News you can use
News you can use
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HHS Class of 1974 held its 50th reunion July 19-20 with approximately 75 classmates and 30 spouses joining the activities which includes gathering at Gallery Lounge with snacks and Nalivka’s pizzas, golf Saturday morning at Prairie Farms and catered dinner by Murphy’s Pub in the Banquet Room of Best Western Plus Havre Inn and suites. Thanks to all who helped and attended in order to make this celebration a great success. Looking forward to Fossil Fest All Class Reunion weekend 2025! Class Of 1974...
We want to thank the U.S. House of Representatives, which unanimously passed H.R. 4132, the Falun Gong Protection Act, on June 25, which aims to end forced organ harvesting and the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. This resolution will also protect U.S. citizens, institutions, the transplant community, and American medical centers from unknowingly supporting this crime against humanity. In July 1999, then-Chinese Communist Party head Jiang Zemin decided that Falun Gong’s popularity and spiritual tenets threate...
Are the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Montana U.S. congressional delegation on the same “sheet of music” on plans to fix two failed steel siphon pipes near Babb? Are they talking? Exceptional reporting from Tim Leeds, Joshua Murdock, and Keila Szpaller reveal competing priorities that need a “Marshall Plan” to meet “cost, schedule, and performance.” As a former legislative aide at the U.S. Capitol, I used cost, schedule, and performance criteria to fund — or not fund — programs with taxpayer dollars. Let’s apply the three cr...
I told my husband, Peter, when he first announced the idea, that I thought it was dumb. I probably didn’t say “dumb,” because I try to be nicer than that. But I let him know that I thought his idea of getting exercise by climbing stairs in the stairwell was, well, kind of dumb. “Find out if I can access the stairs in the stairwell!” he told me, after we had purchased this condo, sight unseen, during the pandemic. We didn’t see it for almost two years. When we were finally rea...
With this year’s campaign in full swing and the stage set for November’s general election, it’s time to turn to that age-old event that is so important to voters to get a better understanding of where candidates stand on important issues of the day — the debate. This year in particular there has been an extraordinary amount of focus on debates between candidates, especially at the presidential level, and the role they play in vetting those who aspire to represent us in government. At the federal level, the nominees for U.S. S...
It was not the usual party. Bear with me while I paint a picture for you of the background that led to this strange, but not unfamiliar, party. First thing, Baby Marley, my great-granddaughter, who spent the winter in the hospital NICU in Billings, who is still fighting the effects, came down with COVID. Oh, yes, the whole family fell ill, one by one, like a standing-on-edge row of dominoes. Every morning I’d check in. How is Marley? How are Kyla, Leilani, Tate, Jessica and D...
Poor Homer. He started to look disreputable. Rather down in the mouth, long in the tooth, rusty around the edges. Sadly, I had reached the age to consider procuring a companion. While Homer is not exactly a cabana boy, I was attracted to him the first time I saw him. His price was mind-boggling. It took me a good year of back-and-forth trips to Tonala, home of huge artisans bazaars, before I made the purchase. This was back in the first couple years I lived here, when each...
It is construction season. The building we live in is 40 years old, and it was recently discovered that water was finding its way behind the brick. This requires some very loud repairs that are not expected to be finished until fall. Usually, I am just finding my way to the coffeepot around 8:30. But now there are men standing on scaffolds, jackhammering bricks at 8 a.m., right outside my window. If I open the drapes, I can see their boots. There is no one to blame. The men...
“If you could master any language in the world, what would it be?” “C++.” It’s a classic programming joke. The humor is ironic: language skills are less important than technological ones. Humor, I’m told, doesn’t flourish in tech. Computers can’t understand it. And, some would argue, neither can engineers. But the computer bit isn’t quite accurate. Chatbots based on large language models, like ChatGPT, don’t understand things the way we do. But with enough data, they can communicate like us. They can even repeat jokes when p...
It is construction season. The building we live in is 40 years old, and it was recently discovered that water was finding its way behind the brick. This requires some very loud repairs that are not expected to be finished until fall. Usually, I am just finding my way to the coffeepot around 8:30. But now there are men standing on scaffolds, jackhammering bricks at 8 a.m., right outside my window. If I open the drapes, I can see their boots. There is no one to blame. The men...
One of my Montana classmates, who has chronic problems with her back, sometimes to the point she cannot walk, told us the story of what happened a several years ago that caused her to resort to hanging onto her walker this week. Cheryl was on a ladder painting the eaves of a new-built garden shed. She needed to move the ladder, started down, slipped and landed on her bottom, broke her tailbone and crushed several vertebrae, but, by golly, she hung onto the paint bucket. Does...
I’d never been to a U.S. citizenship ceremony before. I’d never even thought about it much. I knew the process took a long time but, beyond that, I knew nothing about it, until I was invited to one. My dear friend, Betty, was coming in from out of town to attend the citizenship ceremony of her son-in-law, Raul. Raul is a quiet and soft-spoken man who works in corporate catering. He has been waiting to become an American citizen for many years and finally, last Thursday, he...
The Salvation Army-Havre Service Center would like to thank the community of Havre for the success of their Advisory Committee’s fundraiser “One Great Week of Helping the Salvation Army.” The fundraiser was able to raise over $9,000 during the week of May 12th -May 18th. We started the week out on Sunday when First Lutheran Church held a special offering where the proceeds came to the Salvation Army. The following businesses took a day and donated part of their sales to The Salvation Army-Havre Service Center. Caval...
We have seen a lot of changes at the Havre paper in the past few months, and I want to thank our readers and all the businesses, organizations and departments in the area for their patience and support as we work through turning into a weekly instead of a daily newspaper. It is my goal to continue to produce a high-quality paper for our area. That being said, I apologize if anything has been falling through the cracks. We are getting more and more used to doing things differently, and I hope things just keep getting better...
Rainy nights. Sunny days. Moderate temperatures. “I could live in this season forever,” I said to a friend this morning. If only. Right? Nope, we get to experience all things. We got to experience a mountain-storm almost-tsunami the other night. A right whopper. A few days prior, during a lighter storm, I lay in bed thinking about geography. I’m at the foot of mountains. If a phenomenal rainstorm, something much more than the ordinary, were to burst forth, we could be flood...
Biodiversity is simply the web of life that includes us. Montana lists over 300 species at risk or potentially at risk. That is evidence that the global biodiversity crisis is a Montana crisis as well. This crisis calls for a national biodiversity strategy. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon introduced in the Senate a resolution to create a national biodiversity strategy, S. Res. 494: “A resolution expressing the need for the Federal Government to establish a national biodiversity strategy for protecting biodiversity for current a...
The Washington Post reported on June 4, 2024: “More than 300 [U.S.] House [of Representative] lawmakers were reimbursed at least $5.8 million for food and lodging while on official business in Washington last year under a new taxpayer-funded program that does not require them to provide receipts.” As a former legislative aid on Capitol Hill, we always provided travel, food, and lodging receipts. It was good government. The costs were public information. It was communicating with taxpayers it matters what ‘bills’ get paid wi...
There are 33 million reasons to protect Medicare Advantage. That’s how many American seniors and persons with disabilities rely on the program for affordable health care with more benefits and better health outcomes at a lower cost than fee-for-service Medicare. I should know — as a senior living with tight margins every month, the cost of my health care is very important to me given the increase in costs of just about everything these days. Thankfully, Sen. Jon Tester has long been a supporter of Medicare Advantage, a pro...
I am packing the long packing. I am saying the long good bye. I am readying myself for the big move, the great distance of ten kilometers, all the way to far off, exotic Oconahua, a move which is months away. I love where I am living now, this place, this small house, all my plants. Nobody would ever question my love for this place. And this place has loved me back, big loves. Everybody’s financial and personal situations are different. We who live on the rancho are a v...
Last night, my husband, Peter, and I went to see the play “Come From Away.” I read about it last year, waited for the day tickets were available, and bought the very best cheap seats I could buy. I love going to the theater more than almost anything, so you might be surprised to learn my husband is not much of a theatergoer. I’ve learned, over the years, if I ask him months in advance, he imagines the date will never come and agrees to go with me — and that’s what he did when...
Having proudly served as former secretaries of state in Montana, we understand how important democracy is to the people of our state. It’s not a matter of what side of the aisle you stand on — it’s a matter of what you value. Recently our state’s Supreme Court reaffirmed that Montanan’s right to cast a ballot is not a mere privilege — it is a right guaranteed by our Constitution. A coalition of lawmakers in Congress, including Montana’s Sen. Jon Tester, are working to uphold the integrity of our democracy through the F...
I never learned my multiplication tables. Not really. To this day, if you ask me, “What is six times nine?” out of the blue, with some urgency, I will panic. (Please don’t do this.) The troubles started when I was transferred from one math class to another in the third grade. I now understand that this was some sort of promotion from lower math to higher math, but it did not feel like that at the time. Almost immediately, I realized everyone around me was privy to some secret...
I’m not going into a lot of detail. There was a death, not unexpected, in the family who own this rancho. It’s a big family, a lot of history here. For the past few days, it’s felt like, humor me here, spirits wandering, a lot of back and forth, disconnected and disconcerted. I’m talking about a lot of restless spirits. I’m sensitive to these things, to an extent. Aware, that’s all. This morning I woke up angry, for no discernable reason and with no object for my anger. This...
When it comes to hunter crowding and the state of mule deer, non-resident hunting pressure and harvests aren’t the only culprits, but mounting evidence shows they’re a big one. According to an FWP Interoffice Memorandum dated 5/6/2024, the “total Region 6 mule deer harvest in 2023 was estimated at 9,986, 28% above the 26-year average” and — for the first time ever — non-residents harvested more antlered mule deer than Montana residents in Region 6. The memo added that “antlerless harvest in 2023 was 35% above the 26-year a...
