News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1571 - 1595 of 3218
I met President George H. W. Bush, our 41st President, when he was a former President campaigning in Great Falls in 2000 for his son, then Presidential candidate George W. Bush. I introduced myself to the former President at the event at the Heritage Inn. While we posed for a photograph I told him I knew his son, Neil, from Bush’s 1988 campaign. Bush asked about my family. We chatted about Glacier Park and our service in the Navy. I’ve met and conversed with several Presidents over the course of my life. From my brief but...
It’s already December. Yes, Christmas and the legislative session are coming. In gearing up for Christmas (all holidays, really), Judy does the heavy lifting. This year, the legislative session is my undertaking. Since being elected, many of you have approached me with questions regarding our state and concerns about what will be addressed during the next four months of session. It’s also heartwarming to field questions about what I will be up to while in Helena. Do you have a place to live? Is Judy going with you this sessio...
Havre Public Schools Education Foundation’s 14th Annual Holiday Hoops Blue Pony alumni basketball game will be held Friday, Dec. 28, at Havre High School gymnasium at 7 p.m. Admission to the game is a non-perishable food item to be donated to the Havre Food Bank to help replenish their shelves after the holidays. In past years we have donated around 100 pounds of food each year, thank you to the community for your help. All Havre High alumni are invited to participate, whether you played during your school years or not. To s...
In case you are wondering, sympathy is defined as feeling compassion, sorrow for another person, and empathy is being able to sense other people’s emotions combined with the ability to put yourself in that person’s place. I like to think of it as that we feel sympathy in the heart and empathy in the gut. While I have a normal human capacity for sympathy, it’s my overactive empathy disorder that I always have to keep in check. For instance, despite the fact that I once sold...
For me, it was a fortuitous choice. I don’t sing in public. We were gathered on the festively decorated patio out by the pool. Yes, there is a pool on the Rancho. I don’t talk about it because I don’t get in water lower than my body temperature. We owners, gringos, workers, everybody who had anything to do with the Rancho, sat around the long string of table, practicing the tune with lyrics in Spanish, to celebrate the Posada. Bonnie might have heard me mutter to Carol, next...
Christmas is just 14 jolly days away. I’m sure some of you have or are still gathering presents for family and friends. Others are probably planning and preparing for family and friends to visit. For me, it reminds me of traditions my family had. This time of year always conjures the wonderful smell of tamales. Along with Christmas ham, both my mother and father’s sides of the family would make tamales. Conveniently for us, both my parents’ families live in the same city: Santa Maria. This city name should ring a bell for t...
The other day, I had an unusual conversation with a gentleman, and the nature of that conversation stuck with me. I was driving on U.S. Highway 2 when I stopped for a man who asked for a ride to Rod’s Drive In. Once he had gotten into my vehicle, I asked him if he would need to be picked up after he was finished eating. He simply replied, “No, I’ll walk.” I then asked, “Are you sure, sir? It’s cold out; it’s really no trouble.” “I like to walk,” the gentleman said. “Gives time to think, lets the mind wander. Meditating.” I lo...
When life gives you hard news, read here for the soft and fluffy stuff. Things get crazy in the capitol In the nation’s capitol at the end of November Gavin Clarkson, a New Mexico resident, and his fiancee had their request for a marriage license declined by a clerk in the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau. The Associated Press reports that after Clarkson requested the license and showed the clerk his up-to-date New Mexico driver’s license, the clerk informed Cla...
We narrowly averted a minor crisis on Rancho Esperanza this week. A waterline broke, flooding the entrance road into our gringo enclave, which we fondly call Colonia Americano. This is a dirt road I am talking about so running water can do a significant amount of damage in a short while. With residents’ vehicles plus delivery trucks, the city garbage truck and such, wading in and out, the ruts deepened, water ran faster, ruts deepened. Worse, what an incredible waste of water. The Rancho is private property. We are granted u...
In 1987, the Montana Legislature directed Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to establish a statewide wildlife habitat system to better conserve “our wildlife resources and pass them intact to future generations.” This program, called “Habitat Montana,” turned out to be one of the most successful conservation and public access programs in the West. A recent opinion by Montana Attorney General Tim Fox, however, places the power to approve all conservation easements funded by the program in the hands of the Land Bo...
I never planned on being “Old Man Jones,” but time never stops. I am currently the longest serving Republican in the Montana House, having served eight years as senator and six years as representative. I have served under the Senate simple majority rules, and the House super majority rules. I have served in the majority, minority and leadership. I support changing the Montana House procedural rules — not bonding or veto override — to the Senate’s simple majority format. Changing the House rules to simple majority is good for...
When the first snow fell back in the beginning of October, I looked outside my window at my snow-covered car and thought to myself: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. (Confession: My second thought was of my dad because the black of my car with the white of the snow on top reminded me of his salt and pepper hair.) That’s my pop culture way of saying that I’m not from around these parts. No, I was born in a coastal town in California called Ventura. It’s around Los Angeles for those not familiar with small cities in Califor...
My purpose here today is simply to explain to you why the tonsils are the stupidest organ in the human body. I know this comes as a shock to everyone who thinks that title belongs to the appendix but, with all due respect, that internal organ must settle for second place. Sure the appendix just sits in your belly, uselessly dangling there like a wart on the nose of the large intestine, until it gets an infection and has to be removed. Some appendixes never even bother to do...
Maybe you don’t but I have a tendency to automatically and immediately attach a judgement to various happenings during my day. You know—that’s good; that’s bad. Usually I catch myself and adjust my attitude before damage is done. Usually. Today is not a “catch myself” day. Take this morning. Generally the sun hits my backyard patio beneath the jacaranda by 8:30. I like to take a book and cup of coffee out and bask like a lizard for half an hour, Mexican time, which often...
On a daily basis, we are inundated on both the local and national level with news of how the opioid epidemic continues to infiltrate communities across this country. Previously, over-prescription of chronic pain-relieving opioids was believed to be the main cause of this crisis. This lead to state and federal regulations applied to industry and government that have largely controlled the prescription pill abuse issue. However, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdose deaths were still 30...
Montana hunters have been afield pursuing deer, elk and other big game, just as we have done for decades. But new this year is the knowledge that chronic wasting disease — CWD — is present in our state’s mule deer and white-tailed deer. Last year’s first-ever detection of this devastating disease in Montana wildlife was a huge blow to our state, although its arrival was considered inevitable. This fall, more harvested deer have tested positive for this always-fatal neurodegenerative disease. For years, Montana has been su...
Every month, food pantries, meal programs and other partners of the Montana Food Bank Network distribute over a million pounds of food to those who are struggling in our communities. The impact of these programs is immediate and enormous, helping to keep food on the table for Montana families, seniors, underemployed workers, individuals with disabilities and anyone else in need of a helping hand. While much of this food comes from the generous support of donors, a substantial portion also comes through The Emergency Food...
In a world where it seems the only thing humanity has in common is our divisiveness, scientists from around the globe have met and shown the world that people of the human race come together in one voice to tell the world they can accurately measure the weight of their nerdiness. It’s the astounding news you likely A) didn’t know happened, and B) didn’t know affected your everyday life: Scientific and policy-making representatives from more than 60 nations voted unani...
Every year after Thanksgiving, Americans kick off the holiday shopping season with big stores advertising deal after deal. Not long ago, Americans during the holiday season typically would visit locally-owned small retailers in a downtown area to purchase all of their gifts. Business owners would decorate their shops with lights and ornaments or create elaborate window displays to grab the imagination of a passerby and encourage them inside. It was a magical time of year, and many of us still hold on to those memories today....
My daughter Dee Dee sent me pictures of Antoinette building a snowman, the falling white fluff thick on the ground, the tree branches covered with hoar frost. For a moment, just a moment, mind you, I had a twinge of homesick nostalgia, for snow. I have a theory. Since snow in inevitable in our northern climes, in order to find a marginal ability to tolerate the slick, nasty frozen stuff — as opposed to the genius of ice-cream — we inventive humans, creatures without ben...
Although the session doesn’t start until January, this past week, I was in Helena for the legislative caucus elections. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity last term to be involved in this part of the procedure. It was interesting to see how the process worked. The leadership has pretty much stayed the same as it was the last session. At this point, it looks like my committees will stay the same: Tax, Education and Cultural Resources, and Energy and Telecommunications. It was good to see the staff and legislators who...
Montana appears well down the road to becoming a one party Republican, deeply conservative state, like the states that surround us. Jon Tester’s survival was an anomaly best explained by his personal popularity and his opponent’s weakness. In the late ’60s, and ’70s, when I was first cutting my teeth in politics, the Democrats were Montana’s dominant party. They controlled the statewide offices, including the entire congressional delegation, the legislature and the office of governor. At Republican state conventio...
Sometimes I believe all the people who love me beyond my faults, and those people who just don’t know me well enough, when they say, “Oh, it’s too bad you didn’t have kids. You would’ve been a great parent.” Nope. My animals, aka the four-legged family, often remind me of my weaknesses, which make pet ownership complicated. In the higher-stakes game of parenthood, though, these failings most likely would have proven fatal. Not so much for the kids, but me. I am, by my very...
In other words, “The older the mango, the sweeter the fruit.” Words by which to live from Leo’s Aunt Cuca, 100 years old. Sundays she walks five kilometers to church, refusing rides from neighbors. Señora Cuca Chavez lives on a small farm, alone, near San Antonio de los Vasquez, about an hour north of Guadalajara. I cannot find the tiny village on any of my maps. It is near Cuquio, toward the river. I had written to my son, “Not much to report. Guess my life is boring.” Ben im...
The elections are over and many will probably say they are happy to have it over with: the calls at dinner time, the basket full of flyers and knocks at your door in the middle of the evening news. As a candidate, we also get to a point of feeling that campaign grind. As I pulled the last “Vote Tempel” sign from the ground, Judy said, “This is it.” My wife of 48-plus years has been a real trooper in all of this; have to love this gal. My kids have also been very instrumental in my campaign, not only keeping me on task an...
