Wow! It's February already, and that means Valentine's Day is here. This does not mean that you have to spend all your hard earned money on flowers and candy. However, you do need to make sure that your "husband/wife or boyfriend/girlfriend knows how much you love them.
Here's some suggestions from a man who has been married for 38+ years (that would be me):
Cook your "special someone's" favorite meal for them, become their assistant for the day, compliment them often, write them a love letter, shower them with acts of affection, appreciate them in public for all to see (as well as in private), honor them in front of your children (if you have any), send flowers to their job, hide candy somewhere on their desk, or maybe even create a fun scavenger hunt that leads them to you.
You don't have to do all of these (that would be a lot of work), but pick a few or do your own thing.
It may be a made-up holiday created by the greeting card industry, but it can be a wonderful relationship building opportunity. Don't waste it.
Note: I will be removing the calendar from the Nooseletter in all upcoming issues as I do not have the time to hunt down all of these events each month. If you have an event that you want everybody to know about, send it to me and I will post it in the opening remarks.
~Charles P. Scott
FEATURED ARTICLE
Speech to the Childhelp Organization ~Marion Lovelace
Childhelp exists to meet the physical, emotional, educational and spiritual needs of abused, neglected and at-risk children. They focus their efforts on advocacy, intervention, treatment, prevention, family resilience and community outreach.
Marion Lovelace is a very good friend of mine and has worked with this wonderful organization for the last 60 years. She has been asked to give a speech at an upcoming event, and we have been lucky enough to receive that speech early, along with pictures and videos.
The subject of today’s story was the son of an Episcopal minister, born on February 25, 1848 in Hempstead, New York. Although, technically, not an Old West character, Edward Harriman was responsible for restoring one of the most prominent landmarks of the Old West. Although Harriman dropped out of school at the age of 14, he was not a dummy. Starting out as a broker’s boy, by the age of 21 he had his own seat on the stock exchange...
New images of a wild horse roundup by the federal government are causing outrage.
According to the federal government, there isn’t enough room for the horses on public lands, so they do roundups. Those roundups are controversial, and we have an example of why.
Video obtained by the I-Team shows a young horse with a broken leg as wild horses are captured by the Bureau Of Land Management.
The other horses run away as the horse remains alone struggling.
The roundup is on land known as the Pancake Complex — nearly 1.2...
Barbed Wire Phones?
~W.F. Strong
Historian J. Evetts Haley wrote that, in its time, the old XIT Ranch up in the Texas Panhandle was “probably the largest fenced range in the world.” He recalled that its barbed wire enclosed over 3 million acres of land. At the north end alone, the fence ran for 162 miles. The unique enclosure helped keep in enormous cattle herds, keep out rustlers, and also gave rise to the creative use of a new technology: the telephone.
I’ll come back to the XIT in a moment, but first, consider these smattering of reports from that era. In 1897, The Electrical Review, reported that “on a ranch in California, telephone communication had been...
Wyatt Earp: gambling gunslinger, lawless lawman, and the reason people regard the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral as way better than Okay. A guy whose reputation and mustache preceded him, Earp famously entered a Tombstone saloon, saw the guy from Sling Blade bullying people, and proceeded to slap the potted meat out of his mouth before asking, "You gonna do something, or just stand there and bleed?" Sling Blade guy replied by silently bleeding. Oh wait, that was Kurt Russell humiliating Billy Bob Thornton in the movie Tombstone. However, the real-life Earp shared an even cooler anecdote.
According to the Ford County Historical Society, in 1896, Earp recalled how he unmanned Clay Allison, a man described by author John Richard Simmons as "a famous gunfighter with a club foot and a mean streak." In 1878, Allison came to Dodge City to shoot Earp. However, when the crossed paths...
Robert E. Lee Surrenders
~History.com
In Appomattox Court House, Virginia, Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.
In retreating from the Union army’s Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee’s army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler’s Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in...
A Real Woman Bandit
~John Boessenecker
Few Old West outlaws have had so many myths written about them as Pearl Hart, the Arizona stage robber. Despite the legends, Pearl, unlike almost every notorious woman of the Old West, was a real frontier bandit. For the last hundred years, misinformed Western writers have featured a plethora of purported female Western desperadoes. However, few of these “wild women” were outlaws. Annie Oakley was a sharpshooter and performer, not a criminal. Calamity Jane (true name Martha Jane Canary) claimed to have been a U.S. Army scout, but in fact she was a frontier prostitute and camp follower. Eleanor Dumont, better known as Madame Moustache, was a Western gambler, not a desperado. Many writers have claimed that Belle Starr (1848-89) was a frontier robber, and she is known today as the Bandit Queen of Oklahoma. In fact, Belle Starr was primarily a consort of outlaws. Although she was once convicted of horse theft, she never robbed...
Johnny Crawford's Celebration of Life! Memories! Movies! Family! Friends! Fans!
For those of us that love animals and respect
nature
this film is definitely worth seeing
POETRY CORNER
Grandpa's Cabin
~Ross Middlemist
At the end of World War I, some GIs were given homesteads. I don’t know what criterion was needed, but in 1919, my Grandpa Bill was able to get one. It was south of Dillon, Montana, and east of a town called Armstead. Later, Armstead was torn down and removed when the Clark Canyon Dam was built and flooded the town site in 1964.
To hold onto his land, Grandpa had to “prove up” on it, and this required fences and a cabin. He made the trip from his hometown of Dixon, Montana, twice over two years to accomplish the task. It was 315 miles south by horseback from Dixon to Grandpa’s...
