbors who make the same annual pilgrimage from cooler climates in the U.S. and Canada.

The Stices, who have a 36-foot Itasca, rank among thousands of CONTINUED ON PAGE 35 RV owners routinely traveling south for winters and forming mini RV communities in warmer-climate states to soak in the sun and outdoor recreation.

HIGHEST QUALITY “You make some really good friends,” said Stice, 74.

SEASONAL DISHES “I line-danced with around 30 people this morning,” she said. “In FIRST CLASS SELECTION about half an hour, I’m going to play cards with a group of women, OF WINE & BEER so there are lots of things to do. My husband plays water volleyball CASUAL & INTIMATE with about 14 men who get into the pool.”

Spokane, Wash., residents Jack Cady, 72, and his wife Mary, 70, RESERVE OUR tend to stick closer to home, but they often take their RV to monthly PRIVATE DINING ROOM Winnebago group gatherings as members of Inland Empire Explorers.

The couple usually tow a truck behind the motor home. Sometimes 119 North Broadway • Billings / 406-294-9119 they load on kayaks or their bicycles. After parking their RVs at varMON–SAT: 11AM–Close/SUN: 10AM (Brunch 10AM–2PM / Dinner 2PM–Close) ious parks around the Northwest, they and others in Inland Empire Explorers head out to different activities.

“I play golf, and there are several interested people usually,” Cady said. “There are lots of activities. In Lewiston, there are car shows, and quite a lot of the ladies like to go to quilt shows. There’s camaraderie.”

Stice, president of Inland Empire Explorers, says the group involves about 25 Winnebago and Itasca RV owners. It’s a local chapter of the nationwide Winnebago Itasca Travelers, and a majority of the members live in Spokane, while others are from around the state. Dues are $20 a year.

“We have outings starting in April right through October,” Stice The Best and Largest Collection of Western Furniture, Fashion, Functional added. “We gather usually for three nights. We go to the ocean, all & Fine Art in Great Falls during the over. Two couples plan it, and they’re called wagon masters.”

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Stice and her husband in past months worked with another couple • Enjoy 125 Booths to plan a Coeur d’Alene outing.

• Live Music Nightly “We had 16 coaches, and usually there’s one potluck,” she said.

• The Celebration of Native Plains Artists “There’s one night where everyone goes out to dinner. There’s another get-together that’s relaxing with appetizers. There might be sightPacific Steel & Recycling 4 Seasons Arena seeing. We enjoy each other.”

ExpoPark • Great Falls, Montana Now, more people of the boomer generation are joining those ranks, Calico Rodeo Booth 120-123 as they retire or gain travel flexibility. www.thegreatwesternshow.com March 15-18, 2018 “I know that more and more people 50 to 65 are heading south for the winter,” said Steve Cody of DelCreek Productions, which produces the annual Inland Northwest RV Show and Sale at the Spokane County Fair and Expo Center.

“Home of Steer Montana” “Statistically, the 55-64 age group is the fastest-growing segment of RV buyers—55-64 increased to 11.1 percent, while 65-74 was 8.8 723 S. Main, PO Box 285, Baker, MT percent,” he said. “Boomers are having a huge (406) 778-3265 • FallonCounty.net effect.”

Those who are ages 50 to 65 also are contributing to a recent rise in long-term bookings Winter: 8AM-5PM, Monday-Friday, September-May at RV retirement parks, according to Cody.

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PAGE 34

Recreation

SPORTS•ACTIVITIES•FISHING•HUNTING•CAMPING

Citizen Science: Backyard Bird Count and Intermountain Bird Observatory

Get out your bird book, and identify this unusual backyard bird! BY ROGER PHILLIPS, IDFG

BY HOLLY ENDERSBY We see them every day. Small brown and black darts, zipping among shrubs, looking for berries or tasty insects. Or in great gray flocks, plowing the sky in giant wedges that land and graze, sheep-like, on rich, green fields.

If we’re lucky, we hear them every day, too, rat-a-tat-tatting on old growth Douglas fir or mournfully hooting in the dark nights of December, hoping to attract a mate or “cronking” as they glide like some modern-day pterodactyl onto ponds and streams.

Without birds, our world would be an impoverished place. And today, while some species have healthy populations, others are

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struggling. And that’s where you come in: as a citizen scientist, February 16-19.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is in its 21st year, and singles, couples, families, friends, beginning birders, and experts are all invited to participate. Co-sponsored by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, citizen-collected data helps develop an accurate picture of bird health across our nation and the world.

Birding has become one of the most popular hobbies in the U.S. In 2005, 60,616 checklists were compiled, compared with 181,343 checklists world-wide in 2017, giving a snapshot in time of 6,240 avian species.

This data helps scientists know what species need conservation efforts to keep them healthy and which ones are rebounding after habitat improvement efforts.

Participants in the GBBC are asked to give at least 15 minutes to the count, but more time is encouraged. You don’t need a backyard to join in. Visit a wildlife refuge near you, take a walk in a park or a hike in a national forest, or simply take a walk around your neighborhood.

When the last passenger pigeon was seen in our country, citizens had no concrete way to help professional ornithologists monitor bird populations. Today, with technology like

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS apps for cell phones and events like the GBBC, citizens can help inform scientists.

An easy way to participate is to download the free e-Bird app for iPhones and Androids.

This app helps you keep tabs of what birds you have seen and where, and it’s handy to have all year long. You can find a link to the download on the GBBC website, birdcount.org.

During the GBBC, the website posts realtime maps and charts of where other birders are reporting from and what species they see.

It also has an “Explore a Region” link that tells you what birds to expect to see in your area. Directions for filling out your checklists are online as well. You use a new checklist for every day and a new checklist for each new location, even if it’s on the same day.

Last year’s data indicated some species were arriving in their northern habitats much earlier than in years past. It was also noted some species are moving farther north than they ever have before or appearing in places where they aren’t normally found.

Scientists speculate these changes in migration patterns may be the first indication of climate change requiring adaptations on the part of some bird species.

But don’t limit your bird watching to just one weekend a year. Look up the Intermountain Bird Observatory on your computer’s search engine, and you’ll find additional ways to be a citizen scientist.

Jessica Pollock, research biologist at IBO, says three program options engage a wide variety of people, some as volunteers helping with research and others simply observing what activities scientists and volunteers are doing. Conducting research and enhancing bird conservation as well as educating and engaging the community are the two guiding principles of IBO. The IBO’s popular hummingbird banding sessions, running from May through August, take place at a private residence in Idaho City.

RECREATION

Registration is free, but you need to register in advance by calling the IBO office. It’s a great way for visitors to Idaho, as well as residents, to learn more about these fascinating birds.

“We had over 500 people take part in or observe the hummingbird banding program last summer,” Pollock said, “which is why people need to reserve a spot.”

People can simply watch the bird banding, or, with training, they can take data or release birds from mist nets. Only biologists are allowed to actually band a bird.

“This is a great opportunity for anyone with mobility issues,” said Pollock. “They can walk about 10 steps and sit on a patio to watch the hummingbirds being caught, banded, and released. You can even hold a hummingbird in your hand and feel its heart beating!”

Another program is the songbird banding, which takes place from mid-summer to mid-October along the Boise River and at a new location at the intersection of Hwy 20 and Warm Springs Avenue in Boise.

“Both of these places are easy to get to for anyone with mobility issues,” said Pollock.

Owl and hawk banding are two other wildly popular IBO programs. These take place on Lucky Peak, reached by a road not for the faint of heart in the foothills near Boise.

“It’s a pretty gnarly road,” agreed Pollock, “ but we have lots of people who come for the banding, so it just depends on what you are comfortable driving.”

Owl banding takes place every night from late August to late October. “It’s really an amazing experience,” Pollock said.

Raptor banding takes place daily on Lucky Peak from August 28 until the end of October.

According to Pollock, 1,500 people showed up for raptor banding last year. No reservations are required.

Like so many scientific endeavors, IBO runs on grant money, meaning scientists donate a lot of their time to get the data

PAGE 35

they need to plan conservation measures.

While there is never a charge for any of these programs, donations are gratefully accepted.

I’m lucky. Our home is bordered by national forest on one side and open pasture land on the other. This means that birds that need thick timber, like Great Grey Owls, hang out in our woods while the open, dry pastureland hosts a vast array of raptors, ravens, and upland game birds, like chukar.

In the spring, migratory songbirds come through on their way to northern breeding grounds, but in February, I can count on the raptors and owls to fill my GBBC checklists.

I’ve already invited three neighbors to join me for that weekend of birding: we’re going to turn our bird-a-thon into a roving party, going from our mountain ranch down to the Salmon River. After all, the GBBC is free, it’s easy, and it’s a great way to enjoy the great outdoors! Next summer, the three of us are headed to Lucky Peak and Idaho City to take part in our continuing engagement as citizen scientists! MSN The Montana chapter of the Audubon Society is planning a family-friendly Great Backyard Bird Count event on February 18. More information is available on www.mtaudubon.org/center/ upcoming-programs-events/

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they decided to buy a new RV. With such a purchase, a dealership often gives buyers a first-year membership to Winnebago Itasca Travelers, Cady said. People then can select an affiliated club to join. Often, club members share tips about RV ownership or help each other out when a motor home needs work, Cady said.

He and his wife enjoy their time with Inland Empire Explorers.

“We make an agenda, and kind of everyone in the group takes a turn for wagon master,” Cady added. “If I am a wagon master, then it’s my job to find restaurants and activities. Usually, we have a dinner in and a dinner out. Other times we have a potluck.

“Our group has what they call a men’s breakfast, actually it’s breakfast for the ladies, and the men are responsible on the last morning before we leave to make breakfast for the group. Several of us get together for various things outside the RV group, now that we’ve got to know each other.”

He’s gone fishing and golfing with some of those RV friends.

In May, many Winnebago owners from around the state go to a larger gathering called the Northwest Regional Rally, he said, held in recent years in Cashmere, Wash. The event attracts Winnebago clubs from all over Washington.

“That’s a fun group,” Cady said. “We see each other once a year.

The Northwest Regional Rally has different clubs that take different responsibilities, either sponsoring meals, entertaining or organizing golf.”

“I’ve made friends,” he added. “I was new to the Northwest Regional Rally, but people have been going many years, and they run into people they’ve known for some time. It’s like a reunion for them.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 49

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RECREATION

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

Try Both Nordic Track Ski Techniques

Skate skiing is fast and fun along the Nordic trails at Grand Targhee Ski Resort in western Wyoming. Notice the skier’s V-shaped ski pattern as she moved along the wide part of the groomed trail. PHOTO BY NATALIE BARTLEY

BY NATALIE BARTLEY Nordic skiing provides refreshing outdoor exercise for improving balance and strength. If you’re new to the sport, cross-country skiing on a groomed Nordic trail is a gentle way to try this low-impact aerobic workout in crisp, snow-covered settings. Nordic equipment and trail fees are less expensive than costs related to Alpine equipment and lift passes.

Nordic skiers use two different styles of skiing on groomed trails.

Classic—also known as traditional or diagonal stride—is the easier technique to learn, though efficiency develops through practice and further lessons. It resembles walking while striding and gliding in grooved, parallel tracks set along the edge of the trail. Skiers use their poles in a pattern similar to walking with hiking poles. The stabilizing grooves and familiar walking motion give beginners confidence. Experienced classic skiers avoid shuffling movements and strive for longer, gliding motions.

Skate skiing requires more balance and is an intense aerobic workout. In this technique, skate skiers travel on the wide portion of

the corduroy-groomed trail, using their upper body rigorously. The leg motions resemble those for roller blading or ice skating. With their skis pointed outward in a V-shaped pattern, skate skiers lengthen their glide through practice. They push or step each leg sideways and forward from the center of the body, one ski at a time.

The “V-1” is the beginner’s most-used skate-skiing pole pattern, with three points of contact on the snow when the two poles and one ski touch the snow simultaneously, then one point of contact when the other ski lands on the snow. Beginners gain balance and endurance then add other poling patterns.

Participants new to skiing usually start with classic skiing. As they gain balance and endurance, they often progress to skate skiing. Alpine skiers and bicyclists sometimes start with skate skiing due to either their prior ski experience or their high-level of aerobic conditioning.

Eileen Thuesen, a Boise-based Alpine skier and mountain biker, took up skate skiing. “It’s warmer than downhill skiing and better for my fitness,” she said.

EQUIPMENT DIFFERENCES Both classic and skate skiing equipment are specialized. Classic skis are longer, with a section in the middle of the ski where a sticky wax

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

RECREATION

PAGE 37

or permanent texture helps the ski grip the snow when it compresses during each stride. Skate skis are shorter, stiffer, and waxed for gliding without gripping the snow.

Classic ski boots offer more flexion than skate ski boots, which have high ankle support and a rigid sole. Both types of ski bindings are small and attach the toe of the boots to the skis.

Ski pole lengths differ. Classic poles are shorter, to accommodate the striding technique, while skate poles are longer, so skiers maximize efficient use of abdominal and upper body muscles. Employees at Nordic centers and retail stores help skiers with correct sizing.

Preparation for Nordic skiing helps ensure an enjoyable and comfortable experience. Skiers manage body heat with layers of clothing.

Start with a wicking layer next to the body, and then add an insulating layer, and lastly, a wind-breaking layer. Special water-wicking socks keep feet dry and warm in the thin, lightweight Nordic boots. A ski hat or headband keeps ears warm. Gloves work better than mittens because gloves allow for a more controlled grip on the ski poles and for better dexterity when putting on ski equipment or fine-tuning Skate skier on Galena Lodge trail system in central Idaho.

PHOTO BY NATALIE BARTLEY clothing layers.

Avoid the temptation to Nordic ski in your snowmobile suit or downhill ski pants and jackets, which are bulky and overly warm for aerobic exercising. Nordic skiing is a rigorous physical workout that produces sweat, and lots of it.

Missoula • Pablo • Kalispell • Whitefish New skiers are surprised when they get sun-burned during an outing. Be sure to prevent high-altitude and sun-reflected GREYHOUND sunburn by using lip-gloss, sunscreen, and Go further and discover more with sunglasses. Bring water or an energy drink to Greyhound’s expanded connector service. stay hydrated.

Whether it’s a weekend getaway, a trip to When novices first hit the trails, they often see family, or just time to experience the big city, Greyhound Connect is your ticket to discover a lesson from a ski instructor rapidly where you want to go! increases their confidence and speed. During a lesson, the instructor guides beginners quickly For Information Call Flathead Transit through the learning curve with tips and drills CONNECT 406-275-2877 ext 1352 for efficient skiing. greyhound.com Nordic centers offer regularly scheduled group lessons, private lessons, and special clinics. Lessons typically cover one to two hours. Clinics may last a half- to full-day.

Inquire about senior discounts.

Allow plenty of time in advance of the lesson to assure a smooth experience by arriving ahead of the scheduled start time. Use this time to visit the bathroom, buy a trail pass, 52001 US Hwy 93, Pablo • 406-275-2877 and rent equipment. Let your instructor know of any special needs or requests. Try to relax, 1660 W. Broadway St., Missoula • 406-549-2339 and enjoy the lesson.

As fresh snow accumulates this winter, get on a pair of classic or skate skis at your 20750 US Hwy 93, Evaro • 406-726-3778 local Nordic Center. Your mind and body will appreciate getting outdoors and trying something new! MSN

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Natalie Bartley is a Boise-based author of trail guidebooks Best Easy Day Hikes Boise and Best Rail Trails Pacific Northwest. She is a member of the Northwest Outdoor Writers Association, Outdoor Writers Association of America, and Professional Ski Instructors of America.

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PAGE 38

Helena’s New Mayor, Making History

BY AARON PARRETT Wilmot Collins made history in November by becoming the first African-American to serve as mayor in Montana’s capital city.

Running as a progressive, he unseated longtime and well-liked incumbent Jim Smith, a democrat. His victory has come with a little more fanfare and fame than expected.

“I’ve been interviewed by every news station from NBC to NPR, and by The Guardian, and a dozen others,” Collins said. “But if this is good for our community, I am all for it.”

“Community” is word that happens to come up often in conversation with the new mayor. Having had to flee the place you once called home to seek out a safe environment in which to raise a family has clearly helped shape the way he feels about Helena.

“This community helped raise and shape my two beautiful children,” he said. “I want to give something back and help make that happen for other people.”

Collins and his wife, Maddie, immigrated to the US as refugees from Liberia. The Civil War in his home country (1989-1997) forced them to go to neighboring Ghana, where they lived as refugees for a year. His wife happened to have been an exchange student at Helena High in 1984, and she suggested they try to emigrate to Montana. She went first, pregnant with their daughter, while Collins took advantage of a cease-fire to try and get his teaching job back in Liberia.

He had to flee a second time, this time to The Ivory Coast. He spent two years there as a refugee in a French-speaking country where he did not know the language.

“I was literally homeless there, on the street.” But then he smiled and related one of those simple twists of fate that change lives.

“I was walking down a street and heard someone call my name, my last name, which meant it had to be someone who knew me very

well. In Liberia you use the last name only if you are very close with someone.”

The man calling him turned out to be his best friend from high school, a man who was able to help him connect with the United Nations to begin the process of immigrating to the U.S. to rejoin his wife and daughter.

“I did not see them at all for two years and seven months,” he said, tearing up at

Invited as a guest speaker, Wilmot Collins joins his wife to attend the Concert for America, which helps raise funds for national organizations working to protect civil rights. PHOTO COURTESY WILMOT COLLINS

the memory. “And for four months we had no contact at all. My wife did not know whether I was alive or dead.”

After a two-year vetting process in which he was scrutinized and interviewed by every U.S. agency, from the State Department to the Immigrations and Naturalization Service, from the FBI to Homeland Security, Collins was finally granted a travel visa.

“I landed at JFK airport after 22 hours of flying,” he said, “and entered this country with 25 cents in my pocket. I had to ask a passerby for a dime so I could call my wife in Helena to tell her I was in the U.S., because a phone call at that time cost 35 cents!”

His UN plane ticket provided passage to Helena where he could reunite with his wife and daughter.

He disembarked to a cheering crowd that included students and faculty from both Helena High and Carroll College.

Someone carried a sign saying “Welcome Home, Collins.”

The family in Helena who had hosted Maddie back in 1984 as a high school cultural exchange student was Bruce and Joyce Nachstheim, and in 1992 they helped her contact the federal agencies to initiate the

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long, drawn-out procedures that would get her husband to Montana.

Nachtsheim, a former F.B.I. agent in East St. Louis, had switched careers in the ‘70s, relocating his own family to Helena, where he had a long career as a beloved and respected teacher, first at Helena High, and later Capital High. He eventually became an assistant principal for Capital.

“Bruce contacted Senator Conrad Burns and Senator Baucus and Congressman Pat Williams on our behalf,” Collins explained.

“And meanwhile, Maddie earned a scholarship at Carroll College to study nursing.”

Once in Helena, he wandered the streets, getting to know his new hometown and looking for work. On a whim, he walked into the Capitol and found the office of Governor Marc Racicot.

“I am here to meet the governor,” he announced. “Do you have an appointment?” the secretary asked. Collins was about to say “no” when a man behind him touched his shoulder.

“Can I help you?” the man asked. “I’m Marc Racicot.”

The governor invited him into his office and asked to see the resume Collins carried with him everywhere. Based on the educational background and credentials, one of the governor’s assistants said she knew of an organization that was hiring.

Less than two weeks later, Collins began working for Intermountain Children’s Home, a post he held for three years before moving onto Alternative Youth Adventures in Boulder, where he led adjudicated youth on 60-day backcountry experiences.

Over time, he has served his community in a number of similar roles, working for The Casey Family Program, for example, the Florence Crittenton Home, Veterans Affairs, and currently for Child Protective Services.

Along the way, he joined the Army National Guard and then transferred to the Navy, and is presently eight months away from retirement from the Naval Reserve.

For a time, he even worked for Homeland Security, in the very place that he had taken his oath as a U.S. citizen after a seven-year application process.

“I came here a refugee from Africa, and a few weeks later I was working at Intermountain,” he explained. “Ever since, my message has been, ‘Refugees are not looking for a handout. They are looking for a second chance.’”

Twenty-three years after his first arrival in Helena, Wilmot Collins decided to run for Mayor of Helena, against a popular incumbent, Jim Smith. “I knew this would be a

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS close race,” Wilmont said, “because Jim is a good man. Everyone likes Jim. I like Jim! But this race was not about Jim. This campaign was about my own desire to give back to this community.”

He told the story of how a few months after their family settled in Helena, a neighbor knocked on the door to report some racial slurs that vandals had spray-painted on their house.

“While I went inside to call the police to report what had happened,” he explained, “this woman went around and gathered the neighbors to all come over and scrub the spray paint off our house. You see, that’s the community I want to live in: I don’t think of the negative part of that experience. There are bigots wherever you go, but I want to live in a place, and raise my children in a place, where your neighbors are good people and will come help you wash that stuff off your house. This community is full of good people.”

Collins’s choice to run for mayor was itself a testament to progress and a statement about community.

PAGE 39

“A black man comfortable enough to run for mayor—that said something,” he remarked.

Now that he’s made history, Collins is determined to lead Helena into a progressive future, with essential services at the top of his agenda.

“In 1978, Helena had six people per shift in the Fire Department, and they fielded 302 calls that year. In 2016, we had seven people per shift, and they fielded 5,300 calls.

Seventy-five of those calls were delayed, and in 15 cases, the department could not show up at all.” But Collins is not naive—he is always quick to point out that services come at a financial cost. “The community must do its part to make sure those essential services are available.”

In winter, as he took office, it was snow removal that was on everyone’s mind.

“I have been on the job for just a week, and I am living and dreaming about snow,” he said.

“I know how important it is to our downtown businesses to keep the streets clear. Helena is a community with a large population of elderly people, and we need to make sure they

are comfortable getting around on the streets and sidewalks.”

Like everything else in a city budget, the constraint is money.

“This city operates on a very small budget: 76 million dollars for the entire city for each year. The amount allocated for snow removal is a small fraction of that. I am frustrated too,” he said, “but I know the problem is not the crews. Those guys are out working all the time. I want to tell people we are on it! But we only have 12 trucks.”

Being a high-profile mayor has not gone to Collins’ head. “If the publicity I have generated will help my community, I would do it all again. For me, this is all about moving the community forward in a positive direction. A lot of people who called me after the election had never heard of Helena, Montana. My hope is that people around the country may hear of what happened here and say to themselves, ‘Hey, that place sounds like a good community, with progressive people—maybe I will open a branch of my business there.’ That would be good for the community.” MSN

Aquatic Species Center Stage Bozeman Fish Technology Center

BY BERNICE KARNOP There’s something special about dropping a line into a stream to tease a trout into taking the bait. Of course, when we were kids, we didn’t worry about the health of the fish or the stream. Today reality tells us that both streams and fish face hidden threats, but there are also institutions and people that study the health of streams and care for our native aquatic species.

One of those facilities is Bozeman Fish Technology Center (BFTC) in Bridger Canyon and its goal is to develop “concepts, strategies and technologies for science-based conservation and management of aquatic resources.” This is one of only six such centers within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fisheries and Habitat Conservation Program and they do research on many native-to-Montana fish that are considered sensitive, threatened, or endangered.

BFTC’s efforts provide technical assistance to federal and state agencies, universities, and private entities so they know what needs to be done to keep our fish and our fisheries healthy.

BFTC started as the fish hatchery way back in 1892 when a handful of people found this good location at the south end of Bridger Canyon.

It was ideal because it had good water from Bridger Creek along with natural springs of both Eagles Homes on Prairie cold and warm water Manor the Range Tower (around 72 degrees).

The Fish Hatchery pro• Exercise Room • Grab Bars • All Utilities Paid duced fish for stocking • Beauty Shop • Air Conditioning • Beauty Shop waters in Montana and • Meal Program • Laundry • Community the surrounding states • Massage Therapy • Fridge/Freezer Garden • Laundry • Private Mailboxes • Resident Counsel until 1966. At that time, • Housekeeping • Electric Range • Emergency Call it became a Fish Cultural • One Block from • Close to Banking, System Development Center to Senior Center & Medical Facilities, • Kitchen Pantry conduct research and Post Office Parks, & Shopping • Walk in showers develop methods for improving salmonid 20 W 3rd St 902 3rd St E 725 N 25th St culture. In 1983, it was Havre Roundup Billings 406-265-5531 406-323-1291 406-248-3377 designated as a Fish Technology Center. The site is ideal for research on cold-water species like most of our native Welcoming you across Montana CONTINUED ON PAGE 40

Bozeman Fisheries Tech Center researchers Molly Webb and Kevin Kappenman use ultrasound to determine the sexual maturity of endangered pallid sturgeon.

PHOTO COURTESY BFTC.

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Kids Fishing Derby, held each June at Bozeman Fish Technology and Health complex in Bridger Canyon. The BFTC— one of only six of its kind in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fisheries and Habitat Conservation program—researches native-Montana fish that are considered sensitive, threatened, or endangered. PHOTO COURTESY BFTC. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 39

fish, and warm-water fish like the sturgeon in the Missouri River.

The biologists examine environmental factors to see what different species require to thrive and what they can tolerate and still produce healthy offspring. They work to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species that endanger native fish because they may take over their habitat, consume the food they require, or even eat the native species themselves.

BFTC scientists inspect fish hatcheries and promote programs to prevent the spread of invasive species. These dangerous organisms

hitchhike on boots, on vegetation caught on vehicles, and in water left in boats. They are hard to control and cost communities millions of dollars in restoration.

The threat of greatest concern is still loss of habitat, whether from natural or human causes, as it is for other wildlife.

Montana Outdoors Science School (MOSS), which is located on the BFTC site, does educational tours for school aged children and other groups of six or more people. Not all the buildings are open to the public because they

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want to keep the light and noise disturbances to a minimum for the fish they are studying.

Call MOSS at 406-582-0526 about tours.

Many people champion conservation efforts for wildlife with much concern focusing on waterfowl or large mammals like bear and elk. It’s also important to understand the importance of the work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service focused on the health of aquatic species so when we drop a fly or lure into a river or stream we are likely to experience the thrill of a catch! MSN

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 â&#x20AC;˘ MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

PAGE 41

The parking lot garden in the foreground and the Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fork Restaurant in the background. PHOTO BY SUZANNE WARING

The Garden at Bozemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fork Restaurant

BY SUZANNE WARING Over the door of the Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fork Restaurant in Bozeman are the words, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Discover Fresher Food.â&#x20AC;? No doubt, a person wonders what constitutes â&#x20AC;&#x153;fresher.â&#x20AC;?

Owners Jeff and Suzy Riggs are genuine with this â&#x20AC;&#x153;fresherâ&#x20AC;? claim because they raise produce in a garden located on the restaurant grounds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Even when the garden was in its infant stages,â&#x20AC;? said Suzy, â&#x20AC;&#x153;we had a positive response. The garden turned out to be a good â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;first statementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; when customers stopped at the restaurant.â&#x20AC;?

The distance fresh produce travels from farm to grocery store averages 1,500 miles.

Compare that to the few feet produce travels to get to a table at the Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fork Restaurant during growing season. In addition, nothing tastes fresher than produce harvested and served up on the same day.

Jeff learned the ropes of being a restaurateur when he bought the rights to franchise Wheat Montana in 2003 and built the restaurant just off the busy thoroughfare of 19th Street.

In 2011, he dropped the franchise to develop a different restaurant concept. He introduced a menu that was a perfect fit for the Bozeman clientele, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where the garden came in.

His customers were requesting a salad bar with fresh veggies and fruit. He also used the produce as ingredients for sandwiches, wraps, and other items on the menu. â&#x20AC;&#x153;For all practical purposes, the concept of the garden is more educational. Right now, only the garlic stems are peeping out of the snow. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obvious that we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have produce from our garden 12 months of the year, but in the growing season, we pick fresh veggies and fruit in the garden daily. That fresh produce makes us conscious of the quality we want throughout the year,â&#x20AC;? said Jeff.

He planted six apple trees along the green belt between the restaurant and 19th Street.

It took several years, but those trees are now producing. Jeff has purchased an apple press and looks forward to having a cider festival next fall.

Lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, squash, broccoli, onions, and several kinds of herbsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; including lots of garlicâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;grow right in the restaurantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s parking lot.

Raspberries and strawberries also grow on site. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We would have more raspberries for the restaurant if my children didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t eat so many.

They eat two for every one they put in the bucket,â&#x20AC;? said Jeff.

Discarded kitchen waste materialsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;comprised of coffee grounds and filters, egg shells, napkins, and vegetable remnantsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;go into the compost bins behind the restaurant, to decompose and provide nutrients for the garden. The resulting compost makes the soil richer and increases the organic content.

About the time Jeff was establishing the parking lot garden, along came Evan Gamble.

Since his fiancĂŠe worked at the restaurant, Evan stopped by often. He became interested in what Jeff was doing with the garden. Soon,

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One of the trees on the berm to the side of the restaurant is loaded with apples. PHOTO BY SUZANNE WARING

the two were talking about taking the garden to the next level.

“We plan to take out junipers to add more gardening space,” said Jeff.

Evan has been using “found” objects to enhance the garden. He found sticks along river beds or in the woods, which became the framework for the garden gate and fence surrounding the garden.

Riverbed rocks separate the different veggies. Evan found a discarded treadmill and quickly employed its parts to sift the finished compost and screen rocks from the soil.

Evan and Riggs want to make a natural playground where edible plants are growing.

“When children pull out a carrot from the ground, they will realize how carrots are grown and that they don’t originate at the supermarket,” said Jeff. “To increase the educational value, we want to add interpretive signs. And yes, harvesting should be part of the children’s experience. We want to promote healthy eating. Can you imagine the amazement when they eat a ripe strawberry right after they pick it?”

Last spring a Bozeman middle school class visited the garden.

“I had shovels and wheelbarrows ready, and we built swales at the base of the hillside

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to the east of the restaurant, to catch the runoff,” said Evan. “I explained to the students that the swales on this hillside will be an example of permaculture, which is a philosophy of working with nature instead of against it by using features observed in natural ecosystems.”

“Primarily, I am making a garden for the community. During the summer, the picnic table in the middle of the garden is the most popular table at the Clark’s Fork. One time I found a little dump truck toy that was left in the garden. To me it was a concrete representation of my goals for the garden.”

It occurred to him that most gardens are in people’s backyard and are private. “Our garden is out in the open for the curious to stop by and ask questions. I want to share, so I look forward to their inquiries,” said Evan.

“I hope our garden becomes a model for other businesses, and I hope that people enjoy it for its beauty.”

Stop by the Clark’s Fork Restaurant at 1262 Stoneridge Drive, and check out the parking-lot garden.

Presently, customers are watching for indications that the garden is being prepped for the coming growing season. The Clark’s Fork is a restaurant where produce is as fresh as it can be. MSN

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

PAGE 43

South Central Montana

LOCAL PEOPLE•LOCAL STORIES•LOCAL FUN•LOCAL BUSINESSES

See a Different Side of Yellowstone Park: Visit in Winter but it still had the feel of a winter picnic.

After lunch we drove to Biscuit Basin, where scalding water steamed from the ground while icy crystals fell from the sky.

The walkways, in places, were packed with snow and ice, making for a challenging walk.

To complicate things, the steam from the geysers fogged our glasses until we struggled to see.

Both Rusty and Jewel geysers erupted while we were there. The wildlife are drawn to the warm pools, and we were careful not to come very close.

On the way back to West, we saw golden eye, Canada geese, and eagles along the Firehole and Madison Rivers. Other creatures out hunting for food to fill their bellies included a couple of fat coyotes, a small herd of mountain sheep, and the ever-present ravens.

We arrived back in West Yellowstone in the early darkness, after a totally satisfying day of seeing Yellowstone in winter. MSN

STORY & PHOTO BY BERNICE KARNOP Do you want to see a different side of Yellowstone National Park? Visit in winter!

Yes, Yellowstone is cold in the winter. It’s snowy, and the roads are mostly closed to vehicles; however, people still visit, and they discover a wonderland sparkling, fresh, and breathtakingly different from other seasons.

It’s quiet, and the crowd are gone. The animals are down where you are more likely to see them, and they’re wearing their thickest, most luxurious coats. The geysers and hot pools bubble and steam, heedless of frigid air temperatures.

It’s fresh partly because of the way you see it. Instead of sitting inside of a temperature-controlled car, you see Yellowstone from the, slow, open-air on cross-country skis, snowshoes, or snowmobiles. The easiest and, arguably, least stressful way to visit Yellowstone in winter is in the warm and guided comfort of a snow coach, which is what we did a few winters ago.

We started our visit by driving to West Yellowstone on the last day of February.

Traditionally, West Yellowstone gets snow early, making it ideal for winter sports from Thanksgiving through March.

The town’s historic structures, topped with marshmallow caps of snow, poked their geometric shapes into the smoothly sculptured,

white-on-white world. While some of the town shuts down in winter, plenty is open, including motels, restaurants, and gift shops.

We boarded a bright yellow snow coach waiting outside our motel early the next morning and headed for Old Faithful. The rubber-tracked vehicle provided a quiet and smooth ride out of town through snow-ghosted trees. The friendly driver, in old-fashioned gear-jammer style, was full of Yellowstone facts, trivia, and a few hilarious lies.

Between West and Madison Junction we passed snow-crusted bison standing like carefully sculpted bronzes, conserving their energy against the cold. A pair of young bulls started a head-butting contest, reminding us that, yes, they can move quickly when they want to.

We spent most of our day at Old Faithful.

The famous geyser spewed great clouds of steam into the overcast sky.

The new Visitor Center does an amazing job of explaining the underground geology of Yellowstone and how the geysers work. Being inside for awhile was a nice break from the wind and cold. We ate the lunch we brought in one of the yurts at Old Faithful. The wood fire burning in the stove cut the chill,

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

PAGE 44

Are You Carrying the Right Credit Card for Your Financial Goals?

(StatePoint) If you’ve ever been confused by how to find the right credit card, you’re not alone. A recent national survey found that consumers are overwhelmed by the many credit card offers they receive and find the process of selecting the right card difficult to navigate.

Experian conducted the survey, finding that more than half (54 percent) of surveyed respondents are not satisfied with their cards.

“Consumers surveyed hold an average of three credit cards, which shows it’s been challenging to find a card that meets their needs,” says Ian Cohen, general manager at Experian Consumer Services.

Unfortunately, there can be a bit of anxiety around getting a new card. With 40 percent of respondents admitting they’ve been denied a credit card in the past, many consumers surveyed say they wish they would receive only solicitations with pre-qualified offers. There is also optimism. Sixty-four percent of consumers agree that there is a perfect credit card out there for them.

If you are in the market for a new credit card, identify what card feature is most important to you, such as a low annual percentage rate (APR) or no annual fee. Also, check your credit score because that can help you understand what cards you may qualify for, since a credit score could be one of the factors lenders use to extend lines of credit.

Luckily, free resources exist that can aid your search. For example, Experian offers an online tool that uses consumers’ own credit and financial data to match them with tailored credit card options. To see a selection of credit cards based on your preferences and credit data, visit experian.com.

You should be careful, though, when applying for new credit cards—opening up several new cards in a short timespan may lower your credit score, hurting your chances for additional credit in the future when you may really need it for a big expense, such as a car loan.

If you have credit card debt and are struggling to pay it off, don’t despair. You can start tackling it today with a few steps.

Figure out how much you owe by making a list of all of your credit card balances and loans, along with minimum monthly payments and APR for each.

Assess the best approach, whether it is paying off the card with the highest APR first or making payments on all cards with the goal of applying any extra money available to pay the lowest balance first.

Consider applying for a balance transfer car d with no or low APR for a set period of ti me to transfer the debt.

Whether your goals for having a credit card are building creditworthiness or having a cushion for emergencies, there is likely a card out there that’s right for you.

Consider using new tools to help you find it. MSN

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

SOUTH CENTRAL MT

A Tale of Two Wolves

PAGE 47

Photo ©Reflux, Bigstock.com

BY GAIL JOKERST While sorting through some papers recently, my husband came across the following Native American legend that he had saved and thought I might enjoy. After reading it, I realized it was not one I was familiar with. But the wisdom it contained certainly resonated with me and left me feeling that it was worth sharing with a wider readership.

One evening, a Cherokee elder was teaching his grandson about life.

“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. This battle that goes on between the two wolves is inside us all.

One wolf is Evil. He is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is Good. He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”

Wisely, the grandfather simply smiled and replied, “The one you feed.”

Since I suspected that other variations on the same theme existed, I did a Google search and had my assumption confirmed with

parables of both wolves and dogs figuring as key players. It seems everyone from Billy Graham to Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw has been touched by the ideas in this legend. One site noted that Graham even included a variation on it in one of his books.

In his version, the story tells of an Eskimo fisherman with a black dog and a white dog.

The two dogs fight each other weekly while the fisherman accepts bets on the outcome and always manages to win. Some weeks, the black dog would triumph. On the other weeks, the white dog would be the champion.

When the fisherman was asked how he was able to sustain his winning streak with such regularity, he essentially replied: “It’s easy. I just feed the dog I want to win and starve the other dog. The one I feed always wins because it is stronger.”

In whatever language or culture it may have appeared around the world, the point of the message seems to have remained the same and has continued to be meaningful to a wide cross-section of people.

According to one internet site, the “Tale of Two Wolves” was included in a 2003 film titled, The Missing. While I have not seen the movie to confirm that, I can say with certainty that a variety of videos are available online, and

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PAGE 48

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

A Gift for Storytelling

LIVINGSTON’S AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF WESTERN LITERATURE, RICHARD WHEELER

BY RUSSELL ROLAND Richard Wheeler was upset. He had recently heard that the American Prairie Reserve is going to issue permits to hunt the buffalo they have accumulated for the past several years.

“They are just getting the numbers up, and they’re going to let people kill them?

And it’s just to raise money.” He shook his head. “I’ve been a great supporter of that organization, but I’m not sure I can support them any more.”

This sentiment may come as a surprise for some because he’s such a prolific novelist of Western literature. He’s written over 80 books—all of them Westerns—with the first published when he was nearly 50 years old.

He is not your stereotypical Western guy.

Wheeler doesn’t walk around posing as a cowboy. He wears khakis, a button-down white shirt, and a wonderfully worn porkpie hat. Although he’s well over 6 feet tall, he doesn’t have an imposing presence. His manner is gentle, kind, warm.

“I grew up in Wisconsin,” he said. “But it was less the state of Wisconsin than its cultural heritage that shaped me. I grew up in a middle-class home, with everything from The New Yorker to Popular Mechanics to nurture me.

My mother was a high school English teacher.

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My dad a patent lawyer. In my formative years my parents took me to New York, and these trips led to my first ambition—to become a playwright.”

But his desire to become a writer took a very different path, leading him to a career in journalism. He worked for newspapers as a reporter and editor.

“I liked being an editor much better than being a reporter. We once had a story come in about a guy that had been killed in Vietnam, and my editor asked me to call the wife ‘for a reaction story.’ I waited until about 10 minutes before the end of the work day before I called. Thankfully, her mother answered, and I asked whether the wife was holding up all right. That was as close as I could get to getting a ‘reaction.’”

Talking to Wheeler in person, one can easily imagine he would not have fared well as a hard-bitten reporter. But it does make it difficult to understand how he became a writer of Westerns. Although he worked briefly on a dude ranch in Arizona, he’s never been a hunter or fisherman. He was, and still is, a self-described loner and homebody.

“Oh, here’s where we get into the confessionals,” he said. “I chose Westerns because it seemed like the easiest way to make a living.”

So it was about the money.

At a low point in his life, when he had lost his job as a book editor, Wheeler decided to write a Western, and as so often happens with writers who eventually get published, he had

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS a stroke of good fortune. One day a man showed up at his door, telling him he had heard there was another writer in town.

Otis Carney was not only a published writer, but he had done a lot of work in Hollywood, and when Wheeler told him he was working on a book, Carney offered to give it a look. He came back with some hard criticism, and at that point, Wheeler took a turn that many others would not. Instead of getting discouraged or offended, he started all over again.

As it turned out, Wheeler had a gift for storytelling.

His knack for writing came as a surprise even to him, but what was even more surprising was the acclaim. Wheeler’s third novel, Winter Grass (1983), was his first of 10 to be named a finalist for the Spur, the most prestigious award for Western writers. Six years later, he won his first of six such awards for Fool’s Coach (1989).

When asked the secret of a good book, Wheeler said, “I like stories that are driven by the characters. I start with a character or a cast of characters and let them tell me where the story is going.”

Although he is not the first writer to take this approach, Wheeler’s writing is unique in other ways.

For one, he often bases his fiction on real people, as he did with Masterson (1999)—another Spur Award winner — the story of Bat Masterson, the famous dentist turned lawman.

But perhaps what most distinguishes Wheeler’s novels from other Westerns is the lack of Western clichés.

His characters are nuanced, the stories complex and well-developed.

And his dialog is incredible. The characters feel real.

Among this writer’s favorites are The Richest Hill on Earth (2011), his

SOUTH CENTRAL MT

PAGE 49

story of Butte and the Copper Kings, Cashbox (2004), a wonderful book that is part love story and part historical account of one of the many failed mines in Montana, and Eclipse (2002), about Lewis and Clark.

It turns out that the avoidance of the usual clichés is no accident.

“I discovered that Western fiction is really Southern fiction,” said Wheeler when contemplating his approach to writing stories. “It sells well only in the South, especially Texas. It sells thinly down the Rockies and into the Southwest.”

He attributed this to protagonists who are typically angry ex-Confederates drifting west.

“Their goal is not to render justice or make the world a better place, but to prove their manhood,” he said.

According to Wheeler, this has little to do with character or idealism and everything to do with toughness and an itchy trigger finger.

He asserted gunfight Westerns are hollow, in spite of a few powerful stories such as High Noon, Shane, or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

“Typical Western-shootout stories are dull and unsatisfying because character is absent. Violence is an end in itself,” he said. “I prefer stories that test the characters and their integrity, which is why I turned to historical and biographical fiction.”

The time it took to produce 80 novels in less than 40 years is hard to comprehend.

Wheeler is now 82 years old, and although he considers himself mostly retired, he recently started a new novel and is excited about it.

“It’s been awhile since I got any momentum on a new story, but this one just started coming out.” MSN

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PAGE 50

Money Matters

BUDGET•MEDICARE•TAXES•ESTATE•INVESTMENT•RETIREMENT

Be Aware of Tax Identity Theft This question came from Pat, who visited our AARP booth at a recent event in Helena, Mont.

Q: I am really worried about tax identity theft, how can I avoid becoming a victim?

A: Pat, you are smart to be concerned about this. Every two seconds, someone’s identity is stolen. And with tax season upon us, con artists are stealing Social Security numbers to file for fraudulent tax refunds. It’s a big problem. To date, the IRS has identified more

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than 15 million false tax returns alone. For more information on the latest trends in tax identify theft, check out AARP’s Fraud Watch Network at aarp.org/FraudWatchNetwork.

You can also view information and a special video devoted to tax identity theft awareness at www.aarp.org/scamalert.

THE WARNING SIGNS How do you know if you’re a victim of tax identity theft? If someone files a fraudulent tax return using your identification, and then

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you file your return, the IRS will contact you by mail. The letter will state that more than one return was filed using your Social Security number. Note that the IRS will not contact you by phone, email, text, or social media. You can check the legitimacy of any IRS mailing by calling 1-800-829-1040.

You’ll also get an IRS notice if someone uses your Social Security number to get a job, and the employer reports that income to the IRS using your number. The letter

will indicate that you did not report all of your earnings on your tax return. Another warning sign could be receiving a W-2 or Form 1099 from an employer for whom you didn’t work.

IF YOU FALL VICTIM If you become a victim of tax identity theft, here are the steps to take.

Contact the IRS immediately using the contact information on the notice you received.

You’ll be asked to fill out an IRS Identity Theft affidavit, Form 14039.

Contact your bank and credit card companies and inform the credit bureaus of the fraud. Ask one credit bureau­— Experian, TransUnion or Equifax—to place a free fraud alert on your report, and the others will follow. A fraud alert lasts 90 days, but you can renew it.

Access your credit report, free, from all three credit bureaus. Ask the bureau that places your fraud alert how to obtain your reports.

File an Identity Theft report with the Federal Trade Commission. This will help you get fraudulent information removed from your credit report and stop companies from trying to collect debts related to fraudulent activity.

File a police report. Bring the form you filed with the FTC to the police.

TIPS FOR AVOIDING TAX IDENTIFY THEFT It’s becoming ever more difficult to protect our identities, but here are some steps you can take to protect yourself and your family.

Monitor your credit reports. You can order free reports from all three credit bureaus once a year at www.annualcreditreport.com.

Never give out your Social Security number or other personal information to phone callers.

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Be sure to use a private, protected wireless network if you file your tax return electronically. Filing your return from the local coffee shop, library, or other public place is not a good idea.

Provide information to your tax preparer in person. Avoid sending a fax that may easily be seen by someone else.

Shred papers that contain sensitive personal information.

Hopefully, you will never encounter any

MONEY MATTERS

form of identity theft. Make sure to protect your personal information to the best of your ability, and know what to do if you’ve been victimized.

Sign up for the Fraud Watch Network at www.aarp.org/FraudWatchNetwork to get the latest information on ID theft and scams. You can also call the Fraud Watch Network Hotline at 877-908-3360 to get your questions answered directly from trained volunteers. And for help with filing taxes safely, see information about AARP’s Tax Aide program at www.aarp.org/TaxAide.

Do you have a question for AARP Montana? Send your question to “Ask AARP Montana” at MTAARP@aarp.org or 30 W 14th St., Helena, MT 59601 or call our toll-free hotline at 866-295-7278. As we receive questions, we will consult with both internal and external experts to provide timely and valuable advice.

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Successful Tax Cut Bill Consequences POINTING TOWARD CUTS IN SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE & MEDICAID?

BY ALAN M. SCHLEIN (Senior Wire) With the tax bill signed into law, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has set his sights on reforming Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and welfare in 2018. But he will have to overcome several big barriers to be successful, including reversing President Donald Trump’s repeated campaign pledge not to touch those specific federal entitlement programs for the elderly.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Ryan are also at odds over whether to tackle entitlement reform in a mid-term election year, which traditionally favors the party out of power—in this case, the Democrats. Ryan has made no secret that he expects the national debt to skyrocket, thanks in part, to the tax legislation, which lawmakers approved without a way for it to pay for itself. So Ryan wants to balance the books over the next few years by tackling Medicare and other entitlement programs.

Ryan’s ideas were greeted with some blowback from his own party. He has since appeared to narrow his expectations after several GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol expressed reservations about the political optics of cutting the safety net for the elderly or poor when Republican majorities in the House and Senate are on the line in the 2018 midterm elections.

The tax legislation passed without a single Democratic vote in the House and the Senate.

But Republicans will need Democratic support in order to get anything controversial done this year. The reality of the narrow Republican-controlled U.S. Senate—now one vote tighter with the election of the Democrat, Doug Jones, over Roy Moore in

PAGE 51

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Alabama—is that for almost anything else to pass, Republicans will need at least eight or nine Democratic votes. It takes 60 votes to avoid a filibuster.

“I don’t think,” McConnell said, “as a practical matter in the Senate, we can do entitlement reform without bipartisan agreement,” he told the Washington Post recently.

“And you can fill in the blanks,” McConnell said. “I mean, it applies to entitlements in general Medicare, Social Security, welfare—they’re so doubled down on that, I’m not going to devote floor time to something that has no Democratic support.”

That won’t deter Ryan in the House, however. He seems willing to push legislation through his chamber, knowing Serving Western Montana it may never get a Senate vote. That strategy gives House

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

MONEY MATTERS

begrudgingly—need to impose some limits on the rising spending for programs focused on seniors.

Republicans a record of votes on key issues, which they can take back ENTITLEMENTS, THE FEDERAL BUDGET, THE to the voters at home to say they tried to get things done—even if NATIONAL DEBT, AND OTHER CONFUSIONS those votes don’t have any chance of becoming law.

Often, talk of entitlement reform is fact-free and appears to be Pushing entitlement reform has some political risks for Ryan and a politically-loaded word salad. So it is important to be clear what House Republicans. After approving a tax bill that adds $1.5 trillion to “entitlements” are and what that means. It is not a dirty word. Some the federal deficit, is it politically smart to cite the deficit as a pretext use it to imply that recipients of these programs’ benefits get them for eroding the social safety net that poor people depend on, especially because they’re “entitled” to it. That’s not the case. when most of the tax bill appears to preserve benefits for richer people?

These are benefits that enrollees have paid for over their working Reaching an agreement on how to stabilize Medicare and other lives, through the payroll tax, and in the case of Medicare, through entitlements is not just a political problem for Republicans. It’s an annual premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Seniors are entitled to issue for Democrats too, who want to preserve crucial investments the benefits they’ve paid for. in younger generations. To do so they’ll eventually—and perhaps Why the growing national debt matters is also a key to understanding what Congress will try to do about entitlements.

For decades, fiscal hawks have warned about the growing size of the national debt. But talking about the need to balance the budget and actually getting the federal deficit in control are two different Talk to... things. Many politicians of both parties just talk the talk and are not willing to make the severe cuts needed to actually walk the walk and get the deficit in control.

When you take out a bank loan, the interest rate you get is based on the incentive the issuers of the debt have to lend you money. That JD, CLU, ChFC,RHU works the same with the federal deficit. All $20 trillion dollars of debt currently accrued by the federal government has interest due.

For over 27 years we have been explaining Medicare insurance So the tax bill’s adding $1.5 trillion to the federal debt means there’s options available to clients in and beyond the Gallatin Valley. We additional interest owed on those dollars. Even if the debt is never represent multiple carriers and offer a variety of products. paid down, the ongoing interest that accrues impacts the country’s We are ready to help! credit rating, directly affects lending and borrowing rates and causes McLeod Insurance & Financial Services, Inc. economic pain for almost everyone.

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Medicare and Medicaid are more complex because they are tied to the higher levels of cost and spending on health care. For Do you want to save on your taxes today and support Good Samaritan Ministries the past 40 years, health care spending has for generations to come? consistently grown faster than the economy.

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Business donors qualify for a 20% tax credit, and it does not have to be in the Part of Medicare is funded by payroll taxes form of a planned gift. known as the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) as well as by premiums, deductibles The maximum tax credit is $10,000 per taxpayer. There are other limits and and coinsurance. Medicaid is overseen by the requirements, but we make it simple…from making the donation to claiming the federal government, but each state establishes credit on your tax return. Just ask us for details. its own eligibility standards and determines the scope of services. States also set the rate Stretch your charitable dollars and make a bigger impact. of payment for services and administer their Donate to our endowment fund today! own Medicaid programs. The federal govern406-442-0780 | GOODSAMMINISTRIES.ORG ment pays a matching rate of funds to what THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUAL SUPPORT! states spend for the plan, but that amount varies from state to state and is related to state 3067 North Montana, Helena, MT 59601 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

MONEY MATTERS

insurance. While seniors could still buy into per capita income. It’s usually 57 percent of the existing Medicare system, under Ryan’s the costs. plan, most analysts suggest it would quickly Realistically, you can’t reduce the costs of grow unaffordable to most seniors because Medicare or Medicaid in big way unless you only those with the greatest health needs cut the costs of services or eliminate services would continue under Medicare. altogether. So it’s important to cut through Ryan has made another adjustment from the phony language when politicians lump when he originally proposed restricting Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid Medicare, by pushing for it to only apply to together in a fix-them-all-together solution.

Americans that were already 56 and older with The policy solutions are different.

SO NOW WHAT? So far, the Trump administration and Congress have yet to enact any policies that would directly cut Medicare or Medicaid.

But President Trump did support proposals that would slow down the growth rate of the Medicaid program or end Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

The White House’s budget proposal would cut more than $610 billion from Medicaid by slowing the growth rate or PHOTO ©ZIMMYTWS, BIGSTOCK.COM reducing the amount Medicaid a system of vouchers for anyone 55 and under. spending is increased per year. The White By targeting the younger generations, his plan House argues it doesn’t consider slowing is more popular with older, more conservative down Medicaid’s growth rate to be funding voters as long as there’s no change in what cuts. Perhaps that’s just more word salad. has been promised to them.

Ryan has been pushing his entitlement While some Democrats want to avoid any reform ideas since he arrived on Capitol cuts to these programs and at the same time Hill in 1999. He has changed some of the preserve discretionary spending, that leaves details, but for the most part, his policy idea increasing taxes as about the only solution. remains to convert Medicare into a “premium The last time anyone made a serious effort support” or voucher system. That way, the to curb deficit spending was the bipartisan federal government would no longer pay National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility directly for seniors’ health care, as it does and Reform, headed by then Sen. Alan Simpson, now. Instead, it would provide a fixed sum R-Wyo., and former Clinton administration of money for seniors to purchase private

PAGE 53

Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles created in 2010.

Their proposed deficit solution was a threesided agreement to raise taxes, impose some constraints on retirement programs, and preserve investments in future generations.

Nearly every bipartisan effort to reduce the deficit, including several presidential commissions during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations, almost always end up with some variation of the three-sided solution. As the 2010 SimpsonBowles commission proposed and others have as well, the only way to persuade Democrats to accept entitlement cuts is to couple them with tax increases and vice versa for Republicans.

So is it even feasible, with the GOP tax bill’s huge debt increase, that Democrats would entertain the idea of changes in entitlements without significant tax hikes? And would Republicans approve of a tax increase in an election year after just approving tax cuts? Not likely.

Instead, what is likely to happen is Ryan will shift his focus to programs that largely benefit lower-income families, like welfare and food assistance. Ironically, those hardest hit would be blue-collar white folks in Rust Belt states who are at the core of Trump’s Republican base.

It is setting up a fascinating legislative year to come. MSN Also contributing to this story were The Atlantic and Politico

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PAGE 54

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

Health Care

MEDICINE•PREVENTION•DIAGNOSIS•TREATMENT

Tuning In

BY LAURA FRIEDMAN As my three-year work anniversary approaches, I’ve been reflecting on my learnings as a team member of Hearing Health Foundation (HHF). There is one that sticks out the most: As someone who has only known her life as being one with hearing loss and wearing hearing aids (I was diagnosed at age 3 ½), I don’t know what I’m missing, compared with my typical hearing peers.

I have learned from those who have acquired hearing loss later in life, even as young adults, that they are acutely aware of the difference in their hearing experience, even with assisted listening devices. They aren’t enjoying music like they once did, they have increased difficulties hearing conversational speech around the dinner table and at restaurants, and they are missing things in meetings that the “old” them would never miss.

Ok, I lied. There are actually two major learnings. The second is, which is something I’ve experienced within my own family, the prevalence of hearing loss denial and the resistance to treating one’s hearing loss. If one were to wish hard enough, maybe by sheer willpower their hearing loss will no longer impact them as much as they’ve been told by their doctor or loved ones.

For some, this is resisting the body’s natural aging process; for others it is too overwhelming to think they are less able to do something that used to be second nature to them. For those who do acknowledge their hearing loss, many do not wear their hearing devices, further isolating them from a world they were previously a part of.

As a young child when I visited my grandfather, who was notorious for not wearing his hearing aids, I told him, “If I have to wear mine, you have to wear yours!” He would give me his signature smirk and appease his assertive (and correct!) granddaughter. But I knew once I left, back in the drawers those hearing aids went.

I recognize denying the existence of an ailment or resisting treatment is not unique to hearing loss; this is true for many people diagnosed with other serious and life-changing conditions. However, when it comes to

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hearing loss, almost one-third of an estimated 40 million U.S. adults with hearing difficulties haven’t even taken the first step to see a specialist for help. What’s even more troubling is today it is estimated that 360 million people worldwide have hearing loss, with 1.1 billion people at risk for acquiring it, according to the World Health Organization.

In the U.S., nearly 25 percent of those aged 65 to 74, and half of those older than 75, have a disabling hearing loss. An even more astounding fact is that over 70 percent of

Photo © edwardolive, Bigstock.com

adults in the U.S. who have hearing loss and who would benefit from a hearing aid don’t have one. Hearing loss is truly an epidemic, and it seems to be getting worse.

Studies have shown that even untreated mild to moderate hearing loss is linked to increased levels of loneliness and isolation, depression, dementia, and medical conditions like heart disease and diabetes. It can even hurt earning potential and career mobility.

Treating hearing loss can significantly offset and decrease the risk of acquiring these consequences. So the question is, if treating hearing loss deters the onset of detrimental health conditions, why aren’t more people taking preventative measures to protect their hearing or taking actionable steps to treat it?

For those in the U.S. there is unfortunately little to no insurance and Medicare coverage for hearing aids, meaning those who need them most are unable afford them. While there’s still a lot left to do, policy is slowly moving in the right direction: In August 2017 the Over-the-Counter Hearing Aid Act was signed into law, paving the way for a new class of hearing aids to enter the marketplace.

This will provide greater access to hearing technologies for those with mild to moderate hearing loss at a fraction of the price.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to know what you’re missing; it is my wish that nobody has to experience that feeling.

This is why I chose to work for an organization dedicated to funding research to develop better technologies, therapies, and cures for hearing and balance disorders. Discoveries are the only way to better the listening experience of those with hearing loss and bring more options to the market. Furthermore, if more people choose to treat their hearing

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS loss, I truly believe it will decrease the stigma and discrimination felt by many, like myself, who have hearing loss.

Since I already told you I’m assertive, I ask you to do this one thing: Get your hearing tested and encourage your friends and loved ones to do the same. If necessary, treat your

HEALTH CARE

hearing loss. Treating hearing loss has been a life-changer for me as well as for millions of others around the world who choose to tune in, ultimately benefiting our health, work, and life. MSN

PAGE 55

Laura Friedman is the Communications and Programs Manager of Hearing Health Foundation (HHF), the largest nonprofit funder of hearing and balance research in the U.S. Learn more about HHF’s mission to prevent, cure, and treat hearing loss and educate about hearing health at hhf.org.

Deep Vein Thrombosis: A Pain That Cannot Be Ignored lack of movement such as long distance physicians may consider for their patients travel or long periods of bed rest, a personal is a medical procedure called a mechanior family history of blood clots, older age, or cal thrombectomy. This procedure can help pregnancy. quickly restore blood flow by removing the Understanding the risk factors and being clot altogether, thus reducing the amount and aware of various treatment options can help duration of medicareduce your chance of developing a dantions a patient needs gerous blood clot and the serious health to take, and may help prevent future complications.

“Recent medical advances are allowing more and more patients to have blood clots removed using minimally invasive procedures,” said Dr. Kush Desai, Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

“Some patients, like Bernie McKay just months after a procedure to remove his blood clot. PHOTO Bernie, may be candiCOURTESY STATEPOINT MEDIA dates for a mechanical Bernie, who leads an active lifestyle and thrombectomy, which uses a special catheter works in a hospital, experienced severe designed to help break up and physically cramping in the back of his left thigh one remove all or portions of the clot.” morning while walking into work. The pain Only half of the people who develop DVT became so severe that he rushed himself to experience any symptoms, such as swelling, the emergency department, knowing that pain or tenderness in something wasn’t right. After a series of a leg with skin that’s consultations and tests, he was diagnosed as warm and red or dishaving deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. colored. However, DVT affects approximately 900,000 peoyou should be aware ple in the U.S., according to the Centers for of the risk factors as Disease Control and Prevention, and while a they can increase your clot can form anywhere, it usually occurs in chances of developthe legs or pelvis. Sometimes part of the blood ing DVT: treatment clot can break off and travel to your lungs, for cancer, prolonged which can cause a pulmonary embolism, a serious and potentially deadly condition.

Doctors typically diagnose DVT through ultrasound or blood tests. First line of treatment can consist of medications and compression stockings, but these options don’t actually remove or dissolve the clot. Many DVT blood clots can be absorbed by the body over time with the help of blood thinners; however, as long as the clot is present, it can cause permanent damage to the valves in the vein, leading to chronic Billings B Bi ill Clinic is proud to partner with hardware stores KNOW THE SIGNS pain and swelling, a c across south central Montana to provide red heart stickers AND SYMPTOMS OF A HEART ATTACK o n new shovels warning of the signs and symptoms of a on called post-thromDON’T WAIT heart h e attack and a reminder to call 911 immediately if CALL 911 botic syndrome (PTS). experiencing any of those symptoms. exp Another treatwww.billingsclinic.com/heartrisks ment option that (StatePoint) Fifty-three-year-old Bernie McKay never would have guessed that the pain he thought was a simple muscle cramp was actually a serious medical condition that could have stopped him in his tracks forever.

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PAGE 56

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

HEALTH CARE CONTINUED FROM PAGE 55

complications that may be associated with it.

“With such a short recovery time, the procedure allowed me to spend time with my family and friends—without having to take medications for the rest of my life,” said

Bernie. “I’m more active than I was before, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”

There are risks associated with all medical procedures. Talk with your doctor about the risks and benefits associated with mechanical thrombectomy. For more information visit ClearingtheClot.com or the Clearing the

Clot Facebook community, patient resources developed by Boston Scientific. For more information, visit bostonscientific.com.

Take control of your health to help decrease your chances of developing DVT by understanding the risks and treatment options available. MSN

Organize Your Medical Information (StatePoint) A fresh new year presents a great opportunity to reorganize your medical information and files as part of a greater effort to prioritize your health and wellness in the coming year.

From veterinarian bills to dental x-rays, these tips can help you get all your ducks in a row.

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Be Discerning: While most paperwork related to medical treatments is important and worthy of saving, there are some items that can be tossed. Be discerning, or you will quickly be overwhelmed. Keeping a shredder on hand can eliminate any concerns you may have about discarding potentially sensitive material.

Make it Convenient: It’s all too easy to skip filing paperwork until it gets out of hand. Keep your filing cabinet near your home’s landing area where mail comes in, so you can handle each item as it arrives.

Make Labels: Clear, concise labeling is a must where effective filing and organization is concerned. Check out tools that simplify this process, for example, a label printer. For added visual ease, use color-coded file folders or labels to sort by year or member of the family.

Lock it Up: It’s always a good idea to securely

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store sensitive personal information. Consider using a filing cabinet that locks. Just remember where you put the key!

Take Notes: Whenever you visit the doctor, be sure to bring a pad of paper and something to write with, or a device on which you can jot down notes quickly. Be sure to date and label your notes, and consider filing this along with any other information received from the health care provider that day, so it’s easy to refer to, as necessary.

Learn Your History: If you are not well-acquainted with your family’s medical history, resolve to learn it. You never know when an accurate record will come in handy.

Getting your medical information organized may seem like an annoying chore at first, but once you have a system in place, maintaining it will be smooth sailing. MSN

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(Senior Wire) A few years ago, my husband couldn’t roll out of bed without feeling dizzy. Our family doctor referred him to an otolaryngologist, who sent him home with a motion sickness prescription.

Worse than dizziness, the meds made him groggy.

Still looking for relief from revolving-room syndrome and nausea, he consulted another doctor who put him in a special chair and tipped it at an uncomfortable angle. Called the Epley maneuver, the doctor timed abrupt changes of Paul’s position from side to side.

“I’m cured, “ Paul said returning home after the chair tipping rearranged the tiny crystals of the inner ear.

Every six months he’d need a tune-up, so he’d jump back in the tipping chair and come home with properly positioned inner ear crystals and no more dizziness.

An inveterate do-it-yourself-er, Paul googled his diagnosis, “positional vertigo,” anddiscovered the Brant-Daroff exercise for vertigo. Now he does the exercises at home, alleviating the vertigo and wooziness.

A true believer, he proselytizes to our dizzy friends. Lately he whisked Judy, a positional vertigo sufferer, away from our book group.

He took her downstairs to our bedroom, where he put her on our bed and demonstrated the Brant-Daroff maneuver.

My friends guffawed about my husband in the master bedroom with our friend. However, they missed my real embarrassment: We hadn’t made the bed.

What both my husband and Judy suffered from is described in Mayoclinic.org as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV.) Three

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS loop-shaped, semicircular canals containing fluid and fine, hairlike sensors that monitor the rotation of the head. Against the walls of the inner ear, between the semicircular ducts and the cochlea, lie patches of hair cells topped by small calcium carbonate crystals.

These crystals monitor all head movements related to gravity. Due to trauma, whiplash, aging, ear diseases, or unknown causes, these crystals become dislodged and move into one of the semicircular canals.

WHOA! Rolling over or sitting up causes destabilizing disequilibrium.

The Vestibular Disorders Association says the Brandt-Daroff exercises have been reported to reduce dizziness in 95 percent of the cases.

At his next ear appointment, my husband handed the doctor a copy of the Brant-Daroff

exercises he’d copied from the internet. “Why do doctors write prescriptions for motion sickness meds instead of handing out copies of Brandt-Daroff?” he asked his doctor.

“My patients won’t do the exercises,” the doctor answered.

Feelings of dizziness or nausea deserve a visit to the doctor; however, if benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is the diagnosis, Googling the Brandt-Daroff exercises, following the directions, and timing carefully may put the BPPV sufferer in the 95 percent who can cure their symptoms at home.

Paul and Judy are proof that the home remedy works. MSN

HEALTH CARE

PAGE 57

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Men and Women: A Different Outlook on Work and Cancer (StatePoint) The challenges surrounding life with cancer, particularly in the workplace, are complex, and new findings show that male and female experiences can differ. In a recent survey commissioned by Cancer and

Careers and conducted by Harris Poll, more women than men said they needed to work for financial reasons, and employed women were more likely to feel they had no choice but to work during their cancer treatment.

The survey also found women are more likely to be concerned about health insurance.

When it comes to disclosing their diagnosis in the workplace, women were more likely to do so than men and said their flexibility at work improved and they experienced a decrease in levels of stress.

For more information about the survey and for resources on working with cancer, visit www.cancerandcareers.org.

As the number of cancer survivors continues to increase, the need for support around survivorship issues, such as working during and after treatment, is becoming more important. MSN

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HEALTH CARE

PAGE 58

Healthy Living for Your Brain and Body TIPS FROM THE LATEST ALZHEIMER’S RESEARCH

INFORMATION FROM THE ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION For centuries, we’ve known that the health of the brain and the body are connected. But now, science is able to provide insights into how to optimize our physical and cognitive health as we age. Research in the areas of exercise, diet and nutrition, cognitive activity, and social engagement reveals the importance of adopting these recommendations into a plan for healthy aging.

Currently, no proven methods exist to prevent, cure, or even slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Although there have not

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Image courtesy of the Alzheimer’s Association.

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yet been any conclusive findings, researchers continue to discover links between healthy behaviors and a reduced risk of dementia.

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50s and 60s may help protect them against mild cognitive impairment, a condition of mild declines in brain function that may precede Alzheimer’s.

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Another area of focus for healthy aging is diet and nutrition. Again, we know that a healthy fueling of the body benefits brain functioning, but there are many differing opinions about what is the best way to eat to maximize health.

Research tends to show that a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet is advisable. And there is growing evidence that a diet rich in dark vegetables and fruits, which contain antioxidants, may help protect brain cells.

Cognitive activity and social engagement is another important area of emphasis for healthy aging. Social and mentally stimulating activities can reduce stress levels, which helps maintain healthy connections among brain cells and may even create new nerve cells.

Scientists are working hard to discover strategies for prevention, treatments, or cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Although there are no proven methods yet, making healthy lifestyle choices can improve overall health—staying physically active, eating healthy, remaining socially and mentally active, and avoiding smoking. ISI The Alzheimer’s Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Our mission is to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health. Our vision is a world without Alzheimer’s®.

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

HEALTH CARE

PAGE 59

®

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE

FACTS & FIGURES 2017 2017 Costs of Alzheimer's = $259 Billion Alzheimer’s is the most expensive disease in America, with costs soaring past a quarter of a trillion dollars.

Medicaid $44B

• In 2017, the direct costs to American society of caring for those with Alzheimer’s totaled an estimated $259 billion.

Medicare $131B

• Average per-person Medicare spending for those with Alzheimer’s and other dementias is more than three times higher than average per-person speading across all other seniors.

Medicaid payments are 23 times higher.

Out-ofPocket $56B Other $28B

• Unless something is done, in 2050, Alzheimer’s will cost $1.1 trillion (in 2017 dollars).

• Nearly one in every five Medicare dollars is spent on people with Alzheimer’s. In 2050, it will be more than one in every three dollars.

Change in Number of Deaths 2000–2014

MARCH 2017

-1%

-9%

-14%

Stroke

HIV Alzheimer’s Disease

• Deaths from Alzheimer’s increased 89 percent from 2000 to 2014, while deaths from other major diseases (incluidng heart disease, stroke, breast, and prostate cancer, and HIV/AIDS) decreased.

Heart Disease

• Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th leading cause of death in the United States and the 5th leading cause of death for those aged 65 and older.

Prostate Cancer

Alzheimer’s kills—and deaths have nearly doubled in the last 14 years.

Breast Cancer

89%

-21%

-54%

alz.org®

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

PAGE 60

Caregiving

SUPPORT•INSIGHT•COMFORT•SERVICE•ENCOURAGEMENT

A Friend’s Dilemma: Concern or Meddling?

BY HOLLY ENDERSBY “Every morning she asks me where we are,” my friend John said. “And she’s scared.”

John’s wife, Ellen, was in their vacation cabin of 20 years, but couldn’t remember where she was when she woke up each morning. Several months before, John told me he was worried about Ellen’s memory and feared she was slipping into dementia.

Now I realized why Ellen hadn’t been to the cabin the past year.

The next day, I called and invited them to dinner and got the chance to observe my old friend. Clearly, things had changed. In fact, Ellen called an hour before dinner to ask if

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hadn’t recommended any of those things. I this was the day they were to come. When I know from experience with elderly relatives told her yes, she said, “Oh, John was right. I didn’t know what day we were supposed to come.”

Throughout dinner, Ellen repeated the same information about her family multiple times, never realizing what she was doing, although it was painfully obvious to the rest of us.

Later that week, Ellen’s grandkids came to visit, and she and John took them river rafting.

The next day I asked her if she’d had fun. She couldn’t remember going and asked her granddaughter, “Did I go rafting yesterday?”

The next time I saw John alone, I asked him if he had taken Ellen to a doctor to discuss his concerns. He hadn’t because PHOTO BY DIGITALISTA, BIGSTOCK.COM he didn’t want to upset her. Unfortunately, according to elder care that it helps to have someone along who asks questions during medical appointments. I experts, John’s response is not unique in suggested John talk to the doctor again and these kinds of situations.

A few months went by before John go in with a list of prepared questions to try returned to their cabin. He told me Ellen had to understand what was happening to Ellen.

That appointment never took place. an appointment with a doctor, who asked her I stayed with Ellen at her home the weekif she had any trouble remembering things.

She said she had no problem at all. With very end John returned to their cabin for hunting season. Although I called twice that week to little additional probing, the physician told Ellen to return in three months. remind Ellen I was coming, she forgot until I turned up on her doorstep.

“Why did the doctor want her The next morning, Ellen wanted to show me around their retirement development, so to return in three months?” I asked. we went on a short walk. When we returned to their home, she told me she wanted to show John had no idea why.

“Did the doctor ask me around the neighborhood: she’d already forgotten where we had just walked. you to write down Throughout the weekend, each time we any instances of Ellen returned to her house, Ellen called for John, not remembering or forgetting he was gone. Each time, I reminded being confused?” I her he was at their cabin, and she’d say, “But continued. maybe he came back.”

According to The second night, I was telling Ellen about John, the doctor

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS a new store in the town near their vacation cabin. She looked perplexed and asked me why I would know about that. When I said it was because it was the closest store to our cabin, she asked me again why I would know about that. Then, all at once, she looked at me and said, “Oh, I know you! I thought you were from here because you’re in my house.” Ellen also asked me if I knew a certain man from the vacation cabin development. “Why, yes, I do,” I said. In fact, the man she mentioned is my husband.

On my last morning with Ellen, I woke to find her wandering around the house, fretting about what time she was supposed to be at church. She’d told me several times the day before that the service started at 7:00, but by morning, she didn’t know if it was 7:00 or 7:30. I told her to go at 7:00, so she wouldn’t be late either way. Clearly, the family needed to address the situation.

When I got home, I talked the situation over with my husband: I was torn about what to do. John was at his cabin just a short walk from us, but I wasn’t convinced telling him what had happened during my visit would prompt any action.

This is a pretty sensitive area for a friend to venture into. I didn’t want to hurt John’s feelings by going around him to contact one of his children, and I certainly wasn’t assuming I had any kind of medical knowledge about Ellen. But I also didn’t want her to get lost or be afraid or be taken advantage of when John was gone.

Finally, I decided to call Susan, the couple’s daughter. I had met her once and had her phone number as an emergency contact

for John and Ellen. She also lived in the same town as her parents.

I called and explained after months of hearing John’s concerns and my own experience with Ellen that weekend, I wanted to share what I had observed.

Susan said she noticed her mom’s memory getting worse, noting that she had just visited Ellen for a couple of hours, and her mother had become agitated and worried when Susan had to leave.

Apparently, Susan’s dad hadn’t talked with her or her brother about the situation.

I suggested it might be good to have a family meeting to discuss what was going on, so some safeguards could be put in place.

Susan agreed and said she’d call her brother, who was scheduled to visit the next weekend, to figure out what to do.

And that’s the last I heard about Ellen’s situation.

Now, months later, I wonder if what I did was the right thing. Despite having talked with John on the phone since that time, we haven’t broached the subject. I know if something happened to Ellen, and I hadn’t had the conversation with her daughter, I would have felt deeply remiss.

But did I over-step friendship and move into meddling?

As a former counselor, I don’t think so.

Concern for Ellen was the overriding reason for my call.

I hope the family will rally around my friend and put strategies in place to keep her safe and unafraid. MSN

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CAREGIVING

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

How Hospice May Be Too “Sick” to Care For You

BY ALAN M. SCHLEIN

hospice care they or their families are provided. A 2016 survey of more than 2,100 hospices found that 80 percent of folks surveyed rated their family’s hospice experience a 9 or 10 out of 10.

Nearly half of hospice patients receive care at home. But an analysis of 20,000 government inspection records highlight many

(Senior Wire) People turn to hospice care when they or a family member get a terminal diagnosis and need a way to provide shortterm, pain-free final few days or weeks before death. But if you think hospices are truly safe, a new investigation reveals some contrary findings.

Hospice, which can be provided in your own home or in a facility, is offered by more than 4,000 hospice agencies around the U.S., which pledge to be on call around-the-clock to tend to a dying person’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. It is a booming industry that served Photo © Kasia Bialasiewicz, Bigstock.com about 1.4 million Medicare patients in the U.S. in 2015, including over a third of disturbing situations, showing that missed Americans who died that year, according to visits and neglect are common for patients the latest government and industry figures. dying at home. Families or caregivers, stunned By using government databases and state and angered by substandard care, have filed records, Kaiser Health News reporters found more than 3,200 complaints over the past five many cases where hospice care—whether years. This has led government inspectors to in the home or at a facility—was troubling, uncover problems in 759 hospices, with more and even tragic, in some situations. Despite than half cited for missing visits or other this, the hospice agencies have faced almost services they had promised to provide at the no scrutiny and even fewer consequences for end of life, KHN found. its failures.

Most disturbing is that in most cases there Let’s be clear. The investigation doesn’t were few consequences for the profitable condemn the entire hospice industry, which is hospices, but severe consequences for the now costing Medicare about $16 billion a year. patients and their families. The hospice care Agencies receive that money to send nurses, that people expect and sign up for sometimes social workers, and aides to care for patients disappears when they need it most, the inveswherever they live. While the vast majority of tigation found. Calls for help in times of crisis hospice care is covered by Medicare, some is have been met with delays, no-shows, and paid for by private insurance, Medicaid, and unanswered calls. the Veterans Administration.

There was the 31-year-old California Most people are very pleased with the woman whose boyfriend tried for 10 hours to reach her hospice providers as she gurgled and turned blue. Or the panicked caregiver in New York who called repeatedly for mid“Care You Can Trust” dle-of-the-night assistance from confused Assisted Living hospice workers who were unaware of who Family Friendly Environment was on duty.

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gonna do? No one is coming to help me. I was promised help at the end.”

UNDERSTANDING HOSPICE Hospices are licensed by state health agencies and subject to oversight by federal Medicare officials and private accreditation groups. To get paid a daily fee by Medicare, hospice agencies face many requirements.

They must lay out a plan of care for each patient, ensuring they’ll treat all symptoms of the person’s terminal illness. And they’re required to be on call 24/7 to keep patients comfortable, but because each patient is different, no mandate spells out how often staff must show up at the home, except for a bi-monthly supervisory visit.

Hospices must stipulate in each patient’s care plan what services will be provided, when and by whom, and update that plan every 15 days. When it works well, hospice provides a well-coordinated, interdisciplinary team that eases patients’ pain and worry, tending to the whole family’s concerns. A 2005 Medicare study of patients in their last six months of life found that 86 percent of Americans say they want to die at home, and hospice makes that increasingly possible.

But when hospice fails, federal records and the KHN interviews show, it leaves patients and families horrified to find themselves facing death alone, abandoned, even as agencies continue to collect taxpayer money for their care.

Take the disturbing but probably common case of Leo Fuerstenberg, 63, a retired Veterans Affairs counselor from St. Stephens, Minn., who died panicked and gasping for air on Feb. 22, 2016, with no pain medication, according to his wife, Laure Fuerstenberg.

She told KHN that a shipment sent from Heartland Home Health Care and Hospice included an oxygen tank, a box of eye drops, and nose drops, but no painkillers. “They were prescription drugs, but it didn’t say what they were or how to give them,” she recalled. “I just panicked. I called the hospice, and I said, We’re in trouble. I need help right away. I waited and waited. They never called back.”

For more than two hours, she tried desperately to comfort her husband, who had an aggressive form of amyloidosis, a rare disease that affects the heart, kidneys, liver, spleen, nervous system, and digestive tract, and can lead to life-threatening organ failure. There is no cure for amyloidosis.

Leo Fuerstenberg died in bed in Laure’s arms, trapping her under the weight of his body until she managed to call neighbors for help. “That last part of it was really horrible,” she said. “The one thing I promised him is that he wouldn’t be in pain.”

Laure, a school counselor, was one of the rare people who actually filed a complaint.

Later state investigators determined that Heartland’s on-duty hospice nurse had muted her cellphone.

Hospice officials did not respond to KHN’s repeated interview requests.

“They never followed their protocol, and I’ve never had anybody from there say ‘We failed, we were wrong,’” said Fuerstenberg, who said she relives her husband’s death daily. “If that had been me on my job, I’d be fired.”

Experts say it is very rare for anyone to file a complaint, but about 1,000 people filed one,

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS leading investigators to uncover wrongdoing from January 2012 to February 2017, federal records show. Many more families, experts say, may be too traumatized to take further action.

A recent national survey of families of hospice patients suggests the problem is widespread: 1 in 5 respondents said their hospice agency did not always show up when they needed help.

“That’s a failing grade,” said Dr. Joan Teno, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, who has studied hospice quality for 20 years. “We need to do better.”

Another problem is that many hospices fail to provide extra care in times of crisis.

That may be because of how Medicare pays them. To get Medicare payments, hospices are required to offer four levels of care: routine care, which is by far the most common; respite care, to give family caregivers a break for short time periods; and two levels of so-called crisis care, continuous care and general inpatient care, when patients suffer acutely.

But 21 percent of hospices, which together served over 84,000 patients, failed to provide either form of crisis care in 2015, according to Medicare’s own study. While there’s no guarantee that a given patient will need crisis care, not offering any such care for an entire year raises a concern about “whether they’re providing adequate symptom control,” Teno said.

Other research has found another big problem is a wide variation on how hospice staff visit people when death is imminent. A patient’s final two days of life—when systems escalate—is often a scary time for families and a time when they need professional help.

But regardless of how often they visit, hospices collect the same flat daily rate from Medicare for each patient receiving routine care: $191 for the first 60 days and then $150 thereafter, with geographic adjustments as well as extra payments in a patient’s last week of life.

Overall, Teno and her co-authors, in a 2016 study on the medical care of a patient’s last two days of life, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 12.3 percent of patients on routine home care received no skilled visits in the last two days of life.

Patients who died on a Sunday had the worst luck—they were more than three times less likely to have a skilled visit than those who died on a Tuesday. Teno said that gives her a strong suspicion that missed visits stem

CAREGIVING

from chronic understaffing, since hospices have fewer staff on weekends.

Part of the problem is that, unlike nursing homes, hospices don’t face inspections every year to maintain certification. Medicare recently tightened its rules to require states to increase inspection frequency to once every three years by 2018. That means that promising to do better is the only requirement hospices face, even when regulators uncover problems.

Another issue is that there is really no punishment short of termination barring the hospice from receiving payment from Medicare or Medicaid, which is disruptive for dying patients who lose service.

Termination is rare. Through routine inspection,s as well as those prompted by complaints, CMS identified deficiencies in more than half of 4,453 hospices from 2012 to 2017, but only 17 hospices were terminated during that same period, according to their records.

In a 2016 survey, experts who follow the hospice industry recommended that CMS create a range of different levels of punishment for hospice infractions, such as requiring in-service training, denying payments, civil fines, and imposing temporary management.

While CMS actually can’t impose those alternative sanctions without changes in the law, it did increase transparency in August by launching a consumer-focused website called Hospice Compare (https://www.medicare. gov/hospicecompare/) that now includes hospices’ self-reported performance on quality measure, and next year will include family ratings of hospices.

Until that happens, little information is available for families to try to pick a hospice that will show up when it counts. Amy Tucci, president and chief executive of the Hospice Foundation of America, a nonprofit focused on education about death, dying, and grief, suggests that families of ill or frail relatives consider hospice options before a crisis occurs. Her group recommends 16 questions families should ask before

PAGE 63

choosing a hospice. The list, originally published by the American Hospice Foundation, is located at www.hospicefoundation.org/ End-of-Life-Support-and-Resources/ Coping-with-terminal-illness/how-tochoose/questions-to-ask MSN Also contributing to this story was KHN, Kaiser Health News.

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PAGE 64

Nutrition

FOOD•HOLISTIC•WELLNESS•LONGEVITY•PREVENTION

Five Natural Remedies for High Blood Pressure

BY SUZY COHEN (Senior Wire) While waiting for a prescription, a friend of mine decided to check his blood pressure. He was dealing with a bout of walking pneumonia, and his blood pressure (BP) spiked to 140/100.

Has this ever happened to you, where you checked your BP at the pharmacy, and it was suddenly high?

You can blame stress, the modern diet, lack of exercise, or a bad infection like my buddy had. You can blame other lifestyle factors, too, like smoking. Or it could simply be your genes as high blood pressure, termed hypertension, tends to run in families. If left untreated, hypertension can cause or lead to blindness, stroke, kidney failure, atherosclerosis, and heart failure.

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threonate is also great for helping promote good, healthy sleep and relaxation.

GARLIC Garlic cloves and garlic supplements have been proven to lower blood pressure. Garlic is an allium vegetable that is rich in antioxidants, good-for-you phytochemical and polyphenols, and sulfur-containing compounds called allicin (which are wonderful for collagen promotion, too). Garlic is especially effective at lowering systolic blood pressure.

OMEGA 3 FATTY ACIDS Omega 3 fatty acids are found in fatty fish and some plant foods like nuts, seeds, and cruciferous vegetables. Fish oil is wonderful for lowering high blood pressure, because it contains EPA and DHA, two wonderful compounds for lowering blood pressure and for keeping your heart healthy overall. Fish oils help reduce triglycerides, and that reduces risk for heart attack and stroke.

BERRIES AND DARK CHOCOLATE I saved the best for last. Berries and dark chocolate… Mmm! This sounds like a wonder-combo you can get on board with, right?

Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, goji, and acai are rich in compounds called polyphenols which are blood-pressure lowering. Dark chocolate contains flavonoids, which dilate blood vessels and reduce pressure. A tasty combo comes to mind. Try chocolate-covered blueberries, or dark-chocolate dipped strawberries.

MSN

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

NUTRITION

PAGE 65

Twelve Powerhouse Veggies to Easily Incorporate into Your Diet a challenge. But try what one mom did, Monica Kass Rogers, as she

BY KIMBERLY BLAKER revealed in her article, “How I Got My Kid to Eat Brussels Sprouts.”

Rogers says to cut them in half, then stir-fry them in sesame oil with We know how vital veggies are to our health, whether we like other vegetables. Another trick she recommends is to roast them with vegetables or not. But not all vegetables are created equal. Each olive oil and salt. If kids can learn to love them, so can you. vegetable comes with its unique ASPARAGUS combination of nutrients and Folic acid is what asparagus benefits—some, in particular, are is especially noted for because it a powerhouse source of nutrition. contains 60 percent of the RDA. If you’re not a fan of vegetaBut asparagus also contains a bles, it’s all the more reason to try healthy amount of vitamins K a broad variety. There’s bound to and C, as well as several other be a couple of veggies you’ll dig essential nutrients. if the vegetables are prepared just Grilled asparagus is a tasty the right way. If those vegetables side. Before grilling, brush them happen to be some of these alllightly with olive oil then add stars, it’s all the better. salt and pepper. Place the spears BUTTERNUT SQUASH on the grill for 10 minutes, turn This winter squash is loaded them, then give them a few more with vitamin A, in fact, four times minutes until they’re lightly the recommended daily allowance blackened.

(RDA). It also contains double the SPINACH RDA of vitamin C and packs more Now here’s an RDA that’s This dark green leaf packs a whopping 684 percent of the RDA of vitamin K and well potassium than a banana. impressive. Spinach contains 987 over the RDA of both vitamins A and B6. Kale makes a great addition to smoothies.

To become a butternut squash percent of the RDA of vitamin K. PHOTO © MARILYNA, BIGSTOCK.COM fan, first, cut it in half, and remove Spinach is also an excellent source all the seeds. Then fill a glass baking dish about 3/4" high with water, of vitamin A, manganese, folate, magnesium, iron, copper, and several and place the pieces of squash with the skin facing up. Bake at 400 other nutrients. degrees for one hour. Allow the squash to cool enough to handle it, You can add spinach to both smoothies and pizza. Spinach quiche then scoop all the squash out of the peel, and top it with butter. If that and spinach pie are also dishes many people love. doesn’t suffice, try adding a touch of brown sugar.

BROCCOLI KALE Here’s another vegetable that’s a rich source of vitamin K, packing This dark green leaf packs a whopping 684 percent of the RDA of 245 percent of the RDA. Broccoli also exceeds the RDA for vitamin C vitamin K and well over the RDA of both vitamins A and B6. and is an excellent source of chromium, folate, and fiber.

If you like salad, just add a mix of kale to the lettuce. If you’re not Mix broccoli into most any cheesy dish, and it’s easy to gobble a salad eater, kale makes a great addition to smoothies. it up. Broccoli cheese soup, broccoli smothered in cheese, and other SWEET POTATOES cheesy pasta dishes with broccoli added are good options.

Vitamins A, B5 and B6, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, and carotenoids AVOCADO are the nutritional makeup of sweet potatoes.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 66 The good news is, Thanksgiving isn’t the only time of year you can eat them. Sweet potatoes make yummy French fries, which can even be baked rather than fried. Just look for one of oodles of baked sweet potato fry recipes out there.

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

NUTRITION CONTINUED FROM PAGE 65

Although not a powerhouse of any particular vitamin or mineral, avocado still carries an adequate amount. What’s particularly notable about avocado is it’s an excellent source of healthy fats, polyunsaturated and mono-unsaturated, and can be used to replace unhealthy fats.

Guacamole is an all-time favorite. It’s also good mixed with egg salad or a tossed salad.

PUMPKIN (CANNED) This is an outstanding source of vitamin A, containing 2 ½ times the RDA, not to mention a fair amount of a host of other vitamins and

minerals.

Numerous desserts can be made from pumpkin. So the next time you’re in the mood to bake, make something with a little added nutritional value. Try making pumpkin pie, bread, cookies, or cheesecake.

SCALLIONS Also known as spring onions, these pack 172 percent of the RDA of vitamin K. They’re also known for their antioxidants and are a good source of vitamin A. Scallions can be grilled just like asparagus. Brush them with oil, add salt and pepper, then toss them on the grill until they’re lightly browned. If that doesn’t work for you, try wrapping them in bacon. MSN

Don’t Eat This if You’re Taking That CHOLESTEROL MEDICATIONS If you take a certain statin drug to control high cholesterol, like

BY JIM MILLER Liptor, Zocor, Altoprev, Mevacor, or generics atorvastatin, simvastatin or lovastatin, you should avoid grapefruit and grapefruit juice.

(Savvy Senior) If the prescription label says “take with meals,” does Grapefruit can raise the level of it matter what you eat? It depends on the medication. Many meds the drug in your bloodstream and increase the risk of side effects, should be taken with food—any especially leg pain. food—to increase their absorption and reduce the risk of side effects.

BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICINE If you take an ACE inhibiBut some foods and medications can tor drug, like Capoten, Vasotec, interact, reducing the medications’ Monopril, Zestril and others, to effectiveness or increasing the risk lower your blood pressure, you of harmful side effects.

To stay safe, you should always should limit food that contain potassium, like bananas, oranges, talk to your doctor or pharmacist to tomatoes, spinach and other leafy learn the ins and outs of your pregreens, sweet potatoes, and salt scriptions, along with what foods and beverages to avoid while you’re substitutes that contain potassium.

ACE inhibitors raise the body’s on it. In the meantime, here are potassium levels. Eating too many some foods you should stay away Many medications should be taken with food—any food—to increase their absorption and from for some commonly prescribed reduce the risk of side effects. But some foods and medications can interact, reducing the potassium-rich foods while takdrugs. ing an ACE inhibitor can cause an medications’ effectiveness or increasing the risk of harmful side effects. PHOTO © TIBOR13, BIGSTOCK.COM

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS irregular heartbeat and heart palpitations.

If you are taking blood-thinning medications, like Coumadin, Jantoven, or the generic warfarin, you should limit kale and other greens, including broccoli, cabbage, spinach, and brussels sprouts that contain vitamin K. These foods can block the effects of these blood-thinning medications, putting you at risk for developing blood clots. You also need to watch out for garlic, ginger, vitamin E, and fish oil supplements because they can increase these medications blood-thinning abilities, putting you at risk for excessive bleeding.

ANTIDEPRESSANTS If you take a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) antidepressant like Marplan, Nardil, Emsam, Parnate, or generic isocarboxazid, phenelzine, selegiline or tranylcypromine, avoid aged cheeses, chocolate, cured meats, and alcoholic drinks. These contain tyramine, which can raise blood pressure. Normally, the body controls tyramine levels with an enzyme called monoamine oxidase, but the MAOI antidepressant blocks that enzyme.

THYROID MEDICATIONS If you take a medication for hypothyroidism, like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothroid or generic levothyroxine, you should avoid eating tofu and walnuts, and avoid drinking soy milk. All these can prevent your body from absorbing this medicine.

ANTI-ANXIETY MEDICATIONS If you take medication for anxiety, like Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, Ativan, or generic alprazolam, clonazepam, diazepam, or lorazepam, you should avoid alcohol. These medications act as sedatives, binding with the brain’s natural tranquilizers to calm you down. But when you mix these drugs with alcohol, the side effects intensify and can cause you to feel lightheaded, sleepy, and forgetful.

If you’re taking antibiotics, like Sumycin, Dynacin, Monodox, or generic tetracycline, doxycycline or minocycline, you should avoid dairy—milk, yogurt, and cheese, and calcium supplements and fortified foods—for a couple hours before and after taking the medicine.

Calcium in dairy products binds to the antibiotic and prevents your body from absorbing it, making it ineffective.

To find more dietary guidance on the drugs you take, see reliable health sites like MedlinePlus.gov or MayoClinic.org, or consider the excellent new AARP book Don’t Eat This If You’re Taking That: The Hidden Risks of Mixing Food and Medicine available at Amazon. com and BN.com for $13.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org.

Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of The Savvy Senior book.

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NUTRITION

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

PAGE 68

Fitness

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more about the benefits of essential oils, they come to rely on these natural remedies for their health, home, and beauty routines.

Of course there is a time and a place for traditional medicine, and oils should not replace physician-recommended therapies, but they should be considered for short-term remedies and ritualistic inspiration. They create an environment of peace and alleviate feelings of stagnation. They are meant to supplement, enrich, and nourish your relationship with yourself.

WHERE TO START? The world of essential oils is vast, and it can be intimidating to know where to start.

The quality of oils will affect their function and potency. Just like shopping for produce, the most ideal products can be found in small batches, close to the source. The most pure, therapeutic-grade oils can be identified by looking for “Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade” (CPTG) on the bottle.

METHODS OF APPLICATION The most common way to use essential oil is aromatically. When you smell an essential oil, receptor cells receive the aroma and send signals to the limbic system of the brain. This is the area of the brain that also triggers a childhood memory or brings you back to a certain place or time by way of a familiar smell. The odor molecules facilitate a connection with memory and emotion. One method is to rub a drop or two into the palm of your hand, cup your hands near your face and inhale deeply. Another option is through steam inhalation. Place several drops in a bowl of hot water, place your face over the bowl, and cover your head with a towel to keep the steam concentrated near your face.

Diffusing oils with a diffuser is a preferred method for many and proves to be safe and effective. The oils are mixed with water and released as fine, airborne particles that can fill a room with energetic properties, to affect you while you breathe. Mixing oils in the diffuser is an easy way to create a customized blend.

Another common way to use oils is topically. Drops of diluted oil can be placed on certain energy centers of body, such as your

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS wrists, behind the ears, on your temples and feet. For instance, you can dab peppermint oil on your feet to reduce a fever. Eucalyptus oil applied to the temples can alleviate headache.

Oils are fat soluble and immediately absorbed by the skin. Oils can be topically applied “neat,” meaning straight from the bottle, or can be diluted with a carrier oil, such as fractionated coconut oil or jojoba oil.

In the bath, oils can be used by first mixing several drops with a cup or two of epsom salts, then adding the mixture to the bathwater.

Ingesting essential oils internally is an ongoing topic of discussion and is advised with caution. As with any dietary supplement, be sure you do your research.

Oils are highly concentrated, and a single drop in a cup of water might be the equivalent to 20 or more cups of tea.

Here are a few essential oils that can have positive effects on your

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overall wellbeing: Peppermint—relieves nausea, curbs sugar cravings Lavender—calms, enhances communication, promotes sleep Lemon—restores mental flexibility Grapefruit—supports metabolism Geranium—softens anger, fosters forgiveness Ylang-ylang—contains aphrodisiac properties Clary Sage or Sandalwood—alleviates symptoms of impotence A final word of caution: all citrus oils (grapefruit, lemon, wild orange) are sensitive to light and should not be used topically while exposed to sunlight. When in doubt, dilute all oils with a carrier oil before applying directly to skin. Connect with an herbalist or aromatherapist to obtain samples and discuss specific issues or ailments. MSN

Get Moving To Preserve Your Hearing

BY YVONNIE PHAN Many Americans, motivated to improve their physical and mental wellbeing, have already made the popular New Year’s resolution to exercise more frequently. This commitment has an additional, lesser-known

to maintain a healthy auditory system than someone with low cardiovascular activity.

In a decade-long Miami University study of 1,000 subjects of all ages, those over 50 with moderate to high cardiovascular fitness levels maintained hearing sensitivity comparable to people in their 30s, effectively delaying presbycusis.

An additional investigation from the University of Florida affirms that routine cardio provides the necessary blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients to maintain the health of important auditory systems within the cochlea.

Photo © Kzenon, Bigstock.com

benefit: exercise is proven to preserve hearing health. Engaging in physical activity with proper safety precautions can delay or prevent age-related hearing loss, or presbycusis, which affects a quarter of adults 65 to 74 and half of those older than 75.

Cardiovascular exercise is vital to hearing health as one ages. A person over 50 years old without a genetic predisposition to hearing loss and who engages in cardio for 20 to 30 minutes, five times weekly, is more likely

“The cochlea or inner ear, is a high-energy demanding organ,” Shinichi Someya, Ph.D. said.

Stretching and yoga are healthy alternatives to cardiovascular exercise.

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flow throughout the body and activate the muscles. While stretching or performing yoga poses, it’s important to focus on breathing to increase oxygen and blood flow. There are even yoga poses designed specifically for individuals with tinnitus.

The hearing health benefits of exercise can CONTINUED ON PAGE 70

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

FITNESS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 69

be negated by noise exposure or improper ear care, however.

Listening to audio through headphones at a loud volume can increase one’s chances of Music-InducedHearing Loss (MIHL), as can the music played during exercise classes. Turning down the volume of an audio device, wearing earplugs, and giving ears time to recover from loud noises can help prevent damage to the auditory system.

Those who swim are encouraged to keep their ears dry. Moisture in the ear allows for bacteria, or even fungi and viruses, to attack the ear canal, which can lead to Swimmer’s Ear and cause temporary

hearing loss. Dry ears immediately, and do not insert anything, such as cotton swabs, into them.

Health professionals strongly recommend everyone incorporate exercise into their daily routine. There are many benefits in maintaining a consistent exercise regimen, and we can now add hearing loss prevention to the list. Before starting a new fitness routine, consult a physician to assure the routine is safe and suitable for your health. MSN Yvonnie Phan is Marketing & Communications Intern for Hearing Health Foundation (HHF), the nation’s largest nonprofit funder of hearing research with a mission to prevent, treat, and cure hearing loss. Her article was originally published at www. hhf.org.

Play mind games with yourself to stay mentally sharp

BY WINA STURGEON, ADVENTURE SPORTS WEEKLY (TNS) It is hard to admit to yourself that as you pass middle age, your brain power may start to decline. This isn’t dementia; it’s a normal part of life. In fact, there’s even a name for the condition: ARCD, or “Age Related Cognitive Decline.”

A slew of commercials and advertisements have recently begun to offer products that promise to improve memory or increase brain power. Fitness experts claim that brain decline can be delayed or prevented by physical activity, and there exists a plethora of studies showing this to be true.

However, little recognition is given to what may be the actual cause of ARCD: putting your life on automatic pilot. This happens when certain habits become so ingrained that you don’t have to think about them. You can carry out actions without ever having to pass them

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As actions become more and more automatic, the brain retreats and becomes less involved in your daily thinking process. To keep your mind sharp, you will need to break free of the tether of living on automatic pilot.

Here’s a test: without looking down, think about what socks you are wearing. Can you remember which pair of pants or jeans you put on when you got dressed, without looking to see? If you can’t remember, or if you have to concentrate to think about it for a bit, you may have started to put dressing for the day on automatic pilot.

Remember, the mind is like a muscle. With use, it gets stronger.

Look for areas of your life in which you can increase the participation of your mind. A good example is dinnertime. If you’ve become accustomed to dinners that consist of either prepared food, or the easy cooking of a burger or other piece of meat along with the opening of a can of vegetables, or even if someone else prepares dinner food for you, take the initiative to push that comfort zone.

Look online or in a newspaper for a recipe that sounds appetizing. Purchase the ingredients, an action that requires thought. Put the recipe near your stove and begin following its instructions, which will require several different categories of thought. If you live

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS alone and the recipe serves four people, either do the math to divide it in half, or prepare it as is and freeze the leftovers to eat later.

Closets are another place where the automatic pilot syndrome often sets in. If you can reach for a certain shirt or a pair of shoes without thinking about it, rearrange everything. Sort things differently. Put jackets where shirts now hang. Whatever way you may store your shoes, switch them up. Don’t

FITNESS

store them by color or dressiness. Store them without a system so that you have to at all of them and search for the shoes you want.

In fact, if you’ve gone on automatic pilot where clothing is concerned, you are probably hanging on to things you haven’t worn in years and will never wear again. Donate or give these items away, which will also require your brain to think about which items need to be gone.

PAGE 71

Above all, enhance your brain power by analyzing where you have allowed areas of your life to go on automatic pilot, and let your brain start taking control instead. MSN Wina Sturgeon is an active 55+ based in Salt Lake City, who offers news on the science of anti-aging and staying youthful at: adventuresportsweekly.com.

She skates, bikes and lifts weights to stay in shape.

Dance classes keep Parkinson’s patients moving

BY MARCI SHATZMAN, SUN SENTINEL (TNS) It’s Thursday afternoon and the dance studio in Boca Ballet Theatre is filled with couples, some in wheelchairs, moving in unison to piano music.

The 11 pairs are there for the twice-weekly free class, BBT4PD: Dance for those living with Parkinson’s disease.

“Class can be danced sitting, standing or holding onto a walker,” a flier says.

This is the fifth year, and the program is growing steadily, said Dennis Lue, instructor and co-program director with Cindy Surman.

Classes are 1 to 2:30 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays September through May and registration is required by calling 561-995-0709 or visiting bocaballet.org Students are mostly seniors and consider the movement class a lifesaver. When Parkinson’s disease symptoms catch up with him and he doesn’t feel like going, he goes anyway, said retired rabbi Merle Singer, a program and ballet theater benefactor and rabbi emeritus at Temple Beth El of Boca Raton.

“Today I was tired. I had an off day,” he said.

Singer was at the class with caregiver Maria Beltran.

“I have to keep moving,” he added, saluting pianist Martha Brown, the program’s accompanist.

Singer has been coming to the classes for four years and he’s a convert, but only in the dance sense. “I said ‘me, go to ballet, are you kidding?’ “ he said, laughing.

He announced he had Parkinson’s in 2005, Singer said after class.

A documentary on his life was shown on public TV in the spring.

“I may not live to see a cure, but I’ve had a lot of fun,” he said.

“I’m inspired by the people. They laugh and they’re having fun,” said physical therapist Sharlene Mann, who comes twice a week with her husband Charles Mann after moving to Coral Springs from Boston.

“We came to try it out and we stuck.”

“It helps you become aware of your body. Some of my symptoms have gone. I’m doing well,” said Frances Polini, a BBT4PD student for four years.

Marjorie Faver is in her second season. “As a former ballet dancer, it’s helping me move my limbs myself,” she said. “You can feel the music.”

The class is part of a national program, and instructors Surman and Lue were trained in New York for Dance for PD, a collaborative of Mark Morris Dance Group and Brooklyn Parkinson Group. The program is sponsored by the American Parkinson Disease Association. MSN

Joy Schnall, left, of Delray Beach partners with Frances Polini, right, of Deerfield Beach on Nov. 20, 2017 during a twice-weekly movement class called BB4PD for people with Parkinson’s disease at the Boca Ballet Theatre in Boca Raton, Fla. Photo by John McCall, Sun Sentinel—TNS

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As he began to eat his few bites of hamburger, the people around them were looking over and whispering.

Obviously, they were thinking, Illustration by fabioberti.it, Bigstock.com “That poor old couple—all they can afford is one meal for the two of them.”

As the man began to eat his fries, a young man came over to the table and politely offered to buy another meal for the couple. The old man said they were fine—they were used to sharing everything.

People closer to the table noticed that the little old lady had not eaten a bite. She sat there watching her husband eat and occasionally taking turns sipping the drink.

Again, the young man came over and begged them to let him buy another meal for them. This time, the old woman said, “No, thank you, we are used to sharing everything.”

Finally, as the old man finished and was wiping his face neatly with the napkin, the young man came over to the little old lady—who had yet to eat a single bit of food—and asked her why she had not eaten and what she was waiting for.

She answered, “The teeth.” MSN

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New Memorial and Museum Enlighten Our Inconvenient History

BY BERNICE KARNOP Many people struggled to understand the fuss over memorials and symbols honoring the Confederacy last year. Why should they be taken down after standing for a century or more, and what did Montana have to do with such memorials? We learned that the

the peace on its terms.”

The monument in Helena, he notes, was dedicated when “race relations in the country were the nadir, with segregation and lynchings reaching their peak.” He suggested that rather than tearing down the monuments to the Confederacy, we interpret them with added information and create new monuments that acknowledge the untold history

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opens April 26, 2018, in Montgomery, Ala. It commemorates the thousands of lynching victims in the U.S. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE EQUAL JUSTICE INITIATIVE

Daughters of the Confederacy had erected a memorial in Helena in 1916, inscribed, “In Longing Tribute to Our Confederate Soldiers.”

This was the only Confederate monument in the Northwest, and it was removed in 2017.

Montana writer and Civil War historian Ken Robison tells about Montana’s connections to the Civil War in his recent trilogy of books. In Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price’s Army, he wrote, “Having lost the war, the South was determined to win

behind them.

This has begun elsewhere, for example at the 2016 opening of The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. As well, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and the nearby National Memorial of Peace and Justice will open in Montgomery, Ala., on April 26, 2018.

Both the memorial and museum are the work of the Equal Justice Initiative,

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a group dedicated “to challenging racial and economic injustice and to protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”

The museum is just a block from one of the most prominent slave auction spaces in America, steps from the dock and rail station where tens of thousands of black people were trafficked during the 19th century.

The memorial, commemorating the lives of thousands of African Americans who were lynched during the era of racial terrorism in the U.S., sits on the site of what was once a slave warehouse.

EJI has documented 4,400 lynching between 1877 and 1950. Men, women, and children were shot, hanged, drowned, or beaten to death.

The lynchings not only left thousands dead, they traumatized countless more, trapping them in poverty and marginalizing them in Southern society. Meanwhile, state and federal officials did nothing.

Millions escaped the Klan and apartheid of the South, to head for cities in the North or West.

The memorial sits on a hilltop overlooking Montgomery, a city with 59 memorials to defenders of slavery and champions of racial segregation and white supremacy.

Until now, nothing has acknowledged that Montgomery was one of the busiest slave ports in the U.S., or that it hides a history of racial violence.

Initially, the memorial’s 800 columns appear to be holding up the roof, but when visitors walk up to it, the ground drops away to reveal that the columns are suspended from above, evoking the image of lynching. The columns represent the 800 counties where lynchings have been verified.

In the 6-acre field outside the museum stand 800 identical columns, bearing the names of these counties. Each county has the option of taking the column bearing its name as a memorial of their own.

The columns representing counties choosing not to confront this truth as part of their history will remain at the site.

The Legacy Museum has interactive displays that dramatize the stories of slavery, racial terrorism, legalized segregation, and current issues. One display shows rows of glass jars filled with soil from lynching sites, each one inscribed with the name of a lynching victim.

EJI founder and director Bryan Stevenson, writes, “In this soil, there is the sweat of the enslaved. In the soil there is the blood

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS of victims of racial violence and lynching. There are tears in the soil from all those who labored under the indignation and humiliation of segregation. But in the soil there is also the opportunity for new life, a chance to grow something hopeful and healing for the future.”

Stevenson, a graduate of Harvard Law School, is a professor of law at New York University Law School. He has won national acclaim for his work challenging bias against the poor and people of color. He has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant. He’s the author of Just Mercy, which Time magazine named as one of the top 10 non-fiction books of 2014.

The memorial was designed by Michael Murphy, MASS Design Group, who also created the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda and the 911 Memorial in New York City. Countries like Germany, Rwanda, and South Africa built memorials to reflect on the atrocities of their past.

Berlin marks the home of each Jewish family that was abducted, encouraging visits to the death camps, so people acknowledge and grieve the horrors of the past.

These monuments, memorials, and museums are meant to acknowledge the truth of history’s darkest times, making way for repentance, forgiveness, and healing.

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“We have not done this in the United States,” Stevenson said. “Our nation’s history of racial inequality casts a shadow across the American landscape. This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color, and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and equal justice.”

Germany’s ambassador to Rwanda, S. Peter Fahrenholtz, addressed the people attending the International Holocaust Remembrance Day event, held at the Kigali Genocide Memorial January 25, 2016.

“If there is anything Germany can share from its own experience, it is this: facing up to the grim truth of what took place is the only path to begin reconciliation,” he said. “A past that is not examined fully and honestly will remain a burden for the future.”

Alternative memorials, monuments, and museums allow U.S. citizens to engage with honesty about our own history of atrocities, abuse, and racial injustice, so we can experience healing and reconciliation.

For more information about the memorial, the museum, Bryan Stevenson, and the Equal Justice Initiative, visit www.eji.org. MSN

Lower Antelope Canyon Glows with Shifting Light

BY DIANNA TROYER Walking through Lower Antelope Canyon is like Alice slipping down a magical rabbit hole and finding a wonderland. The popular slot canyon, a 10-minute drive east of Page, Ariz., is a wonderland aglow with shifting golden, terracotta, and violet light reflecting off Navajo Sandstone. An ideal time to tour the canyon is during the off-season in winter and spring.

Our Navajo tour guide led us on a 15-minute hike to the entrance of the canyon, nicknamed “The Corkscrew.” The Navajo word for it means “Spiral Rock Arches.” Looking at the undulating terracotta-colored sandstone on the surface, it seemed impossible for a canyon to lie beneath us. At the entrance, several flights of metal stairs led us down into the 120-footdeep canyon.

For the next hour, we learned how steady water erosion, eons of Inside the canyon, light reflects off the canyon flash floods, and geologwalls, making them glow gold, orange, or violet.

PHOTO BY DIANNA TROYER ical forces sculpted and scoured the V-shaped canyon’s smooth walls and narrow sandy floor.

Around each curve along the half-mile path, a different hue of light beckoned us as ever-changing clouds and sunshine shifted above.

Depending on cloud cover, shafts of sunlight usually beamed down into the corridors between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

The canyon is a paradise for photographers whose images have been turned into a Microsoft’s Natural Wonders Desktop Wallpaper. It’s also a popular backdrop for graduation photos and weddings. As if on cue, a bride in her elegant, floor-length white dress and groom appeared around a bend.

The power of flash f l ood i n g i s e vi den t.

The smooth ground above Lower Antelope Canyon Crews regularly mainhides the 120-foot-deep slot canyon below. PHOTO tain the stairs and haul

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away rocks, sticks, and other natural debris deposited on the trail after storms.

Equally enthralling is Upper Antelope Canyon five miles away. Nicknamed “The Crack,” it is shaped like the letter “A” with the canyon wider at its floor than its top. The Navajo word for it is translated as “The Place Where Water Runs Through Rocks.”

If storms are predicted, tours are canceled due to the potential for flash floods. Several tour companies in town take reservations, or you can just show up at the canyon and register. The area is managed as part of the Navajo Tribal Park, and tribal guides are required, due to past vandalism. MSN

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Eyeing Iceland

STOPOVERS AMONGST SHEEP, WATERFALLS, GLACIERS, AND HOT SPRINGS

BY NATALIE BARTLEY Iceland is known for its natural beauty and was on my bucket list. The United States Tour Operators Association named the country in its list of top 10 destination fads for 2017.

This island of 39,768 square miles with a population of under a half-million has plenty of space to absorb curious travelers.

With flights from Portland, Seattle, and other U.S. cities, Icelandair makes it easy to experience Iceland, allowing a free stopover for up to seven nights with flights across the Atlantic Ocean. Available since the 1960s, the stopover is included at no additional cost to your airline ticket price. WOWair also offers a free Iceland stopover on round-trip flights going from U.S. cities to Europe.

This past September during Iceland’s shoulder season, I took advantage of an Icelandair stopover on my return flight from Germany to Seattle. We flew to the Keflavík International Airport (KEF) near the capital city of Reykjavík. Two of us rented a

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Visiting waterfalls, such as at Goðafoss (Waterfall of the Gods), is a favorite stopover activity in Iceland. PHOTO BY NATALIE BARTLEY

small, fully-equipped camper van from Kuku Campers. Several companies offer larger campers for rent.

Our mission was an eight-day drive around the island on the Ring Road. This 826-mile paved road is ideal for viewing Iceland’s famous scenery. On the way we stopped at numerous waterfalls, ocean beaches, and quaint towns, spending nights in campgrounds and undeveloped sites.

We took a thousand photographs of glaciers, rivers, mountains, lava rocks, and autumn leaves along the way.

One night we camped with views of the ocean while parked beside a glacier next to a river. On the Golden Circle driving route, we spent a night at a campground in a pasture near the Strokkur Geyser in the Haukadalur geothermal region. Along the north side of the island we slept on a high point at a roadside pullover area with the ocean spread out below us.

Later in the week, we experienced the healing geothermal waters of a community recreation center’s swimming complex.

Another campground, located at a golf resort, featured hot tubs facing a mountain.

Icelanders take geothermal pool sanitation seriously. The facilities require thorough

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showers prior to entering, and one city facility even had attendants checking that everyone complied.

Our last night outdoors was at a campground near a lighthouse with the northern lights peeking out occasionally.

Even though I love watching wildlife, I admit the sheep and Icelandic horses stole my heart. Fluffy white sheep dotted the green fields. Horses with punk-rocker hairstyles strolled over to fence lines to meet us.

Last autumn, some of my friends heading to Europe stayed in the capital town of Reykjavík. They raved about the local organic farm-to-table eateries and beautiful waterfalls. Sue Allison, a Boise resident, visited on her way to Germany.

“Probably my favorite thing about Iceland was how environmentally focused and friendly the country is,” she said. Allison liked their emphasis on organic foods and gardening, and noted the premium quality dairy products.

Visitors with only a few days for a stopover generally base out of Reykjavík. In town are bicycle, beer, and food tours. Travelers can easily access the Blue Lagoon geothermal springs on the way to or from the airport.

Shannon Page of Boise spent two days in Iceland on her way to Germany. “Don’t make the same mistake I made and schedule too little time in this amazing country,” she said.

A three-night stay allows for tours to waterfalls and geysers along the Golden Circle route near Reykjavík.

Longer stays permit renting a car or 8 Hotels in the heart of the Canadian Rockies camper and exploring further afield. If you want to whale watch, HOTEL ROOMS SUITES CONDOS sea kayak, or take a 1-800-563-8764 helicopter ride, visit the Icelandair and www.bestofbanff.com WOWair websites to

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

TRAVEL

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Glaciers and volcanic mountains add beauty to the southeast Iceland scenery at the Skaftafell area of Vatnajökull National Park. PHOTO BY NATALIE BARTLEY

book these and other tours, or book a tour once you arrive in Iceland.

Tour buses transport passengers to all parts of the island for scenic views or overnight stays in luxury hotels.

Budget-conscious backpackers and van campers have plenty of options with hostels, and home stays on farms offer an intimate look at the sheep and horse cultures.

If you saw the Icelandic scenery in the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, you might recognize the movie locations during your travels in Iceland. Games of Thrones filmed scenes in south Iceland.

The busiest tourist season is June through August, with endless daylight and lots of festivals. Bring a rain coat and warm clothing for the constantly changing weather. The island is an expensive place to travel since food and gasoline prices are high, so carry credit cards, ATM cards, and cash.

We found the Wi-Fi reliable and readily available throughout the country at gas stations, restaurants, and campgrounds. Iceland has high-quality tap water, so we only needed bottled water for camping at the undeveloped sites.

Although the country’s designated language Icelandic (a North Germanic language), English is widely spoken. It is part of the Germanic language family. Road signs can be tricky because place names are sometimes spelled in various ways.

Our week-long driving tour through Iceland was a teaser for what the island offers. I am eager to return to for an in-depth exploration in the backcountry PRESENTED BY: beyond the roads and waterfalls. MSN

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Jan 26 - Apr 22, 2018 Icelandic horses are common and often approach the fence line to serve as willing photo models. PHOTO BY NATALIE BARTLEY

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Photography

LIGHT•LANDSCAPES•HOW TO•PEOPLE•GEAR

Calling all photographers....

SUBMIT YOUR MONTANA PHOTOS TO THE MONTANA SENIOR NEWS! Each issue, the Montana Senior News will hold a reader photo contest with winning entries prominently displayed in the photography section of the printed publication as well as in our online gallery.

Submitted images need to show or represent the state of Montana in some way and must be a minimum of 240 dpi when printed at 5"x7".

Photos will be judged on Composition, Originality, Technical Image Quality, and General Creativity. We will not publish subjects of a sensitive nature.

Submit your images for consideration by completing our online form: www.montanaseniornews.com/reader-photo-submission/ Photo © Rawpixel.com, Bigstock.com

Six Steps to Improve Your Smartphone Photography

BY JONATHAN RIMMEL About 42 percent of seniors use smartphones, and that number’s on the rise. Why? They’re a useful tool. Conveniently capturing photographs is one beneficial way to use smartphones. It’s the camera you always have with you.

Now I certainly don’t advocate setting aside your “real camera” anytime soon; however, I thought it would be prudent to offer some tips for getting the most out of these devices as photographic tools.

1. Don’t hold your phone like it’s a dirty diaper (as far away from you as possible.) Instead, tuck your elbows into your sides, and firmly grasp your phone with both hands. This will add stability to your shot. Additionally, if you can assign the shutter release to an external button like the volume control, do it. This is much easier than trying to contort your hand to touch the screen.

2. Use a dedicated camera app, such as Camera+ for iPhones or Camera FV-5 for Android phones. These apps will give you control over focusing, white balance, exposure compensation, flash, shutter speed, and iso. Unfortunately, most phones have a fixed aperture, so that can’t be changed, but using these apps will still be better than letting the phone decide what’s best.

3. Use RAW format if your phone supports it. If you know what RAW is, chances are you’re already using it. For those who don’t, the simplest explanation is to compare the RAW format to a film negative.

This gives you the most control and leeway when editing your images.

Just be sure to save them as JPEGs later if you want to share them online.

4. Use a photo-editing app, such as Snapseed, if you want to do some quick edits on your phone. This app in particular is quite easy to use, but still very capable of allowing you to change the image’s tone, sharpness, saturation, etc. Of course you can always offload images to your computer and edit in some more serious software, like Lightroom or CaptureOne. 5. Use the flash outside to balance the exposure on a backlit subject.

Now in the case of cellphones, this will work best if you are fairly close to your subject as the flash on these devices is not particularly powerful.

6. Think about your photo before you take it. Why are you taking the photo? What are you trying to convey? Do you have a clear subject?

What does the composition look like? Does anything look weird or out of place?

This list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a pleasant boost in the quality of your smartphone photography. Now get out there and make some beautiful images! MSN

Frosty bison grazing in the morning sunlight at Lamar Valley, Glacier National Park. PHOTO BY DIANNA TROYER

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 â&#x20AC;¢ MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

PHOTOGRAPHY

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Swallowtails pool up on our driveway, and they are always a sure sign of spring/summer. PHOTO BY DIANNA TROYER

There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. ~ Ansel Adams

Iceberg Lake, Glacier National Park. PHOTO BY DIANNA TROYER

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

PAGE 80

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ALL ABOUT MONTANA

PAGE 81

All About Montana

LOCAL PEOPLE•LOCAL STORIES•LOCAL FUN•LOCAL BUSINESSES

Fly Fishing: It’s All About Food, Rest, and Sex

BY HOLLY ENDERSBY

Hunt recommends stopping by a fly shop near water you want to fish. “There’s nothing like local knowledge. These shops can steer you to the right flies to use,” he said. “And

Despite what some fly fishermen would have you believe, successful fishing boils down to three things: what fish eat, where they hide out, and what their activity is at a specific time of year.

Food is the dominant factor in fly fishing, with a focus on the type of food the fish you want eats (insects), the color that attracts them to that bug, and the size of that morsel.

Unless the fly you are using looks like fish food, the best rod, waders, and presentation won’t matter. If fish aren’t actively looking for food, they are often resting, so learning to read water is also a key ingredient for success.

Photo © graphicphoto, Bigstock.com Look for resting areas behind large rocks or in quiet bank-side if you buy your rod-and-reel combo from water or the seam where quiet and livelier a shop, they often throw in a lesson waters meet. with the purchase.”

Then there’s sex. When spawning, most No matter where you fish, what they are fish don’t actively feed, but they do get testy, eating at the time you are heading out to the especially the males, and they will hit a fly water is critical information. Those local fly just out of sheer aggressiveness at that time. shops can be a real help to beginners and Getting started fly fishing shouldn’t be experienced anglers. intimidating. Chris Hunt, a resident of Idaho Chuck Robbins, resident of Dillon, Mont., Falls and author of three books on fly fishing guide, and author of Flyfisher’s Guide to (Shin Deep, Fly Fishing Idaho’s Secret Waters, and Montana, recommends checking the fishing A Fly Fisher’s Guide to Idaho’s Small Waters), said news boards in local fly shops for what’s beginners will do just fine with a nine-foot, hatching and the flies successful guides are 5-weight rod-and-reel combo. using. “This information comes from the “You can get this set up for around $140,” guides who are out on the water every day,” Hunt stated.

Robbins said.

Any decent sporting goods store will carry Both Robbins and Hunt recommend hiring the right gear, including an assortment of a guide for a day and learning all you can flies to cover a variety of fish and different from an expert. At first, learning to cast can water. Artificial flies match a specific life be frustrating, so personal instruction from stage of an insect: they are either a nymph, a guide will help you become proficient much emerger, or adult. more quickly.

For small streams, Hunt recommends a According to Robbins, anglers have a selection of dry flies (they float on the surrich diversity of rivers face), such as an elk hair caddis, a stimulator, to choose from for a an Adams, or a Royal Coachman. guided trip near Dillon.

“Bigger water requires some streamers or “There are great flies, like a wooly bugger,” Hunt added. “For rivers to sample within subsurface insects, try a stone fly nymph or an hour and a half of a caddis fly nymph.” town. The Jefferson,

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Ruby, Big Hole, Missouri, and Beaverhead are all terrific fisheries,” he said.

“Both Idaho and Montana are loaded with world class trout fisheries,” said Hunt. “You could fish your whole life and never cover all the streams and lakes these two states offer.”

He recommends checking out more remote waters and keeping a DeLorme Atlas & Gazetter for each state in your rig.

“You can use Google Maps, too, but if you’re out of cell service, the Gazetters a r e a l w a y s available.”

This past November, an angler pulled a 30-inch rainbow trout out of the Boise River near downtown, so don’t forget waters close to or in cities as well.

“The Boise is a four-season river,” said Hunt. “You can have a great time fishing it through town all the CONTINUED ON PAGE 82

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PAGE 82

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 81

way to Eagle before water gets too warm for trout in the summer months.”

In Missoula, the Clark Fork lures anglers with smallmouth and largemouth bass as well as some pike, and the access couldn’t be easier. Further north the river is flush with several species of trout.

The nearby Bitterroot holds populations of trout and big browns as well. It’s hard to beat the Missoula location for fishing options as just west on Highway 12, anglers can ply the waters of the famous Lochsa River over the border in Idaho.

Mountain fishing in Idaho is good on the Payette River between Banks and McCall. This is a summer stream as the spring runoff is ferocious. Further north, anglers can try their hand at steelhead in the late winter in the Little Salmon River, and summer means smallmouth bass in the big Salmon River as well as spring chinook and steelhead.

Feeder streams to the Salmon, like the Rapid River and the Wind River, are classic pool-and-drop and yield some very nice trout.

The Beaverhead in Montana is easy to fish because walking and wading aren’t difficult, but Photo © graphicphoto, Bigstock.com it doesn’t give up fish easily.

“It’s got big fish,” said Robbins, “but the flow depends on the dam’s water release, so it can be tricky. But the upper section of the Beaverhead is as good as any river in Montana.”

Hunt and Robbins agree the Big Hole is special. “It’s my favorite river in the whole country,” declared Robbins. “There are some monster fish in it, and every section is different.” He noted that summer wade fishing at the Big Hole is easy with tons of access, while the upper reaches are classic riffle-and-pool.

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Hunt added that the Big Hole offers a unique opportunity for fly fishermen. “It has native arctic grayling, and that’s a pretty neat fish to go after.”

In addition, Robbins added brown trout, rainbow trout, westslope cutthroat, brook trout, and mountain whitefish to the list of fish in the Big Hole.

Trophy trout waters in Idaho include the South Fork of the Clearwater, the St. Mary’s and St. Joe in the north, the Big Wood River near Ketchum and Hailey, and on the east side the South Fork of the Snake and the Henry’s Fork of the Snake.

“The Yellowstone country has an amazing number of excellent rivers for fishing,” Hunt said. “The Madison, a legendary Montana stream, the Yellowstone, Firehole, Lamar, Gardener, Gallatin, and Shoshone are all in the national park.”

Hunt recommends anglers check in at West Yellowstone Blue Ribbon Flies for information on what flies to use as well as which guided trips to take.

“The owner is a fly fishing legend,” said Hunt, “and they offer amazing day trips.”

Robbins was quick to add that the reservoirs of the upper Missouri also all have great trout fisheries.

“Clark Canyon Reservoir has great big trout, with some reaching 20 inches and in the 14-pound range.”

Further north in Montana, both the Yaak River and the Flathead have good populations of brook trout and mountain whitefish in addition to Cutthroat in the Yaak and bull trout in the Flathead and its tributaries.

There are literally a lifetime of rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs to explore in Idaho and Montana, so grab that new rod and reel, a handful of flies, and get going! MSN

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FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

ALL ABOUT MONTANA

Calving Season

BY ELLA MAE HOWARD Our 2018 calving season started two days before Christmas 2017. The early start was not because the bulls got out before the June 1 turnout date. Or because we miscalculated our artificial insemination schedule. First calf heifer No. 609 went into labor about noon

Cow 85 is 14 years old, never had any problems in the past. She’s a really good cow—raises a big soggy calf every year. She has good feet and a good bag; we keep her heifer calves as replacements.

But when I found her away from the feedground, a nose was showing, but just one foot. I watched her lie down, push, get up, walk around, lie down, push some more. I

PAGE 83

was struggling to get its feet under him. In a matter of few minutes, the calf was covered in mud. It was cold and had not gotten to its feet. We got the Ranger, loaded the little fellow in the back, and drove to the house where we moved him to the porch. Usually, a couple of big bath towels will suffice to get the calf dried off and warmed up, but not 011 Calf. It took five big towels to get it cleaned up and dry.

We fixed a bottle of colostrum milk, which the little guy drank in a few gulps. In a couple of hours, 011 was warm, dry, and trying to get to its feet.

We loaded him in the Ranger and took him back to a very anxious mom. The next day, Calf 011 was bucking and kicking on the feedground. I had to smile at him.

And tomorrow, we continue our routine of checking, looking, prepared to help If needed.

That’s the path of calving season. MSN

Photo © ruslan1117, Bigstock.com

on the 23rd. I walked her down to one of our calving sheds.

When I went back to check her, I found her standing over a small black lifeless form.

I gave her a couple of hours to identify with her dead calf, then I hauled it off to a spot the coyotes and birds of prey would easily find.

Sometimes calving season gets an early start, and some newborns need a little extra help to increase their chances of survival in the cold. PHOTO COURTESY OF ELLA MAE HOWARD.

There are a few ranchers who calve in the fall, but most ranchers control the breeding season, so the first little guys show up starting in March or April. We AI our replacement heifers and expect them to start the first week of March. But with heifers you can be surprised a couple of weeks early. About the middle of February, we keep a close eye on them, watching for the signs of labor. Any soon-to-be young mother is moved to a calving unit where we can keep around-the-clock vigilance on her.

We expect our older cows to calve without problems, but we know that Mother Nature doesn’t get the calf in the correct position to pass through the birth channel.

thought about walking her to the corral where we could help her, but when she lay down again and really started struggling, I slipped up behind her, took my coat off, rolled up my shirt sleeve, and went in and got a hold of the foot that was tucked back.

I straightened the leg and stepped back, and with 85’s next big push out came a beautiful heifer calf.

Mom was up immediately, cleaning her newborn, and in a few minutes, she had her calf on its feet, nursing.

I drove back to the house with tears streaming down my cheeks. It was such a special moment when that little calf got up on its feet and wobbled around until it found Mom’s teats. I don’t know if Mom knew that I helped her bring forth a precious little black bundle that will in a few days be on the feedground, chasing around with tail in the air and giving Mom some concerns because it is getting too far away from her.

Then there was Cow 011. We knew she was getting close. We watched her. It was like she didn’t want to take a chance on not getting her share of cake, so she started walking across a muddy area to where she thought we were going to dump the cake. But then she stopped, lay down, and popped out her calf.

It was a chilly, damp day, and the little guy

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MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

ALL ABOUT MONTANA

A Solution to Unpredictable Road Conditions

BY ELIZABETH LARCH

can take Meridian, Center, or the bypass. My preferred route is the bypass, but if one of the first two has already been plowed or sanded and is therefore safer, I will change my routine and take the other. However, I have no way of knowing which roads have already been

First, let me make something clear: I have no intention of telling anybody how to do their job. I have absolutely no clue how to operate a snowplow, much less coordinate the Flathead Valley Road Department. But this time of year, the Road Department, specifically the winter maintenance team, comes under a lot of scrutiny from Valley residents due to unplowed and icy road conditions.

Of course, this is inevitable: With a limited number of snowplows and personnel and many, many, miles of road in the valley, some roads are going to remain unmaintained for awhile.

We’re Montanans; we’ll complain, but we Photo © Taina Sohlman, Bigstock.com have snow tires, and we plowed, short of calling residents of these can deal with this. My primary difficulty with areas and asking. Possible, since Kalispell is a the winter conditions is the unpredictability, small town, and I probably know people on all and I think others have this problem as well. of these streets, but difficult, especially when The current unpredictability of road mainteconsidering an easier solution: The Internet. nance makes it difficult to plan transportation If the Road Department posted their ahead of time and choose the safest options plowing progress, predicted scheduling, and for travel. current maintenance priorities online, planFor example, as a Kalispell resident, there ning travel—predicting delays, finding safe are a few different routes I can take to work. I streets, and choosing departure times—would be significantly easier.

On an icy day, I would usually try to leave the house before 8 o’clock, but if I knew that the road was tentatively going to be sanded at 8:30, I would probably delay leaving until then because it would be safer.

My suggestion for easy formatting of maintenance information is a color-coded roadmap of the valley, with roads represented in one of five colors: green for completed roads, orange for roads where maintenance is in progress, red for high-priority incomplete roads, yellow for mid-priority incomplete roads, blue for low-priority incomplete roads, and black for any road whose conditions neces-

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sitate emergency travel only until further maintenance.

Estimated completion times would be available by clicking on each road; obviously this would be more accurate the higher the road priority. Additionally, snowplows, sand trucks, and other such vehicles could be tracked via GPS and appear as different colored dots on the map. Similar websites for highway and mountain pass conditions throughout Montana exist, but none of them go into enough detail for route selection on daily commutes.

My neighborhood was not designed and planned for easy winter driving, and there are times when my neighbors and I just stare at each other and ask, “What is the Road Department up to?”

A map would add transparency to the Road Department, and with that transparency will come a much-needed understanding of, and sympathy toward, the maintenance crew, as well as valuable community feedback.

Maybe neighborhood A could stand to be plowed a half-hour later if the main thoroughfare of nearby B were to get plowed first.

Maybe some neighborhoods actually would appreciate later plowing when everybody’s at work and no cars are in the way, resulting in better snow removal.

The lack of communication currently characterizing the road department causes a lot of unnecessary anger toward the winter maintenance crew. In my mind, my street should be their number-one priority, and if they’re not up plowing it at 5 a.m., I want to exact revenge by writing a biting editorial.

But if I were aware the maintenance team was hard at work, clearing the streets surrounding schools, the major highways, and the hospital complex, I would be a lot more understanding.

One thing I know for sure— it’s not just me. MSN

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PAGE 85

Opportunity Defined as Activism for Sister Mary Jo McDonald

BY CONNIE DAUGHERTY “It was an opportunity,” began almost any sentence uttered by Butte’s Sister Mary Jo McDonald as she recalled her varied paths through her 76-year life full of opportuni-

in Leavenworth Kansas because “she was a Catholic girl,” even though she was determined to attend MSU in Bozeman and play softball with her friends. However, when the scholarship from St. Mary’s came, she decided to accept it. That decision changed the direction of her life.

those years, she lived in dangerous neighborhoods, experienced the challenges of Civil Rights up close, coached softball and volleyball, and served as a principal.

When there was an opportunity to come back to Butte, Sister Mary Jo accepted it and taught for three years before the Parish pastoral opportunity at St. Ann’s.

“Parish work is people work. Liturgy work—the whole gamut—it’s where you meet the people, and it’s also where you meet the poor,” she explained. “It’s also an opportunity to be involved in the community.”

Sister Mary Jo was definitely in her element, not only because she was a member of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth with their focus on Vincent DePaul’s 400-year-old teachings regarding social justice issues, but because that is Sister Mary Jo’s passion.

“It allows us to be activists simply because we are members of a religious community,” she said. “What are they going to do to a nun?”

So she jumped in. The first big project she CONTINUED ON PAGE 86

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ties—each offering some sort of service to others.

Although retired from her duties as a Pastoral Minister and Administrator for St. Ann’s Church in Butte, she has not stopped participating—she just allows herself more for more opportunities, like serving on Butte’s Natural Resources Damage Council. A strong, determined advocate for what is right for the environment and for the community, Mary Jo’s absolute focus is on the people of the community.

Baptized in Walkerville, raised in Anaconda, and now living in Butte, she is an example of the best of her environment and her upbringing. Before her family settled in Anaconda, she recalled her youngest days as the family moved from place to place along the high line, following her father’s work as a phone company lineman.

“We were called the trailer tramps,” she said with a bit of a giggle.

Despite Anaconda’s smoke from the smelter stack’s operation, Mary Jo remembered good times.

“It was nothing short of an opportunity to gain friends for a lifetime,” she said, remembering her mother sharing what little they had with a neighbor who had even less and her father supporting the men in his union.

Mary Jo remembered riding her bike, playing outside until dark, and fishing with her father and brothers—and winning a Warm Spring Creek fishing derby. “I had that pole forever,” she recalled. A very good softball player, Mary Jo was on a women’s team that won the state championship one year.

When she was a senior, her high school principal insisted she apply to St. Mary’s

“I met our sisters, came home at Christmas time, and told my parents what I was thinking,” she said.

After only a few months in Leavenworth, she was thinking she wanted to join the Sisters of Charity, a big decision for the 19-year-old.

Even though her parents encouraged her to wait until she finished her degree, Mary Jo filled out the application.

“If it’s meant to be, I’ll be accepted; if it isn’t, then it isn’t,” she recalled.

She joined the order the following August.

Teaching was her first career after graduation, and she eventually earned master’s degrees in Counseling and Administration and in Pastoral Ministry.

Meanwhile, she taught junior high math, science, and religion for 21 years in Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas. During

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ALL ABOUT MONTANA

MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 85

initiated was a 1990 class action that eventually—after six years of litigation—allowed Butte to own the Butte Water Company. It was a time when Butte’s water was considered 406-265-3125 hazardous.

220 3rd Avenue “The one that really ticked me off was #401- Upper Level Atrium • Havre when they turned off the water fountains in hpg@highplainsgallery.com the schools and told the children to drink pop and juice,” she said.

One day, when she was in a women’s prayer group, they were talking about the water situation.

“Somebody needs to bring a class-action law suit,” she recalled saying. That night she got a phone call—an opportunity. “That was Gift store celebrating Native Style the beginning.” They gathered a group of peoAs we walk in peace through 2018 ple—a lot of them the poor themselves—and 48 Second Ave, Havre • 406-265-3340 • 406sundogs.com they stuck it out and eventually won.

Meanwhile, Sister Mary Jo was busy doing her day job as St. Ann’s Pastoral Minister. She began serving on the boards of the Butte Food Bank and the Lady of the Rockies.

She continued her photography hobby— begun years before in Kansas City. Here in Montana, her focus has been mostly scenery and animals—elk, wolves, sheep, and eagles.

“I think with most animals, if you’re quiet and very peaceful, you can get good pictures,” she said.

• 24 hour Pool “If you sit and watch • Pet Friendly them long enough, there are some inter• Fresh Baked Cookies esting stories that are • Extended Continental worth sharing with Breakfast others.” Sister Mary Jo has captured many • Cloud Nine Bedding stories in her photographs, which she mounts, frames, and donates to different organizations to sell as fundraisers.

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To raise money to take a group of students to Mexico to help build houses, another Sister and Mary Jo decided to sell some of the photos at Anaconda’s Art in the Park—but it was a juried event.

“We did get accepted; I think simply because we were the nuns,” she said with a laugh. They raised enough to fund their charitable trip to Mexico.

While Sister Mary Jo was taking pictures and leading young people and others at St. Ann’s Parish, life and conflict continued in Butte’s Superfund activities, and of course, she was right in there, determined to do what is best for her community.

“In 2010, three of us sued on behalf of Silver Bow Creek to make sure it was legally a creek and not just a drainage area,” she declared as she chuckled. “I’m sure people were scratching their heads, wondering why we were suing for the creek.”

As usual, however, Sister Mary Jo knew what she was doing. Since a creek is a state waterway, it has to be cleaned to state standards.

“In order to do that, the Parrott tailings have to be removed,” Mary Jo explained.

Now a Restore Our Creek group has been established, and the complex and challenging work begun by Sister Mary Jo and two others continues.

“That’s a good focus for me in my retirement,” she said with a gleam in her eye.

Sister Mary Jo continues to help in St. Ann’s Parish, serve on Butte Food Bank and Lady of the Rockies boards, and serve as an on-call Chaplin for St. James Hospital. And she has decided to dust off her cameras start taking pictures again.

However, she readily admitted, “Political action has always been who I am.”

No one knows what other retirement opportunities God has in store for Sister Mary Jo McDonald, but whatever they are; they will be meaningful and active. MSN

FEBRUARY // MARCH 2018 • MONTANA SENIOR NEWS

ALL ABOUT MONTANA

Power Irish Duo, Black Donnellys Dublin, To Tour Montana

PAGE 87

One of Dublin’s premier Irish bands, “The Black Donnellys Dublin,” will be touring Montana in March.

Dave Rooney, voted 2012 Best Irish Singer/Songwriter of the Year by NYCS “Radio Irish,” and multi-instrumentalist Dave Browne comprise the duo, which plays traditional Irish, Celtic rock, folk, original, contemporary, country, and Appalachian music.

Formed in 2004, the band first came to prominence with You’re a Star singing sensation and internationally renowned George Murphy, who was a finalist on the TV show. He went on to sign with Sony, and had a Number-1, multi-platinum selling album in Ireland.

The band played live shows and recorded albums thereafter, touring extensively and performing in premier venues throughout Europe, America, and Japan.

Rooney, a critically acclaimed songwriter, released his debut album This is My Home at the prestigious Sugar Club in Dublin in 2009. The title track placed Number 3 in the Irish download charts.

He later released two more albums, If it Ain’t Broke in 2010 and The Entertainer in 2011, which was the soundtrack to a musical he released in 2012 called, Cobblestone Sam. The play was based on a homeless man Dave met while performing as a musician in Temple Bar, Dublin and were well-received. Actor Seamus O’Rourke played the main character.

Rooney has since teamed up with Pioneer Motion Pictures and will make a movie based on the song he wrote of the character, aptly named “The Millionaire.” It will be shot in Dublin in 2018 and distributed in the States.

Guitarist Browne smashed the world record for marathon guitar playing. In June 2014, he played guitar continuously for 114 hours at the Temple Bar Irish Pub in Temple Bar, Dublin.

Later that year, the band moved to Las Vegas, taking up residency at the Rira Irish Venue, Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, where they beat the world record for the longest concert ever held. They played for 15 days and 10 hours.

The Black Donnellys Dublin are renowned for their lively performances. From the raucous vocals, musicianship, and remarkable songwriting skills of Dave Rooney, to the rip-roaring fret work and high-octane performance of Dave Browne, this band truly is a breath of fresh air. MSN

BLACK DONNOLLYS DUBLIN MONTANA TOUR SCHEDULE << H e l e n a , M o n t a n a : G r a n d s t r e e t Theatre—Friday, March 2 at 7 p.m.

All proceeds go to the Helena Food Share. Tickets are $20 at the door, or $15 in advance. Tickets are available at the Helena Food Share. For further info call (406) 498-4162. << A n a c o n d a , M o n t a n a : W a s h o e Theatre—Saturday, March at 2 p.m.

All proceeds go to YES Youth Empowerment Services. Tickets are $20 at the door, or $15 in advance, and $5 with a student I.D. For further info call (406) 498-4162. << B u t t e , M o n t a n a : M T T e c h L i b r a r y Auditorium—Sunday, March 4, 2 p.m.

All proceeds go to the Butte Emergency Food Bank. Tickets are $20 at the door, or $15 in advance, and $5 with a student I.D. Tickets are available at the Butte Food Bank, Montana Tech’s Activities Department in the Student Union Building, and Insty Prints at 120 W. Park St., Butte, MT. For further info call (406) 498-4162.

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