Nickels, numbers and nudity

Who said, "…striking the two coins (pennies and nickels) at well above their face value set the Treasury and taxpayers back about $100 million last year alone?" That statement was recently made by Luis Gutierrez, Congressman from Illinois whose panel oversees the U.S. Mint. He also said each penny costs 1.26 cents to make and a nickel costs 7.7 cents. Are they going to do away with pennies and nickels? I'm guessing "NO," but they are likely to begin using some metal not as pricey as copper, zinc and nickel. There is talk of minting pennies from steel like they did during World War II. There are people like me who don't understand why the government even makes pennies anymore. Small coins made sense in the olden days when we had penny postcards, a first class letter cost 3 cents to mail, and big jawbreakers only a penny.

We now only have pennies for one reason, to get change when purchasing items that cost $4.99.

No grizzly attacks in Glacier Park for three years? KNOCK ON WOOD! Can't remember a spell that long since 1960. There were six different years in that span of time with no attacks — 1961, '64, '66, '69, '70 and 2001. Four seasons, 1984, '87, '91 and '95, had four separate attacks and they included two fatals. Highest number of deaths occurred in 1980 when there were three; however, the young man and woman killed on Divide Creek were just outside Glacier's boundary.

There have been 141 people involved in bear attacks since 1960. Sixty of those received "minor" injuries, 22 major injuries and 10 died. All the fatals involved grizzlies while about four injury cases were puncture, i.e., bite wounds from black bears. Why are we talking scary stuff about bears? Just thought these figures received from Bear Manager John Waller were interesting, and the figures also point to the huge mathematical odds of you or me being seriously hurt in a bear incident in Glacier; however, I'm not going to leave my bear spray in the car again when hiking off the road.

Time for something lighter. Den cleaning continues in our basement. Finding lots of "neat stuff." (My grandkids say "neat," so I'm trying to use it more.) Philosophy is not all a person can find in new and/or old files. Just stumbled on a book written by a "full blood" Norwegian who lives in North Dakota. Included in his stories is the report of a man's remains being found in an old building being torn down in Minot. "An investigation revealed the body was that of the 1956 North Dakota 'Hide and Seek Champion.'"

Another report tells about "Ole" getting hired as the caretaker on a public beach. One day Ole came upon a young lady wading nude. Ole told her, "Young lady, it is against da rules for anyvun to be on dis beach vitout some clothes on."

The young lady defiantly said, "That's not the law. I can sunbathe here because I have a 'divine right.'"

Ole replied, "Yah, dat's true… and dere ain't anyting wrong with da left vun eeder."

Drive Carefully, Wear Your Seat Belt, and Be Kind to One Another.

G. George Ostrom is a Kalispell resident and Hungry Horse News columnist.