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  • Letter to the Editor - Veteran survey: Make your voices heard

    Updated May 2, 2024

    Editor, Montana’s veterans deserve to live with dignity and independence. The Department of Public Health and Human Services is conducting an important survey to understand and improve the living conditions for our veterans. We at the Veterans Navigation Network encourage every veteran, caregiver, and family member in Montana to participate. This survey will help the state understand what veterans need to live well in their communities. It looks at healthcare access, financial stability, and opportunities to connect with o...

  • Looking out my backdoor: Hacking through brambles in the rabbit hole

    Sondra Ashton|Updated May 2, 2024

    Like Alice, now and then I take a dive down a rabbit hole, purely for entertainment. Oh, well, and so I can feel superior, yes, smug in my own knowledge. I’m not on Facebook, but when I check weather on my computer, I get a sidebar of widgets, (love that word), that is every bit as good as FB for misinformation, from what I’m told. So, there I am, trawling along through non-news, political rants, hundreds of chocolate-chip cookie recipes and other trivia, when I spy a hou...

  • The Postscript: A good cat

    Carrie Classon|Updated May 2, 2024

    Our cat, Felix, has a new home. We adopted Felix in Mexico while we were staying there. The woman who fostered him, Marcela, thought he was a kitten because he was so small — except for his tail, which appears to be intended for a much larger cat. But when I took him to the vet, they said he was two years old. I worried he was going through a lot of changes rather quickly for a two-year-old. He lived on the streets until he was picked up by Marcela, then he came to live with u...

  • Looking out my backdoor: Heart attack

    Sondra Ashton|Updated Apr 26, 2024

    The other morning, I visited with a long-time friend who lives in California. We don’t visit frequently, but when we do, it’s always good. Ideas fly and grow and develop and land in our deep hearts. My friend Anne belongs to a small church with an aim to make a difference in their community, to really matter to those they serve. With all the best intentions in the world, they formed a committee to put together gift bags for people in their area with no fixed abode. “Ho...

  • Tackling the rising cost of housing in Montana together

    Updated Apr 26, 2024

    More than 100 years ago, my grandparents made a life for our family on a homesteaded plot of land outside of Big Sandy that we still farm to this day. I’ve been blessed to call Montana home my entire life and to always have a place to rest my head after a hard day’s work. Unfortunately, finding an affordable place to live has become a challenge for far too many Montanans. As I travel across Montana, I hear about how housing challenges are hurting working families. From Missoula to Kalispell to Bozeman, all the way to sma...

  • The Postscript: Waiting for Estefan

    Carrie Classon|Updated Apr 23, 2024

    I ordered the sofa cover as soon as we adopted our new cat, Felix. The sofa in the little apartment my husband, Peter, and I rent in Mexico has seen better days, but we didn’t want to be responsible for ushering it into an early retirement due to cat scratches. So I bought a beautiful turquoise handloomed bedspread from a woman across the street to use as a throw. And the job would have been done right then and there if I’d kept my mouth shut. Instead, I asked the woman if...

  • Strengthening families month is a great opportunity to help a local child

    Updated Apr 23, 2024

    April is Strengthening Families Month, a time to promote the safety and well-being of Montana’s kids. If you’ve been wondering what the blue pinwheels are around town, these are the symbols of this month and drawing attention to the issue of child abuse. Communities around the state and country put them up in April. CASA of Hill County is also hosting a Kids Carnival on April 27th to wrap up Strengthening Families month and celebrate happy childhoods. We will have free games with prizes, free lunch, and door prizes from 11...

  • Looking out my Backdoor: Summertime, and the living is dusty

    Sondra Ashton|Updated Apr 19, 2024

    That may not be how the song is sung but that is how we sing it in Etzatlan this summer. We juggle the procession of seasons, winter flips into a few days of spring, which gets dropped on the floor and immediately flames into summer, temps in high 90s up to 100 this week. Dry and dusty. What little breeze we get brings cane ash and field dirt, right into my casa where I can enjoy it at leisure. I yearn for what I now think of as normal times, when the rains come in June, bring...

  • A bitter pill

    Patrick Johnston|Updated Apr 19, 2024

    To our readers, Today will be my last day as a reporter for the Havre Daily News, and I want to bid the paper and the community it serves a fond farewell. I want to. I want for my final thoughts to be about the people I’ve met, the community I did my best to serve, the memories I’ve made and how thankful I am for them, and every word of the parting letter I want to write would be true. However, I’m afraid my final thoughts cannot be about those things, at least not entirely, because a recent change announced at the paper...

  • Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees ask for support on mill levy

    Updated Apr 19, 2024

    Dear Havre residents: The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees seeks your support for the Elementary District General fund Mill Levy on the May 7, 2024, ballot. Approval of this levy will allocate an extra $138,615.45 to bolster educational initiatives for K-8 students in Havre. Passage of this proposal will result in a tax increase of approximately $7.40 per year for a home valued at $100,000, $22.19 per year for a home valued at $300,000, and $44.39 on a home valued at $600,000. HPS has diligently pursued grant funds to...

  • The Postscript: Spring cold

    Carrie Classon|Updated Apr 16, 2024

    The fact is, I am spoiled. I never get sick. I’ve never spent a night in a hospital since I was born (and then, my mother stayed with me). I’ve never broken a bone. I’ve never had a major operation. I am absurdly healthy, and I can take no credit for any of this. So, naturally, when I get sick, I am insufferable. It always starts in the same way. I get a sore throat. First, I ignore it. I have found this is the best way to deal with imminent disasters. When I used to drive...

  • Second-most unpopular man wins presidency

    Updated Apr 16, 2024

    Because of the unique qualifications of contenders Joseph Biden and Donald Trump, the Havre Daily is able to provide readers this exclusive early 2024 presidential election wrap up. While some details will have to wait for November, one election shocker is here now: a majority of Americans are still mad, and mildly depressed by the outcome. In the aftermath of the hard fought unpopularity contest, election analysts point out that both Trump and Biden maintained their respective deficits to the finish line. Former President...

  • Looking out my Backdoor: Birthdays and other afflictions

    Sondra Ashton|Updated Apr 12, 2024

    I’ve never made a big deal of my birthdays. In childhood, my birthday presents were always books, which was exactly what I wanted. Coming from family raised during the Great Depression, a gift was a Big Deal. I’m pretty sure my dad never had a birthday present. For decades, beginning in my forties, I began skipping the “9” years. Instead of forty-nine, I became “almost fifty.” I did not see 49 as a positive gain. Almost sixty. Almost seventy. This year, a “9” year, I turned...

  • Clerk of Supreme Court position too important for Ellsworth

    Updated Apr 12, 2024

    Primary candidate for clerk of the Montana Supreme Court Jason Ellsworth doesn’t understand or respect separation of powers — a core tenant of our American democracy that protects us all. Demonstrated by his newly created “Judicial Oversight Committee” and now the subpoena he recently issued to the Montana secretary of state, Ellsworth continues to show, in addition to his personal criminal and civil records, that he doesn’t think the law applies to him. Worse yet, his actions undermine governmental accountability, judicial...

  • The Postscript: Bonanza!

    Updated Apr 9, 2024

    My husband, Peter, and I spend the winters in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. The center of the town is a designated World Heritage Site, which means the facades of the buildings must remain as they were in the mid-1700s. The streets are made of round and sometimes slippery cobblestones. The doors are stout and covered with hundreds of coats of paint, and on the top of every building is a rooftop terrace where people can watch the fireworks that go off for no reason that anyone has ever been able to figure out. It is...

  • One for the road

    Updated Apr 9, 2024

    I just finished “Democracy in America,” which is a book by a Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville on… well, it’s in the title. To write this book, Tocqueville and his friend Gustave de Beaumont, who was the Dr. Watson of the duo, only without a mustache, sailed to the United States to check out its capital attractions. Not McDonald’s. Prisons. These two splendid gents got the French government to sponsor their jaunt across the Atlantic by promising they’d bring back loads of stuff on prisons. Wouldn’t you know, the plo...

  • I would bring accountability to Washington

    Updated Apr 5, 2024

    During my second tour to Iraq as a U.S. Marine, my unit was tasked to help secure the Syrian border. We had received intel that Iran was sending weapons into Syria to smuggle across the border for use against American troops. At the same time, refugees from all over the country were flooding the border to escape the war. We successfully accomplished the mission of securing the border that deployment. It is an absolute shame the Biden administration will not do the same and is allowing an unsecure southern border in our very...

  • Looking out my Backdoor: Sometimes when life

    Sondra Ashton|Updated Apr 5, 2024

    Sometimes when life gives you lemons, well, you can’t make lemonade when life drops the whole tree on your head, can you? The entire last month has been terrible for my friends, Ana and Michelle. First one of the cats got strange. Cats can be strange, so what! However, when something is wrong, something is wrong. After several visits to the nearest small animal vet in Tala (Havre to Loma), Blue was diagnosed with diabetes and Cushing’s disease. Blue is on medication, blood jab...

  • Fair taxes now

    Updated Apr 5, 2024

    We are a house divided against ourselves. The evidence is everywhere. Neighbors are angry with neighbors. Republicans and Democrats accuse each other of treason and stupidity. Our government, churches, colleges and universities, scientific community, corporations and other institutions are subject to abuse and skepticism. People are even asking, “Shall we trade our democracy for authoritarianism?” There is plenty to be angry about. In that sense, the anger is understandable. There are so many problems that we could solve if w...

  • State-level marijuana legalization has been a stunning success

    Updated Apr 5, 2024

    It’s been over a decade since Colorado and Washington became the first two states to legalize marijuana for adults. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s fair to ask: Has this policy been successful? Absolutely. A policy of legalization, regulation, and education is preferable to a policy of criminalization, stigmatization and incarceration. Let’s be clear. Legalization didn’t create or normalize the marijuana market in the United States. The market was already here. But under a policy of prohibition, this market flourished und...

  • Opponents to SB 442 spewing false information

    Updated Apr 2, 2024

    Hello, my name is Todd Devlin, a fourth-generation farmer/rancher in eastern Montana. I have been a Prairie County Commissioner since 1995, and a past president of the Montana Association of Counties (MACo) in 2016-2017. I have been very involved in public land and natural resource issues both at the state and national level for over 30 years. Currently, I am the chair of the National Association of Counties Public Lands Steering Committee and the executive director of the Montana Natural Resource Coalition of Counties....

  • The Postscript: Perfection

    Carrie Classon|Updated Apr 2, 2024

    I was lying in bed the other night in the little apartment my husband, Peter, and I rent in Mexico, and thinking that things were perfect. Then I wondered what that meant. Because, without trying very hard at all, I could come up with things that were far from perfect — in the world, in the neighborhood, even in my body if I really started digging. But it did not prevent me from feeling that — at that moment, lying in bed, listening to the distant cacophony of noises out...

  • State Senate pushes back on a judicial Trojan horse

    Updated Apr 2, 2024

    A majority of the Montana Senate has delivered letters to the Montana Supreme Court, Governor, and Secretary of State outlining our concern that a recent court order is unconstitutional. It’s easy to get lost in the weeds of the issue, but the heart of the matter is pretty simple. It’s about the separation of powers among our three branches of government. The Legislature is the branch closest to the people. We cannot abide a situation where the people’s voice in Helena is ignored by the other branches. First, it’s importa...

  • Help protect climate for our children

    Updated Apr 2, 2024

    The American Academy of Pediatrics was the first major medical society in the US to write a policy statement on climate change. Our updated policy was just published in March 2024. In the 14 years since the first edition, a vast body of peer-reviewed medical literature has emerged showing even more harm from heat and air pollution to health and mental health of children. There is strong evidence that exposure to heat and air pollution for pregnant women affects the health of the unborn baby resulting in more preterm births,...

  • A letter to the citizens of Montana about SB 442

    Updated Mar 29, 2024

    County commissioners from across Montana appreciate the widespread support that Senate Bill 442 enjoyed throughout its legislative process. Marijuana revenues are new to Montana, and the bill’s thoughtful distribution of this higher-than-expected new revenue stream included some funding for county roads. Bipartisan and impactful legislation backed by such a wide variety of Montanans is a rarity, and we commend Senator Lang and the bill’s many proponents for their efforts. Even after Gov. Gianforte exercised his right to vet...

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