An old-fashioned calf branding party

I can’t tell you how many times people have come to me with the same line that Linda Byrum approached me with about a week ago. "I don’t know if you’d like to or not, but we’ve got something that would make an interesting story in the paper."

Linda told me that she and her husband Mark, who live about a dozen miles west of Agar in rural Sully County, were going to have an ‘old fashioned calf branding’ that weekend and she was inviting me to come along. This lead held interest to me not only because it would make a good story for the paper, but also because it gave me an excuse to get to ride my horse all day.

Communication Dependencies

When I came home the other night, my sister met me at the door of our apartment with tears in her eyes, obviously distraught. She immediately implored the used of my cell phone, quickly explaining that hers was ‘locked up’ and had been for several hours, leaving her out of touch with the world.

While this may seem like a trivial situation, the main cause of her anxiety was this: she’d promised her boyfriend – who lives in the next city – that she would call when she got home … and it had been an hour since. She was worried that he was worried that she hadn’t made it safely. Turns out, that’s exactly what he was thinking and had been about to start a search party because it’s not typical of her to be out of reach.

I gave her my phone right away and asked to see hers in return. An iPhone 3, I messed around with it for a while before I was able to get it to power off and start up again. (If only I had magic fingers when I was the one experiencing the technical difficulties!) She was thankful and began the process of returning calls and answering text messages from worried friends who all wanted to know why she had ignored them for so long.

We Will Never Forget

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

Sunday was the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on our nation that took the lives of over 3000 innocent American people. As a 12 year old who was struggling on dreaded homework, I’m ashamed to say that I was just relived to get to put math away for a while.

I was sitting on the couch in my living room, trying to make sense of fractions. My mom came in from outside in a rush, having somehow heard of the attacks, and turned on the TV.

Shrine circus memories

My first memory of the circus is of a night show, after dark, sitting in the bleachers at the Ft. Pierre rodeo grounds for the Oahe Shrine Club Circus. I remember watching in awe as the tight rope walkers balanced with their arms outstretched, high above my head. Colored lights reflecting off their glitter-covered faces only seemed to amplify the excitement. I remember the taste of cotton candy in my mouth and having to share my seat with my sister because of the large crowd that was in attendance that evening.

The show featured many things I’d never seen before; colored doves appeared out of a magician’s hat and poodles did tricks in skirts, bears rode on tricycles and elephants danced to their trainer’s whim. There were also clowns and tigers and ponies and many other things to entertain a young child.