News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1420 - 1444 of 3210
We are making progress, but we are still trying to figure it out decades later. Twenty years ago, in June 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmstead v. LC that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities violated their rights guaranteed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA, which was signed into law nine years earlier on July 26, 1990, established the civil rights of people with disabilities and helped them be more included at work and in the community. The Olmstead decision sent a clear message...
This past week, my parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary and I stood in front of the greeting card rack for a very long time. Whenever I try to buy a card for my mom or dad, I have a heck of a hard time. I almost bought a “blank inside” card because there wasn’t anything that even came close to telling them what I was thinking on the occasion of this milestone anniversary. My parents have the kind of marriage that used to intimidate me. Other kids’ parents fought....
For reasons that still seem sound because we all made it home safe — which I’m happy to state at the outset for people who can’t handle suspense — two friends and I hauled horses to Power, Montana, and back home yesterday despite ill-weather predictions. To be fair, when the appointment was arranged, the forecast was for 70 percent chance of rain and thundershowers. The little storm icon only had clouds and rain that was depicted falling straight down from the clouds to the...
I boarded the Empire Builder #7 in Wolf Point. I quickly kissed my daughter goodbye, the door clanged shut, I found my seat and the train rolled west. I cried all the way to Glasgow; the sky, November Gray in June, mirrored my sorrow. My daughter Dee Dee and I had managed to steal time from her busy schedule to talk, to laugh a lot and to argue the inconsequential. We had three weeks together, family times, good times. I wanted to go home and I wanted to stay. Human nature,...
The film industry produces something different every day. Movies and TV shows represent all varieties of genres and styles. Some may be three-hour epics, while others may be only a few minutes. They’re distributed through different methods, from major theater releases to YouTube uploads. Regardless of the differences, one thing you’ll always see is a sequence to credit the people, and indeed the places, responsible for the production. Credit sequences are determined by contracts, unions and tradition. As a result of fin...
I started The Postscript exactly one year ago. I am more than a little superstitious when it comes to numbers. When I wrote the first draft of my memoir, “Blue Yarn,” I had an even number of chapters in all three sections. This was probably tidier than necessary, but maybe not terribly unusual. But then I made sure that every chapter had exactly 5,000 words. This pleased me to no end — even as I realized my mania for symmetry was tipping over the edge. When my agent sent...
I respectfully submit this column to my current employer as a tentative notice of my possible eminent resignation should my application for a job in Denmark as a happiness investigator pan out. Ikea, the assemble-it-yourself furniture and other-home-stuff company based in northern Europe, is working on a promotions gig in its Denmark branch. Specifically, they want to fill the full-time, temporary position of “happiness hunter.” It’s a two-week, all-travel-expense-paid trip...
Does anybody remember Mighty Mouse? Is Mighty Mouse still alive? Evidently, I thought I’d swoop into my daughter’s life singing, “Here I am to save the day!” Boy, howdy, was I ever wrong! I totally ignored the part where I am in my 70s and my daughter is 50. Once a “Mighty Mom,” always a “Mighty Mom.” I also ignored other basic facts of her life, such a her husband, her teenaged daughter and 42-hundred family pets. Expectations trip me up every time and land me smack on my fac...
I’ve got a good friend, Ayo, who told me, “Don’t use your head to break a coconut.” As I wrote about in my memoir, “Blue Yarn,” I lived in Lagos, Nigeria, for almost four years, and I met Ayo there. Ayo is a very smart woman and a voracious reader and she is full of good advice. Ayo is what they describe in Nigeria as “a serious person.” A serious person in Nigeria is one you can trust, someone who can be relied upon. The advice Ayo generally gives, however, annoys me because it challenges the way I think. “Have you consi...
The entire state of Montana has only one member representing us in the United States House of Representatives. For most of our history we have had two. That changed in 1992 when the 1990 census resulted in Montana’s loss of a Congressional seat in the population-based House of Representatives. Our lone U.S. representative now represents more people than any other member of Congress. With over a million people, Montana’s congressional district is about 50 percent larger than the typical congressional district. Unf...
A principal in West Virginia has been disciplined for plagiarizing the speech he gave to his school’s graduating seniors. Now-graduated student Abby Smith listened to the speech Parkersburg High School Principal Kenny DeMoss gave to her graduating class and thought it sounded familiar. After she found the speech online and saw DeMoss had copied actor Ashton Kutcher’s 2013 Teen Choice Awards speech almost word-for-word, she did what modern teens know to do, she made a vid...
After a whirlwind trip around eastern Montana last week, I’ve settled in a room with no view but, more importantly, with private bath, at my daughter’s new home in Glendive. At times in our lives, circumstances dictate in unpleasant ways. Their last home was a mice-infested hovel with a black-cloud grimace. This home, also an older farmhouse, welcomes one with arms wide-open. It perches on the edge of Glendive with expansive field and yard surrounding it, spacious room for...
Father’s Day is a day to celebrate dads for all they do. It is also a great time for dads to remember the important role they play in influencing the choices their kids make regarding tobacco use. Tobacco use among men remains a serious problem. According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one in six men currently smoke, more than 278,000 men die every year from smoking and 216,000 kids have already lost their dad to smoking. Dads who smoke can celebrate Father’s Day by quitting; and all dads — smokers and nonsmokers alik...
Spring came late and so, appropriately, did the annual deep cleaning of the refrigerator. A lot of stuff gets tucked into the refrigerator over the course of the winter. Obsolete condiments band together and take refuge deep in the corners. A thuggish-looking jar of jam wearing a cap of mold sidles up to an empty bottle of horseradish sauce and they both evade detection by skulking behind an oversized bag of sun-dried tomatoes. A stray stalk of celery becomes separated from the pack and is left alone to mummify. Unnoticed...
Scientific studies are great, but they often raise more questions than they answer, even if it’s just: “How much alcohol are we talkin’ here?” ABC4 News station WZTV, reported in April that a study by Penn State and University of Buffalo researchers found that people in jobs that require them to exaggerate positive emotions, or suppress negative ones, drink more alcohol after work than people who aren’t expected to be nice to others. The article gave food service workers,...
Montana and the nation are moving quickly toward marijuana legalization as public opinion rapidly evolves on the issue. A recent University of Montana poll found a majority of Montanans support ending the prohibition on marijuana for adults. That’s not a surprise to me, and seems like common sense. In Montana, support for marijuana legalization, like most other issues, isn’t defined by Republican or Democrat party affiliations. Conversations are taking place around the nation in Congress, state legislatures and city hal...
Bacon and eggs are common base ingredients, but we created a different kind of omelet at Char’s the other morning, a “Friend Omelet,” made of ingredients (ourselves), old friends and new. I had no idea whether we could pull it off. I conjured the germ of an idea shortly after I spontaneously decided to fly to Montana. My little girl needed me. She was born in ’66 — you do the math — but age is meaningless to a mother, and I wanted to see her new home. Dee’s family moved...
My husband, Peter, decided to make friends with a raven. We have a lot of ravens around our house. Ravens are smart birds and Peter did some research on them. They mate for life and can live to be seventeen years old in the wild. They learn to recognize people and will grow less afraid once they know someone. So, Peter decided he was going to leave small treats on the birdbath every day and let some raven couple get to know him. At approximately the same time as Peter hatched his plan, we decided to replace one of our two...
The principles behind installing gates are so simple even I can mess them up. Gates are essential when you have livestock, pets, small children and other animals that you need to keep confined in or out of a fenced area. I have a few miles of fence plus several pens and corrals, which are equipped with different types and sizes of gates — wire gates, wooden swinging gates, wooden sliding gates and metal swinging gates of all sizes and weights. Some of them I built and most o...
Nearly 30 years ago, the first drug court opened its doors with a simple objective: rather than allowing members to cycle through the system and become part of the incarcerated community, DUI, Drug and Specialty courts found a better way to rehabilitate, not to incarcerate. They are in your community and you need to be aware of the good they are doing. Community-based programs provide rehabilitation of participants and their addiction, by allowing offenders to stay out of jail and providing an alternate recovery program to...
Depression by any other name is no rose, let me tell you. Steve and Theresa, my friends from my long-time home in Washington, are back in their home. We had a lovely time together; I especially treasure the stories we told, peeling back layers to reveal more of ourselves. When friends leave me, typically I count on three days depression before I can get myself back in gear. I don’t mean deep-clinical-want-to-rip-my-heart-out-with-a-rusty-machete-and-no-anesthetic type d...
I get anxious, as I might have mentioned. While I don’t think it’s anything requiring medication, fortunately, I became aware at middle-age that I have always had a sort of “hum” of anxiety going on in the background. I usually only notice it when it stops — like when the refrigerator has been running nonstop and you only notice when it falls silent. Anxiety has not always been my enemy. I am almost never late. I never miss a deadline. I lie in bed and obsess about everything I’ve written to everyone so I don’t make a lot of...
Earlier this week, the Wounded Warrior Project offered a great “Statement for the Record” to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. WWP’s analysis focused on five different sections of “Senate Bill 785 — Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act of 2019.” NAMI Montana has been working on this Legislation in honor of our dear friend, colleague and Helena Navy SEAL veteran — Commander John Scott Hannon. The bipartisan bill was introduced by Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to im...
I’ve been a big, fat, liar, liar, pants on fire all week long. I’d be more concerned with this uncharacteristic laps in moral standards, but I’ve been on vacation and I just can’t muster the energy to show the proper amount remorse. This general laziness also explains why all my lies include the phrase “a few minutes.” “I’ll get started on that in a few minutes.” “I’m just going to lay back down for a few minutes.” “I’ll be there in just a few minutes.” “I’m just going t...
Friends come in every size, color and flavor and I would not want it to be any other way. I’ve heard it said that some friends are for a reason. I’d agree with that. Take Benjamin, for example, the man who delivers my twenty liter jugs of drinking water. He is a delightful man. I enjoy our short chats, always like to see him. But we don’t share home visits. My long-gone but always with me friend, David, would say Benjamin is a business associate. And that is true. We have...
