The Ekalaka Eagle - Your Community Builder

I will have been writing a weekly column for 27 years this June. The best part about being a columnist is reading my mail. Sometimes I get “fan mail” that I use to fan the fire in the wood stove, but usually I get really nice comments and fuel...

We just celebrated Dr. Seuss’s birthday, so it is time for what has become my annual tradition—my Dr. Seuss Whoville poem. Probably every generation feels that the overall moral and ethical state of the world is declining at breakneck speed, but...

The thermometer reads 17 below this morning, but I am in a wonderful mood, because I am fleeing from the tundra of Montana for a few days in Arizona. My torn hamstring has healed enough from doing the spilled dog water splits four weeks ago, and we...

This year for the first time in 41 years, I will not be a participant in inducing trauma in children. Since I have retired as an educator, I will not be involved in the spelling bee. All across the country, kids are being traumatized not by cyber bul...

During this last month before calving begins, we are enjoying normal dinner hours and having an actual bedtime as we count down the days until calving starts and that all changes. I love calving season now, because I am pretty much a second string...

I grew up in the Sun River Canyon northwest of Great Falls and thus Malmstrom Air Force Base. All the years I was growing up, a nuclear war with Russia was an ever-present threat. Our friends, the Mergenthals, who lived right by Gibson Dam had a...

I will have been retired for one month this week, and somehow retirement is not working out like I thought it would. Perhaps the reason is that I retired from the only job where I actually received a salary. My bosses at my other jobs have not...

I have gone on record as a proponent of global warming--especially when the thermometer dips below zero. Following December’s storm dubbed Storm Elliott, which brought record low temperatures to Montana and Wyoming, I am starting to wonder if globa...

This past weekend, I attended a natural cheese making workshop presented by Allison Cooley Agee, and the take-away for me is that cheese making is extremely labor intensive. There are so many steps and so many pitfalls to avoid that my cheeses would...

Technology never ceases to amaze me! Not only have they invented cars which drive themselves (something I am going to need very soon, and my family might argue that I need right now), but drones are going to change the way we live and play. They now...

Every day a few minutes after we posted the daily lunch special on Facebook, the phone would ring. Caller ID would announce, "Call from Cole Drug," and we would answer the phone by saying, "Hi, Paul!" He would usually order the special, but we knew...

I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas filled with feasting as part of the celebration. Even though intermittent fasting and the Mediterranean Diet seem to be the rage in diets right now, I hope you will enjoy this little Christmas rhyme I...

Every year I find myself in the same predicament as I look down the barrel of the Christmas gun. Every year, it is as though Christmas sneaks up on me out of the blue. So with just days left before Christmas, I am in my usual pre-Christmas panic...

Since I am retiring from my County Superintendent of Schools job at the end of this month, I am trying to clean out file cabinets and computer files. Some days I don't get a lot accomplished, because it is like taking a 41 year trip down memory lane...

Next weekend, we will again be cooking for the Sons of Norway Christmas party. Although I have been doing it for several years, I still feel like a poser when I am cooking Norwegian food for a traditional dinner. Although it has not been confirmed...

Every year right before Thanksgiving back when I was teaching English, I would ask all of my junior high students to write poems entitled, "I Am Thankful For..." I always modeled a few lines of an example poem for them, so with a very straight face...

We have been enjoying a beautiful fall, but suddenly Mother Nature decided to turn on us with prolonged snow and cold these last couple weeks. We old timers well remember the horrible winter of 1978-79 which followed a really nice fall right up...

We shipped our calves this week, which generated lots of material for a humor column because funny stuff happens when you combine a bunch of cattle and horses and cowboys and elk hunters and things that break down at inopportune times. But, somehow,...

I receive many submissions from readers, and I love to share them. However, in my 27 plus years of writing this column, I believe this is the funniest piece about shipping cattle any reader has ever sent me. Thanks, Tom Ogle of Paris, Illinois for...

There are many extraordinary people living in Melstone, Montana (population 126) including Sage Newman, who has a commanding lead in the 2022 PRCA Saddle bronc standings and J.R. Vezain, who has inspired millions with his mission entitled "Will To...

Although it has been a beautiful autumn, the "Old Farmer's Almanac" is predicting that winter is going to be rather old fashioned. Our High Plains region is going to be colder than normal, with the coldest periods in late November, early December,...

When Covid hit, we decided to stop offering working cattle ranch vacations, which means my summers have become much less hectic but also less entertaining on a daily basis. One of the best parts about entertaining guests is recounting the funny...

Since early season rifle has been going on for several weeks, there are some hard working mule packers pounding down the trail every day packing duffel, trophy horns, dead elk and deer, and most importantly food for hunters and hay for livestock. It...

This is the time of year when cattle producers are busy marketing their cattle. Although technology has opened up many more options for marketing cattle such as internet live auctions, internet static auctions, drone film, etc., it is kind of tragic...

Since I am about to retire from my County Superintendent of Schools position at the end of December, I am constantly receiving job offers from people who are concerned that I am going to be bored at home eating bon bons and watching daytime...