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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Dracon" data-source="post: 1606159" data-attributes="member: 14799">Allan - The gifted usually reveal their talents early in life.  So it was true with Ivan Doig who thoroughly impressed his teachers in Ringling and White Sulphur Springs as he was growing up. There is a whole tribe of Doigs still around.  Some of his first cousins tell me that Ivan was indeed fortunate to possess writing talent since he wasn't much of a cow hand.  Always had his nose in a book, according to them.  Relatives usually don't cut their kin much slack.The rural country school at Ringling sits empty, recently consolidated with White Sulphur Springs.  With improved highways and a dwindling school population, rural schools all over Montana are shutting their doors.  The movement from the rural to the bigger cities has been relentless.  More and more land is vesting into fewer and fewer hands.  The super wealthy have been cherry picking in Montana for over 30 years.  White Sulphur Springs is, as they say,  conveniently located somewhere in the middle of Montana. Our modest library recently closed because some employees believe it causes illness, ala sick building syndrome. Yet our "stimulus" has come to our little airport (over $4 million) so corporate jets can bring our absentee landlords for some R & R.  Montana has yet to break a million in population.  Less than 100,000 more people in the past 50 years, and those folks have moved to our cities.When you mention Ringling, my wife and I took a drive over that way last year and found at the abandoned RR Station,  a big barn owl perched under the eve - in broad daylight.  White Sulphur Springs still has no traffic lights as HW 89 winds through town.But all this space means more freedom for our birds.  They like it here!  John</blockquote>

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