News you can use
News you can use
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In Jalisco, we are held fast in the grips of unrelenting heat and drought. As northeastern Montanans, we all know what that is like. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Depressing. Blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. My tender magnolia flowers all dried up in the fragile bud, turned to brown dust without opening. Even with daily watering, vegetables I planted poked up their little slender heads, looked around, said, “No, not me, uh huh, no, and keeled over.” As each bucket is harvested, I’m leavi...
Property tax appraisals are currently arriving in the mail. It’s important to review the valuation and appeal it if you do not agree with the valuation. The appeal instructions are in the letter that was mailed to you. You only have 30 days, so do not wait. If the value of your property increased by 30% that does not mean your taxes will increase by 30%. However, generally if the value of your property increased, most likely your taxes will be increasing. Property tax calculations are complex and understood by few. To c...
Property tax reappraisals are arriving in Montanans’ mailboxes this week and the news is not good. The Montana Department of Revenue is expecting average property tax reappraisals to jump a whopping 43% — Some properties are seeing an increase of 60% of its taxable value. “We have Gov. Gianforte to thank for our soaring tax hikes,” said Sheila Hogan, executive director of the Montana Democratic Party. “Because of his abject failure to do anything to permanently address property tax increases, working Montana families,...
It has been one year since the U.S. Supreme Court — SCOTUS — issued the Dobbs decision, eliminating the federally protected right to abortion. Here in Montana with the 2023 legislative session having ended in early May, we saw unprecedented attacks on the right to abortion and bodily autonomy, with record numbers of bills having been brought forward by legislators. However, Montanans can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the right to abortion, despite the attempts to ban and restrict, remains legal and safe. The path lai...
It’s time to be thinking about Father’s Day — even if all we do is think about it. The woman who suggested Father’s Day in 1909 was named Sonora Smart Dodd. She was raised, along with her five siblings, by her father after her mother died in childbirth. The idea took a long time to catch on, and didn’t become a national holiday until Richard Nixon was in the White House. If you’re thinking it’s too bad that Ms. Dodd wasn’t around to see her dream fulfilled, you’d be wrong — sh...
In statistics, the term mutually exclusive refers to two or more related things or events that cannot exist or happen simultaneously. Common real-life examples of this state include that war and peace cannot coexist at once; the result of flipping a coin can’t be both heads and tails; and you can’t turn right and left at the same time. But all this does not mean that two opposite, but related, things can’t both be true at the same time — especially when dealing with that lo...
It’s not you, it’s me. And I’m really sorry, but I’m breaking up with you. I have to go away for a while and sort some things out. I don’t plan on this breakup lasting forever, but you should know that my brain is broken, so it’s a possibility. I know, my brain always has been set a hair off center, but I like to think that it’s in an off-beat, weirdly charming sort of way. COVID, though, B-R-O-K-E it. So, yeah, I am seriously going to take time off from writing and publishin...
I know better. I set myself up to fail. All the signs pointed to early rain. I jumped in with both feet and gleefully shouted to everybody I know, “This year the rains will come early in June. What a wonderful wet year we will have.” Ha. I know better. Sure, it rains in summer. Late June when we are lucky, July, August, and rains dribble off in September. The rest of the year is bone dry and that is easy and safe to predict. If I really wanted to be right, and who doe...
During the legislative session that just ended, Republicans spent a lot of time on hollow rhetoric about protecting Montana’s children — but that rhetoric was empty, and now we’re seeing the awful proof of that. Gov. Gianforte is refusing to accept $10 million to help feed hungry kids this summer, money that will otherwise just sit unused. And this isn’t the first time the Montana GOP has refused to act to make sure our kids have enough to eat. I would think that if there is anything we as Montanans can agree on, it is that n...
“Here” being Jalisco, the Garden State of Mexico, it seems to be either feast or feast. One day it is too many tomatoes. Another day presents a splurge of tomatillos. On to a glut of papaya. Today’s feast consists of a mess of mango. I must have been out of my mind. Weeks ago I made the decision that the only mangos I would see this summer would be the few I bought at the tienda for eating. No mermelada, which is jam in English. Every year I make mango jam. Every year I give...
Folks have been asking what a legislator does during the interim (time between legislative sessions). First off, we get assigned to an interim committee and connect with other legislators on the committee. In the past, I have been on the Education Interim Committee and this interim I have been appointed to the Local Government Committee. Having not been on Local Government before, I reached out to a couple of the members who served on Local Government during session. I wanted to find out if there might be a study that was pla...
I heard him yelling before I saw him. He was in front of the church. His possessions were loaded into a shopping cart, and it appeared he was trying to navigate the steep hill. And he was yelling. Was there a fight? Should I be worried? But when I finally saw him, he was standing alone with his shopping cart. His face was flushed, and his voice was loud. I walked until I stood on the sidewalk in front of him. “What’s the matter?” I asked. He stopped yelling immediately. He lo...
The No Labels Party thinks the country needs a centrist option for the 2024 presidential contest — maybe something like a West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin/former Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan unity ticket. But do the two big parties really have that much trouble uniting when it counts? The recent debt ceiling drama answers the question. Whatever the partisan uproar might be about who gets to say what on Twitter and what books kids get to read in school (...
“They put in a new sidewalk,” my neighbor said, “and the first thing that happened was, a cat walked across the cement and left little footprints!” My neighbor was amused. “I hope they leave them. They’re so cute!” I thought those prints would probably survive. No one was going to take the trouble to cover up a few cat prints on the sidewalk with concrete. A few years back, they started putting poetry on the sidewalk, laid right into the cement. I stop and read the poetry on...
In honor of 14-year-old Dev Shah of Florida, who won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday, this week’s column is about official words. Scripps uses the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary as its official word source, but here in the news world we consult The Associated Press Stylebook, first, and the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, second — for spelling and usage of words that the AP stylebook does not cover. Or, as I like to say, only for words that AP...
The dust seems to be settling on the 68th session of the Montana Legislature, and I want to thank the residents of House District 28 for allowing me the privilege of serving Havre and northern Montana in the House of Representatives. My time in Helena was, as expected, both very rewarding and at times frustrating. But by focusing my time and energy on the common-sense priorities for which I campaigned, and by working cooperatively across the partisan divide that is all-too prevalent these days, I was able to have good...
An acquaintance stopped by the other day for a visit. Most people would have said, a friend. Another man, a close friend from years ago, whom I miss terribly but can visit only in memory, used to say, we have few friends. Most people we know are business acquaintances. I’ve thought about his saying often. My visitor definitely fits into the transactional group. I’ve known him for several years now but I so easily forget the rules. (His.) I expect a visit to be an int...
My new friend, Betty Lou, started a book club, and she asked me to join. I was delighted. I hadn’t been in a book club for a long time. Because she is a librarian, Betty Lou knows better than most the importance of reading a variety of things and so, at the very first meeting, we read a graphic novel. None of the members of this group are young, and this was the first graphic novel most of us had read. We weren’t sure what to say about it. “This book is very heavy!” one member...
In April, the Belgian coastal town of De Panne crowned the top seagull screecher in the closing ceremony of its European seagull immitation championship. Reuters reported in an April 23 article that the contest attracted to the stage 50 participants, many dressed in seagull costumes. They were each judged by a professional jury which awarded up to 15 points for the contestant’s ability to mimic a seagull call and up to five points for mimicking their behavior. The contest, w...
With the weather finally warming up here for spring time, I’ve been spending a lot of time out on my tractor finishing up planting. Every year, I plant my fields with crops like wheat, barley, peas and millet. The days are long — Sharla and I start early in the morning and work late until the job is done — but as Montanans know, hard work is rewarding and always reminds us how lucky we are to live here in Montana. Our Montana way of life is what makes us The Last Best Place, and it’s worth defending for our kids and grandki...
Dear Kathy and Richard, Thank you for sending the amazing photos that you take on your walking tours throughout the mountains of France. They are truly beautiful glimpses into the countryside you traverse. I suppose you think I envy you the pleasures you experience these days. Oh, far from envy, my dear friends. While you trudge through the rain and the mud, or sunshine, on toward the next village or city where you stay the night in luxurious hotels, explore the neighborhoods...
My new friend, Betty Lou, started a book club, and she asked me to join. I was delighted. I hadn’t been in a book club for a long time. Because she is a librarian, Betty Lou knows better than most the importance of reading a variety of things and so, at the very first meeting, we read a graphic novel. None of the members of this group are young, and this was the first graphic novel most of us had read. We weren’t sure what to say about it. “This book is very heavy!” one member...
Though this is not the year of the goat, one goat’s demands for attention were recently met with an official response that two officers may learn to regret. An Enid, Oklahoma goat in the throes of an existential crisis elicited a 911 call on behalf of its distressed cries for “help” bringing a visit from two Enid officers that is creating international headlines for the would-be rescuers. The headlines about a goat screaming for help sound like clickbait, but when they were...
If you are an elderly Montana veteran on Social Security in a mobile home park, Gov. Greg Gianforte does not have your back! Montana’s manufactured homeowners had just two minutes to defend their homes in hearings on HB 889 sponsored by Rep. Jonathan Karlen of Missoula, yet they persuaded the House and the Senate to adopt a modest package of protections for park residents confronting large out-of-state private equity firms buying up the parks on which their homes rest. The well-heeled lobbyists for out-of-state private e...
Up at 6:30 and out the door to walk Lola. The sun is almost up, the sky spread cool with night clouds. These days, when Lola and I go walk-about, I have an entourage. A few months ago Josue and family adopted a pup, named him Hunter. He is mild-mannered. Most of the time. He thinks I am his. When he hears my belled gate open, Hunter bounds like Tigger, meets me with wet tongue greetings. Lola takes lead. Hunter races between me and Lola. Hunter does not walk. Pup, remember. A...
