News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1052 - 1076 of 3212
On Canadian Thanksgiving Day, Kathy wrote with questions about our U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Basic “how does that work?” questions. I’d been in the kitchen preparing a more-or-less traditional Thanksgiving Dinner in sympathy with and support of our northern neighbor’s celebration. In the past many years, I have managed to celebrate two annual Thanksgiving Days, with friends in Vancouver, in Victoria and in northeastern reaches of Saskatchewan. While choppin...
Today I will get Blue again. Blue is the anxious Italian mastiff that I dog-sit on Wednesdays while his owner, Bill, works in the office. The new procedure is that I walk down to Bill’s house, fetch Blue, and bring him back to my home. This seems to work better than having Bill drop him off. When Bill does that, Blue hangs onto Bill’s legs and tries to avoid coming in my house like a petulant 4-year-old trying to avoid day care — which is exactly what he is. When I go to Bl...
Times are getting more difficult and the decisions we make now will have repercussions. For the first part of 2020, COVID-19 has largely slipped under the radar in Montana. This has cultivated a sense of complacency and skepticism. And for the most part, people have let down their guards. Large gatherings continue, mask wearing is still debated, and the lethality of COVID-19 is questioned. Why must something as potentially devastating as COVID-19 be so controversial? For the...
My editor in chief, and longtime colleague Tim Leeds wrote an op-ed earlier this week begging the question: “What’s wrong with people?” Of course, as opinion pieces do sometimes, the header probably ruffled some feathers, but, in my humble opinion, and given where our state, county and community is with COVID-19 right now, it was indeed an honest and valid question. And one I’ve been pondering myself for some time now, but in recent days, that question is one that is causing...
To be fair, my husband and I both knew it was just a courtesy when I offered to run to town with him to help find and fill out some paperwork because I’m about as attentive and effective at paperwork as the average 5-year-old asked to clean his bedroom. I stayed home to tackle something that suited my skill set: Clearing out a good-sized grove of dead chokecherry trees and saplings. Nothing like a good ol’ mindless physical task to give you time to reflect on your per...
“My need is such I offend too much. I’m lonely but no one can tell.” Ah, they were a great group, back in my time, The Platters. “Pretender” is the real word of the song, not “offender.” “Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal” so rather than pretend I took a deep breath knowing I was setting out to offend a friend. I stuck my foot in the sludge, big time. I have strict self-rules to protect myself from the COVID virus. Since I live on a walled property with hardl...
I get stomachaches. I get them with regularity and always have. “It’s just gas!” my mother says, and, of course, she’s right. My mother tells me I get stomachaches because I have the “Benson stomach,” by which she means that I have the same stomach she has, which is the same stomach her mother had, which my grandmother inherited from her mother — who was a Benson. It seems a little sad that the only time the Benson family comes to mind is when I have a stomachache....
Human expression is different from other more biological responses like sweating when we’re nervous, which is a primal response of the fight or flight kind. Probably the most common shared experience with the fight or flight response is public speaking — the thing that a majority of people fear more than actual death. What I learned in five years of teaching public speaking — and a lifetime of hating it — is that the thinking/feeling part of your brain says, “No. No. No, n...
In these perilous times, we must make our own fun. In the interests of pleasure and economy, aided by an unusual (to me) scientific bent, I set out to boil up some chemical experiments. A huge tree with giant orange flowers lifts arms to the sky just outside my northern wall, an African tulip tree, common in Jalisco. I gathered a bowl of fallen flowers, dumped them into a large pot of boiling water. What I hope for is a natural dye, a color in light shade of brown, to dye a...
Yesterday, I had a nice long Zoom chat with an old friend. I know this is nothing remarkable these days, but it was the first time my friend Andrew had used Zoom and I was frankly a little surprised. Andrew isn’t on Facebook. “It’s none of anyone’s business what I’m up to!” he tells me. I don’t think Andrew is “up to” all that much, but he takes a particularly fierce view on privacy. He won’t buy groceries with his credit card if they are going to track what he buys. “Why...
Early this week my husband and I had to say goodbye to the best dog ever. Cooper was complex, unceasingly faithful, funny, a bit of jerk, neurotic, sweet and adored by many fans and loved ones. He was the number one wing man in my posse, John's best little buddy, the supervisor on all work parties, a semi-professional trick performer and the finest example of how far a good attitude will get you. His early life unfolds like the dog version of a 19th century novel, maybe a...
Here in Montana, we are granted the right to vote on ballot initiatives once they clear a number of hurdles, including having the related petition garner enough qualifying signatures. Not achieved, however, is the ability to hold public hearings on the proposed issue — such as is accomplished during legislative debate, fiscal review and the amendment process. Nov. 3, we will be voting on CI-118 which would legalize marijuana here in Montana. Aside from what the proponents and opponents argue in the press about public h...
When I sit at a blank page with no idea what I want to write, I go through who, what, when, where and how of the past several days to see what might pop up and out. My life is simple. I read a lot. A lot. I read the phrase, “explains the real meaning of life,” in a book blurb. Blurbs operate as the worm on the end of the line that is meant to hook me into choosing to read that book. “Real meaning?” I kid you not. Is there other meaning of life? Several meanings? Isn’t l...
During six years of my service in the Montana Senate and all eight years of my service on the Montana Public Service Commission, I had a ring-side seat with four major bankruptcies that had huge impacts on Montana residents, and I helped Montana avoid being taken down by a fifth. The first four, in order, were Enron, Montana Power/Touch America, NorthWestern Corporation, and Southern Montana Electric. The fifth, and dodged bullet, was Babcock & Brown Infrastructure — BBI — an Australian investment conglomerate that pro...
The recent lawsuit alleging that Montana’s mail-in elections are risky discredits Montana’s election administrators. Montanans can vote safely and securely by mail in this election and every election. More than 70 percent of Montana ballots cast in the 2018 general election were absentee mail ballots. Montana’s June 2020 primary all-mail election had the highest voter primary turnout in recent history with a record-breaking number of ballots filed. Our county elections offices and US postal workers capably handled this surge...
My husband, Peter, is now at war with the mice. The mice (possibly with the assistance of a rat or two) have eaten the electrical wiring in our car, causing extensive damage. The coating on the wires is apparently tasty. I don't know any automobile engineers personally but, if I did, I would suggest that constructing a car out of tasty materials is probably not a great idea because now we have a lot of small creatures trying to eat our car, one piece at a time. We are not...
Nowadays, it is difficult to know when to stick your neck out and fight for what you believe in. We ask you, are your kids worth fighting for? As the days pass, with what doesn’t seem to be much of a plan for adding more days of in-person learning, the education of our children is becoming the topic that we are willing to fight for, regardless of the backlash. We need a re-opening plan based on a realistic threat assessment. We need Mr. Mueller, his re-opening team, and the school board working with the Hill County Health D...
“I looooove fall. It’s my faaaavorite time of year ... all the colors, the cool temps, the blah blah blah.” If words were one-hundreds — $100 bills that is — I could retire off the number of times I’ve heard some version of that before. I think I’d be close to being able to buy a new pickup truck, just from the number of times I’ve heard it at home from somebody who’s not me. Don’t get me wrong, if I had my way our seasons would be five months of spring, five months of fall...
Several years ago I attended a prestigious writers’ conference in Seattle. It was time. I was committed. I paid a bundle. The conference offered a chance to mingle with real writers, to talk with agents and editors, to attend numerous workshops; an immersion in the literary world. Already, I knew I was not a real writer. I did not set a schedule to write daily, come fire or flood or dark of night. When my babies were babies I did not lock myself in the bathroom with my p...
Blue had been through a rough patch. He was adopted from the shelter and then returned for unspecified reasons. That’s when Bill met him. Blue is an Italian mastiff — which means he is massive, just not quite as massive as an ordinary mastiff. I don’t know exactly what attracted Bill to Blue, but it’s not hard to understand. Blue is a very sweet boy. But he’d been through a lot. Bill is still working from home most days, but he’s been going in on Wednesdays and that’s what...
A recent Billings Gazette editorial, “Stapleton Shows Why He Is Unfit for Any Office” is right on target. What it doesn’t say is: his second in command is just as incompetent. Christi Jacobsen has been Corey Stapleton’s deputy secretary of state for almost four years. And she is now running to replace him. This is not the person you want in that office, for several reasons. First, they are joined at the hip and their record is atrocious. They have wasted taxpayer money in extraordinary, historic style. There was Stapleton’s n...
According to current popular standards, I should be referring to my animals as “fur-babies,” but we don’t share that kind of relationship. My critters aren’t my children and I’m not their mother. I think I would remembered having a puppy in a birthing room 15 years ago. I’m equally certain everyone else would remember that, too. Surely a photo would still be circling the internet of things showing a fuzzy newborn puppy, already sporting a full beard and old-man eyebrows, lying...
Last week, Crin wrote that she saw two full moons. I shrugged. That fits. The earth is flat, thank you, Pam. And the sun gallops around the earth at an unprecedented rate. The world and all its people have gone topsy turvy. Karen in England says, “What a bunch of miserable.” Restless, irritable and discontent. I rarely have these kind of days. Tomorrow will be different. Today is sniffles and sneezes and low-level weariness. A mild summer cold. And sadness. All will be differe...
Over the past couple of weeks, I have taken advantage of social distancing guidelines and had a chance to get out and truly experience the great outdoors of my Montana Senate district. It has been an eye-opening experience. A real quick idea of the layout of District 14 would be from Great Falls to Havre, south of the Milk River to Whitlash, containing parts or all of four counties: Hill, Chouteau, Cascade, and Liberty. What lies within these counties is amazing, in the truest sense of that word. As Judy and I traveled...
Yesterday, I bought gladiolas. They are nearly three feet tall and bright fuchsia. It is safe to say they are the most exciting thing to appear at my desk in ages. When I walked in the front door, my husband, Peter, said, “Oh my gosh.” Translated, that means: “You have gone overboard on the flowers.” But Peter is too nice to say that. I always have flowers on my desk. I used to feel guilty, spending good money on flowers every week. It seemed to me it was a little frivolo...
