News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1086 - 1110 of 5551
Concealed weapons on campus? HB102 directly raises that issue. But in spite of arguments to the contrary this is not a Second Amendment issue as it relates to campuses. What is at issue is the Regents constitutional right to manage Montana’s University System. Our history is rife with examples where politics and vested interests have interfered with our higher education system. In 1915, at the behest of the Legislature and the Anaconda Company — ACM — University President Craighead was fired for not towing the ACM line....
We’re all getting excited up here that it finally feels like spring, but some homeowners in Southern California are having a hard time with the backlog of migratory birds coming home to roost. UPI reported Wednesday that a family in Torrance, California, near Los Angeles came home to find that hundreds of migratory birds called Vaux’s swifts had flown down their chimney and were swooping and flitting around the family’s home. The birds showed no desire to leave, and they are, apparently, harder to herd than cats. And for t...
• Take the time to thank the people who have helped you to get to this point in life. • Appreciate the path you have taken to get where you are right now. Life is a journey not a destination and everyone has their own journey. • Tell your loved ones that you love them. Tell them often, show it and mean it. You just never know when that last time will be. • Always keep learning and moving forward. Life will throw things at you, but keep moving forward and learning. Not everyone will take the same path and that is ok. • Do no...
I ask for people’s votes to let me continue in the position on the Havre School Board I was appointed to this year. My tenure as a 40-year veteran educator will help bring education and experience to the board. I taught special education and worked as the school psychologist for the district and also worked with non-special needs students. I also have experience from when I coached track and girls basketball and spent time as the area coordinator for Special Olympics. Being an active listener to parents, and a...
I was going to write about the morning symphony, featuring “Variations on a Theme at Sunrise” with Bell-ringing Bird on timpani. This music assured me that the huge black cloud in the western sky was not a slow-moving tornado but a cloud of smoke coming from the landfill, recently plagued by brush fires. I was going to write about “The Rule of Three,” a phenomenon in my family that mechanical failings trundle down the line in triplicate, always. This past week my washing...
Management of natural resources needs to be a long-view and long-term proposition. This is not to say that some short-term issues cannot be addressed with temporary short-term action. In managing uses, economic opportunity and values of natural resources, there are and needs to be multiple “tools” available. Limiting ourselves to one tool is not in natural resource values or our best interest. Rarely do natural resource management challenges have single “silver bullet” solutions. In practice managing natural resourc...
Editor, My name is Jessica Kennedy-Stiffarm. I am a candidate for the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees. I am a mother of three and my children attend school in the district. I am married; my husband’s name is Pete. We both grew up on the Hi-Line and we have lived in Havre for the last 14 years. I am a public health nurse and I will be graduating with my master’s degree in Public Health this summer. I am very passionate about education. I am now at a place in my life where I feel I can give back to the community. I can...
I finished my bath and saw that the rust-orange towel had molted all over my body. I was covered with tufts of orange fur. It was not a good look, and it felt worse than it looked. Worse yet, it gave me a taste of what the next two months would be like. My husband, Peter, is a man of many systems, and I have learned to appreciate this over the six years we have been married. He has a particular way to do nearly everything, from making coffee, to washing the dishes, to...
During the past year, federal employees nationwide and 12,898 active federal and U.S. Postal workers of Montana have dedicated themselves to keeping our country running while weathering a global pandemic. They continue to provide essential financial services, processing stimulus payments, tax refunds, small business loans, Social Security checks, mortgages and student loans to keep the economy churning and households operating. As they do every day, they have kept us safe, tracking cyber threats, protecting the food supply,...
Week 16 was a marijuana-intensive week. Early in the week, we were given an overview of what was in the 260-some page SB-701. There were many questions and some of the last-minute requests were also addressed. Fortunately, a special committee was assigned to take care of the recreational part this issue. When the medical marijuana bill came to be a couple sessions ago, it was assigned to the Tax Committee, of which I am a member. We had to figure out how to make a law that not only worked and made sense, but was also...
For decades, Montanans of all stripes have worked to create a responsible and commonsense pathway for the restoration of wild bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. But Gov. Greg Gianforte just sunk those efforts. In doing so, he has allied himself with a fringe wing of political operatives who are highly motivated to privatize Montana’s wildlife and limit our access to land and water. This is a very dangerous signal of things to come. All Montana hunters and anglers who remain proud of our wildlife h...
Freedom was at the forefront last week in Helena. This week at the Legislature, we made significant progress in ensuring freedom and protecting liberty for Montanans all across the state. House Bill 702 prohibits discrimination against all Montanans based on their vaccination status. That means employers may not punish or fire employees for personal medical decisions, nor can they require employees to get a COVID vaccination. However, employees must understand the policy manual of the employer. This bill is not an attack on...
I got to pull stitches out of my husband’s face Wednesday and I was so excited about it I did a happy dance while he wasn’t looking. He never wants to let me play doctor on him. I get it — and by that I mean I get it, and I don’t get it all at the same time. John is, let’s say, sensitive. He lives with pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get that. So a new pain, even — or maybe especially — little pains like from a sliver, cause a sort of excited nervous system respon...
April 3, Montana lost a wise and deeply decent public servant. Stan Stephens, our state's 20th governor, passed away at the age of 91. A native of Calgary, Stan's father suffered a debilitating illness when Stan was a small boy, leaving Stan's mother and her five young sons in perilous circumstances. Trained by his musician father, at the age of seven, Stan was able to use his remarkable gift for music to play trumpet solos in the Calgary Symphony, and soon after as the child...
I’d been out of bed five minutes when I heard the clang-rang of my gate bell. We respect each other’s boundaries. When neighbors visited, they stood out by the gate and yelled, “Sondra, are you home?” I’d lived here a year when I figured there must be a better early-warning system. At the tianguis in town I bought a goat bell. I had a welder make an arch and attach it to the gate so the bell would hang free. When I hear the bell, I go out to the gate and open it for my guests....
“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.” Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard. I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t. This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy — with the possible except...
Montana’s response to the COVID pandemic has put our state’s public health system in the spotlight, as well as into the crosshairs. Through numerous bills this session, members of the Montana Legislature have sought to attack our state’s public health system and insert politics and bureaucracy into the process of making decisions that keep our communities safe and healthy. However, a new poll indicates that these efforts by legislators are driven more by special interests and ideology than by what Montana voters actually want...
While much ado has rightfully been made of the repeated attempts to undermine and privatize Montana’s wildlife hunting access and privileges, less attention has been paid to numerous dirty water bills working their way to Gov. Gianforte’s desk, each of which threatens fisheries, clean water, countless jobs and businesses, and our way of life. Recent rhetoric about cutting the proverbial government red tape is a nice soundbite, but in practice will have the opposite effect of the so-called jobs and recovery focus of this ses...
Dear Editor, I’ve never written a letter to the Editor before but I have an issue that has been bothering me for some time. Why do we have to climb a hill to get in the clinic to see our doctors? When it’s icy it’s very difficult to walk up or push someone in a wheel chair up the hill. Why can’t the first parking lot be brought up level with the clinic doors? I’ve talked to my neighbors and friends and they all agree, something needs to be done to level the 1st parking lot. Then we all can get in and out without much diff...
Editor, As faith leaders in Montana, we encourage you to receive the COVID vaccination if you are able. We believe we have a personal responsibility to get vaccinated as good stewards of God’s creation — our bodies. We believe we should get vaccinated out of love for our neighbors who may be physically vulnerable and not able to withstand the side effects of COVID-19. We believe we have a responsibility to get vaccinated to actively collaborate with our community to preserve life. We invite people of faith to join us as we...
The issue of plastic bags and garbage blowing out of the landfill has been an ongoing problem from its creation, and a timely subject since Earth Day is April 22. As my husband owned land adjacent to the landfill, we were continually picking up garbage, mostly plastic, from the property and fence lines. Checking cattle one day we discovered a calf nearly dead from trying to ingest a plastic grocery bag sticking partly out of his mouth. Plastic is toxic to cattle, every other type of animal, bird, and fish because of its chemi...
April is always a fast-paced month at the Legislature, and this year is no different. The Senate has been busy voting on a lot of bills that covered a wide variety of topics. I am confident that the bills we passed will improve lives of Montanans in many ways, however nothing is perfect. This past week the Senate passed two critical appropriations bills that will help our state move past the pandemic and sustain prosperity for decades to come. As we decided what to do with the federal stimulus money, Republican leaders in Hel...
The 67th Montana Legislature is turning its back on Montana voters and the public lands we rely on. From Billings to Butte, Great Divide to Glendive, Helena to Havre, Montanans of all stripes find pleasure, beauty, and much of their protein outside. In Montana, we know that our public lands can’t just serve as an empty slogan for politicians to lean on during campaign season. Public lands shape our way of life, our dinner plates, our economic health, and the state we pass down to our children. Back in November, Montanans o...
Editor, Thank you to Karen Jelly, our mortician, and my friend, for the excellent job she is doing during this pandemic. She has seen it, done it and lived it from day one. She deserves our greatest gratitude. Sincerely, Faye James Havre...
Editor, How can they? … Is it not enough that they control our House, Senate and governor’s seat? … They now demand total political appointment of judges and 10 percent of all state jobs? When we voted “More jobs...less government” did they mean “More jobs for political pals. … Less service for people?” How can the party of “less government” dictate who can vote and what you can smoke? Force you to pay and burn coal and smother solar? Glorify guns and snare traps but withhold funds from facemasks? Pick what women shall we...
