News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 877 - 901 of 5551
It’s not the type of headlines you expect to have blowing up the internet: “Controversy over the advertising of sex toys at curling Olympic qualifier cancels televised coverage in U.S.” I would like to think that you have at least heard of the sport of curling, but in case you’re in the dark, curling is that team sport played on ice with a 42-pound polished granite stone. One person, with a push maneuver, kind of launches the stone down a 150-foot lane. The teammates frantical...
My Uncle Andy recently turned 90, and it was hard to imagine what a guy would like for his 90th birthday. At 90, getting a lot of new stuff doesn’t sound very appealing. Andy is in the process of getting rid of stuff, a job made more challenging by the fact that neither he nor his wife, Bea, have any children to fob the stuff off on. Andy and Bea live in the farmhouse where my mom was raised, and we were stumped when the subject of a 90th birthday present came up. “What does A...
The lodge in Beaver Creek Park is in need of updating and it will take funding beyond what is available in normal financial operation of the Park. There are ongoing efforts to find and secure grants for the needed updates. Grants are not the only way to raise the necessary funds. Anyone with a mailing address or phone number is regularly solicited for money for any number of purposes. However, many of these are not invested in our local area. I can’t help but believe there are 10’s of thousands of dollars flowing out of thi...
Sometimes people will ask me “What does the Foundation do?” To get right to it, the Montana State University-Northern Foundation (aka Northern Alumni Foundation) is the recognized philanthropic not-for-profit organization for Montana State University-Northern. However, that doesn’t really describe what we do. In a nut shell, we encourage donations, process gifts, and manage funds. We host events and we fundraise for both small campus initiatives and large capital campaigns. We sit in countless meeting with the University and...
I thought to write a Christmas newsletter but then common sense prevailed. What would I say? For all of us, 2021 has been a year of isolation, of illness and deaths in our friends, families, neighbors and acquaintances; a year of worry and fret. To balance what I said above, the solitude, for me, has been a most precious gift. I don’t have any words to explain, just that it has allowed a deepening and sharpening of senses and sensibilities. That doesn’t make sense. You’d have...
I walk around my neighborhood later in the evening these days, mostly so I can see the lights. There are some impressive houses just a mile or so away, and I walk down the sidewalks and see what has appeared on the lawns and in the windows now, right before Christmas. Some of the houses clearly had outside assistance. There are lights hung in places that only a cherry picker could reach. One house had four such enormous trees in a row, all in uniform white lights, until the...
As I write this, the quarters of a white-tailed buck deer I harvested over the Thanksgiving weekend hang in my garage. It’s not that I couldn’t find time in the last 10 days to get the cutting, grinding and packaging done. I won’t butcher it until I get back the testing results for Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD. CWD is an always-fatal neurological condition that’s spreading rapidly in our country’s deer herds. It also affects elk and moose. Much of its workings are still a mystery to researchers. CWD is not caused by...
I am rounding out my first term in the Montana Legislature and have spent the past year thinking about hope: where we find hope, how we create it, what is both feeding and eroding it, and the future of hope within our democratic institutions. I am writing to share one of the conversations on hope I’ve been having with myself. I recently returned from a legislative leadership academy with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers from across the West. We gathered to learn about the history of state legislatures, how to n...
Editor: A heartfelt “Thank You” to all the businesses that donated to the Super Certificate Giveaway held Dec. 4: 40 Below, 406 Custom Auto, And Company, Aquatana, Bear Paw Credit Union, Bear Paw Meats, Bearly Square, Ben Franklin, Bergren Transmission, Best Western Plus Great Northern Inn, Big Equipment, Bing’n Bob’s, Bosch Kurr Dugdale & Brown, Brandon‘s Drapery, Cavaliers, Clausen and Sons, Duchscher Kapperud Insurance, Duck Inn, Edward Jones, Emporium, Erickson Insurance, Ezzies Wholesale, Flynn Realty, Foster Home and...
November 30, 2021; 11:26PM DENTON FIRE RESPOND ON HWY 80 FOR A REPORT OF GRASS FIRES IN WEST SIDE OF DITCH TO ASSIST STANFORD FIRE When the page came in, we were only 34 minutes away from the 1st of December and Denton’s volunteer firemen were thinking the wildland fire season should be over. Unfortunately, Denton Fire was about to face their greatest challenge yet of this difficult fire season. It’s painful and difficult to recall all the events spawned out of the night of November 30th nor is that the intent of this let...
When your life is rich with irony and sarcasm, it’s easy to become jaded and hardened with the world, like having a nasty case of calcium buildup or plaque over the soul, so I was kind of surprised this week to find out that I could still be surprised. It is, of course, ridiculous — after more than half a century living in Montana — to be surprised by winter, so perhaps it’s an intelligence issue. I don’t know. Yes, logically, I know it’s coming. spring, summer, fall, winte...
Editor’s note: Clara Laird provided this statement she prepared to read during this week’s Havre Public Schools board meeting but was not allowed to read, with the board saying public comment cannot be made on personnel issues. Good evening members of the Havre Public School Board, my name is Clara Laird, I am a sophomore at Havre High School. I am here to speak on behalf of Coach Ryan Gatch, and why he should continue to be the Head Football Coach at Havre High School. Havre Public Schools has a motto, Tradition of Exc...
It is finally time for the U.S. Senate to pass the Build Back Better legislation, and it can’t come soon enough. Many families have not financially recovered from the pandemic, and with the cost of gas, food, and other necessities rising worldwide, people are really struggling. This legislation will improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of Montanans. Here are a few of the most critical ways the bill will reduce poverty in Montana: Child Tax Credit. This year, for the first time, families most in need were e...
Don’t get excited. This is not a big deal. I might save a tree or two. I won’t be leading parades nor expect anybody to jump on my bandwagon. Three things linked together in my head and this idea shot out the other end. (Please, do not examine that statement too closely.) Weather devastations and our dying planet met up with my shrinking income met up with a memory of childhood when I learned to iron clothes beginning with handkerchiefs for the whole family, some embroidered i...
Yesterday I bought a Christmas tree at the hardware store. I thought it was a good day to do it both because I'd heard the rumors of Christmas tree shortages and because it would keep me away from my email for more than an hour — a near record in the last two weeks. No one tells you, when you start writing, that it involves a lot of waiting. I have sent the manuscript of my first novel off to someone, and it feels as if 30 minutes or so should be plenty of time to read 300 p...
Our Beaver Creek Park was established and acquired for recreation and a park; it was not acquired to benefit commercial and private interests. We need to keep this in mind for current and future times and constantly balance how we develop and use our park. To help maintain a present day focus on the future long run ecological/economic/sustainable/regenerative aspects of the park without prejudice, it behooves the Hill County citizens that own our Beaver Creek Park to organize and advocate on behalf of our park for the...
Editor, If Elsie Arntzen were your batty aunt, she’d be kind of fun, inspiring incessant family gossip. As in, she did what? Noooo! Tell me more! The problem is, she is our state superintendent, Montana’s chief public education officer, and she is doing a simply awful job of it. Her management has caused 90% of the Office of Public Instruction staff to abandon ship, fleeing her fanatical temper tantrums. Without their experience, OPI is no longer functioning, and superintendents across Montana are in open rebellion, cir...
The Hill County Commission apparently has appointed a new Hill County attorney. It also apparently, and ironically, broke state law in its appointment of the highest legal officer in the county. The commission’s weekly calendar for next week reports the oath of office will be administered Monday to the new county attorney, who will take the place of Karen Alley, who resigned to take a position out of the area. Appointing a county attorney to fill the term is not the problem, in fact, it is the duty of the county commission t...
In the most scandalous scandal to hit the beauty pageant world since Mary Leona Gage lied about her age and her marital and parental status then won Miss USA 1957 — proving that a married 18-year-old mother of two could beat the sashes off the 20-something-year-old single women — more than 40 beauty contestants at a festival in Saudi Arabia have been banned from competition for breaking rules that prohibit cosmetic alterations that unnaturally enhance the beauty of the con...
Editor, While families are counting down to the holidays, many are also anxiously watching a different clock — the one that is running out for the Senate to take meaningful action to address hunger and poverty in communities here in Montana and nationwide. Unless Congress acts before the end of the year, families will get their last monthly check this month through the enhanced Child Tax Credit, one of the programs of the Build Back Better Act now under consideration in the Senate. This benefit has been a lifeline for f...
Well, it is, you know. The season of too much. Christmas begins in August in the stores. There are too many presents under the tree. Excessive decorating until what would have been pretty becomes tasteless. Too much spending. Too much eating. Too much guilt. As you might surmise, I have managed to pare down my life even more. Here on the Rancho, every year we exchange little gifts. In one breath I announced that nobody was going to get a gift from me and begged my neighbors...
“It’s not about luck,” my friend Andrew insists, “it’s about gratitude.” Andrew is not some sort of New Age guide, in case you were wondering. He is a slightly curmudgeonly tax preparer and not given to feel-good platitudes. He was refuting what I had said, which was that luck has played a significant role in my life. When good things happen to me, I don’t believe it’s only because I worked hard. “Lots of people work hard,” I told Andrew. “Not everyone had the head start I...
I pray everyone had a Thanksgiving to remember as we move into the Christmas season. This past month has been a busy one for me. My education committee has been charged with a study to determine if incarcerated individuals are receiving the education the State of Montana is required to offer. We first toured the education department of the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. The education offered at the facility starts with the HISET — High School Equivalency Test — formerly known as the GED. Everyone at the prison has the...
Senators and representative, As we approach Christmas, we have one request to Montana’s federal delegation: please do everything in your power to stop the reckless taxing and spending proposal currently working its way through Congress. The biggest gift Montana could receive from Washington, D.C., this holiday season is a dose of common sense, not more federal taxes and debt. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said it’s his goal to pass President Biden’s $2 trillion tax and spend bill before Christmas. Meanwhile, inflat...
As tragedy, after strife, after contention, after attack rolls through the news cycle, the one news byte that really hit home is this: North Americans are facing a maple syrup shortage of such dire proportions that Canada has had to tap its national emergency strategic stockpile of maple syrup to get us through these desperate times. I am not joking about this. I have been craving pancakes with maple syrup for more than two weeks now, and the thought of not having maple syrup...
