Editor: Last autumn, my husband and I were on a camping trip that took us across Canada and the U.S., visiting friends and family and taking in sights we had always wanted to see. We had booked at Pocahontas State Park for a few nights and were on our way there when our truck broke down. We were over 3,000 miles from home, knew no one in the area and had Hurricane Michael heading up the coast toward us. We were truly stuck and didn’t know what we were going to do when a lady, Lisa Bailey, stopped and asked…
Browsing: Commentary
As I was recently listening to the tragic story of the house fire in Buckingham County that claimed the lives of three people, something that the Virginia State Police said caught my ear: investigators had not yet been able to rule out that the fire could have been set intentionally. Fire investigators begin at the same point at every fire: was this fire intentionally set or is there an accidental cause? Determining how a fire started is vitally important to the safety and well-being of those living in a community. I believe that the fire in Buckingham will be found…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. Just so you know, this article is being written from my secret Dogpound bunker, which happens to be my office at work. Sadly, the reason I am in here on a Saturday morning is that my laptop is in the shop for repairs. I am having my laptop scanned for any bad software that might have been installed by a third party. Let me explain. I was having some issues with my laptop a few weeks ago, and I got into a help site that offered to do a…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. As of this writing, the next Democrat presidential debate is just around the corner (Sept. 12). It looks like two dozen have been cut down to a more manageable size of 10. This is not surprising since the top three – Biden, Warren and Sanders – are totaling a combined 70 percent of the poll numbers. I think many people will watch the debate just to see if Joe Biden generates one of his classic gaffes. He has been on a roll as of late, and I think it…
With the exception of the year-round schools, all other area schools started the fall 2019 session on the Tuesday after Labor Day, Sept. 3. Schools starting means school buses picking up children, school zones being active, increased traffic, and, in some cases, walkers. These changes require that each of us drive with heightened awareness. For some, it will require a complete change of driving attitude. When driving in and around county schools, we all must expect delays, especially when school starts and ends. Incidentally, the start and end times are different from one school to another. The point is to…
The day started out as any other day but rapidly turned into one of the deadliest days in American history. Terrorists hijacked four passenger planes in Boston and used them as weapons. Two of those planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York, one was flown into the Pentagon and one reportedly destined for the White House crashed in Pennsylvania. The target at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, during World War II was military personnel and the ships and aircraft that made up a large part of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The target on Sept.…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. Technology is great. Today, we each hold in our hand more computer power than it took to get to the moon and back, and yet it can be a pain. I will give a recent example. We have a nice place about 30 minutes from where I live in Sullivan, Ind., called Boot City. They are one of the largest stores for western clothes, boots and other accessories in the state, and to complement their store, they built an adjacent building that houses a very nice auditorium where they…
Although they will never see my article, my words to the St. Louis firefighters who rescued four children, all 5 and under, are: “Job well done!” Those firefighters were dispatched to an apartment fire after a passerby noticed smoke coming from the second floor. Firefighters did not know that there were four small children in the apartment, but they did their job and did it well. They conducted a primary search of the fire apartment, found the four children, three of which were in cardiac arrest. One child was in a closet, one was in a doorway and two were…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. My dental insurance provides for two free annual cleanings, but they are not really free. The last one cost me over $200 because they had to update my x-ray chart, and, of course, I wanted the fluoride treatment. I actually dread going for my cleaning. Why? I dread the question, as they poke around my teeth, “Have you been flossing?” I tell her I do floss, but that is really kind of a white lie, since I hate flossing. I cannot get into all the areas, and I am…
Aksa Soptelean-Rivas, 12, and Vida Soptelean-Rivas, 16, relax next to a creek below a waterfall near Marion, Mont., on Weyerhaeuser land in August 2019. (Caleb M. Soptelean photo) It was a refreshing experience. Last week I was afforded the opportunity to take my 12- and 16-year-old daughters to the place I love: Northwest Montana. I had taken them there for the first time two summers ago, and we watched our first rodeo together in Polson, hiked on the Beardance Trail down to Flathead Lake — the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River — and hiked part of the…