News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2215 - 2239 of 3208
It’s that time of year again when the nights and mornings get a little cooler the leaves start changing color and the elk are bugling. Soon, it will be time to break out the snow shovel and winter coat. The changing season also means that across Montana our students and teachers are back in the classroom. As a father of four and a product of Montana’s public schools from kindergarten at Longfellow Elementary School in Bozeman through college at Montana State University, I look forward to this time of year and the new beg...
I like to write letters. I like to receive letters. It’s a lifelong habit for me. While I no longer have a mailbox, I do have an email account and a computer. While the pleasure is not even similar to pulling down the flap of the aluminum container perched on a post at the end of the drive, I have learned to compensate. We live in a wondrous and fearful world. Everything — letters, bills, junkmail, spam, appears on my screen without visible means of support. Just this week, in...
I will stand for the national anthem because I live in a free country. This freedom comes with a price. This freedom comes from the ultimate sacrifice. This freedom comes from hard work, deep thinking, intense arguments, powerful protests, and a continued dedication to improving our country. This freedom also comes from a long and sordid past. I have never wanted to be a soldier or a politician. I have been happy to enjoy the freedoms and luxuries that come from living in America, and have tried my best to stay an informed,...
A massive sob came over Havre Thursday afternoon as word spread that civic leader Pam Hillery had died. She had meant so much to so many. On Facebook, in downtown conversations, in office buildings, people mourned her passing. Not that it was a surprise. Since she learned nearly four years ago that she had the horrific disease ALS, Pam had been open about it. In Facebook posts, newspaper columns, blogs, in interviews and in public appearances she had been very open about it. She shared the most secret thoughts on life and...
My friends are back home in British Columbia. I signed up for three days of depression, lonely following our whirlwind of explorations and excitement. A vibrantly green lizard perches on my wall, staring down at me, as if to say, “I’m here. Don’t cry.” Each day brought choices, where to go, what to see. We drove to Tonola twice for the tianguis (open-air street market). Twice we plucked fruit and vegetables from huge piles at the Friday tianguis in Etzatlan. Under the guise o...
Not that I was hyper-critical before, but now that I'm hyper-sympathetic to errors, I find myself thinking - far too often - "Ha, ha, haw, hmm, ooooh, man, I feel your pain." It really is pain I feel in my heart-guts-brain area - even if it's a 6,835-mile-long error that lands you, your crew and 212 paying airline passengers on the wrong continent. But we'll get back to that. For a good handful, or two, of years a significant part of my job has been not only to not-make...
Last session, I sponsored SB 128, a bill that created the School Funding Interim Commission, and requires the legislature to examine the school funding formula at least every 10 years, if not more frequently. The Commission met for 18 months and just wrapped up its work. The results of the Commission are several strong, new proposals to adjust some components of school funding to meet some pressing needs of Montana's public schools, and additionally, to lay out a roadmap for...
Recycle Hi-Line has partnered with Pacific Steel and Recycling, and Collective Recyclers of Billings to host an e-recycle event Saturday, Sept. 10. This event will allow residents a safe and convenient way to recycle unwanted electronics. Typically, Pacific has a per-pound charge to take items such as TVs and monitors. This charge is due to the costs for shipping, through end of life fees for that item. EPA regulations require meticulous handling and documentation for cathode ray tubes — CRTs — and hazardous substances in ele...
One of my horses is kind of loaned out to a ranch right now, and it’s like having a disturbance in the Force to be missing one of the living beings in my life. The two horses I have left are rocking the adjustment like, well, horses. This means, they ran around frantically for 15 minutes, whinnied loudly and regularly for maybe three hours, whinnied occasionally for another 10 hours and then they moved on to jockeying for position in the discussion over who would be in c...
Today, Kathy and her sister Crin fly into Guadalajara from Victoria, British Columbia. I’ve known Kathy for, I don’t know, maybe 15 years. When two friends recognize they are kindred spirits, who counts years? This is embarrassing, but I can’t remember Crin’s given name. I met Crin a couple years ago in Mazatlan. Crin’s unusual nickname comes from her penchant for crinoline underskirts when she was a little girl, back in the day when we all wore the starched scratchy...
As I enter my fourth year post-ALS diagnosis, I can honestly say, I have been blessed by the Havre community, my family and my widespread friends. To hear what you mean to people is a true gift, one I will treasure to my last breath. While in the words of Monty Python, I’m not dead yet, I am sticking close to my beloved home and yard. My voice is gone, and I get nervous in crowds. (I have to be sick: not talking and avoiding people!) I had a good run, though, and have no regrets. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say what hos...
With war in the Middle East bleeding the U.S. military budget dry, government officials have had to come up with creative ways to practice war craft, and officials launched their inaugural test run under this initiative Sunday with a small-scale invasion of riverfront property in Canada under the guise of a drunken float trip in the Great Lakes region. About 1,500 water-floaters taking part in the Port Huron Float Down on St. Clair River were blown by storm winds to the...
Groucho Marx said it. I suppose there are as many book readers in Mexico as in any other country. What I know for sure, no supposition, true fact, is there are more dogs than people. I’ve wondered if dog ownership is a residency requirement. Even here in Colonia El Guaje, also known as Rancho Americano, everyone has a dog or two or even six. Oops — no — I’m wrong. Lani has cats. Lani has three large male cats. Three male cats equal one male dog. All the dogs are male. I’ve no idea how they reproduce. Maybe a company g...
The bodies are piling up and the continual scenes of carnage are starting to eat away at my soul, causing me to ponder the deeper implications of the bloody actions of my quarter-feral, yellow-tabby cat. Frankly, I had been thinking for a while now that I might be harboring a serial killer, but then earlier this week, in the faint pre-dawn light of morning, I saw him snag a bat out of the air mid-flight and it occurred to me that I may be operating a secret base for a...
My cousin Nancie will board the plane for her home in Washington today. Three weeks wasn’t enough time for her to finish the long list of tasks she set herself in her new casa. But she painted and made curtains and cleaned and scratched off great chunks of her list. We found time to visit each day, often during work breaks or sharing meals, mugs of coffee, cups of tea. Years ago I had a friend in construction work who, with a wink, said that paint hides a multitude of sins. I...
When I read Mr. Kevin Zoren's letter to the editor about the article I'd written and we published Friday, "Man arrested in bizarre parking dispute," my first reaction was to seriously consider if I mishandled the story. We reviewed the article and even discussed it as a staff. Mr. Zoren claims I mocked the mentally ill and was "eager to sensationalize the admittedly abnormal behaviors of a man who at first blush, appears to have suffered some form of psychotic break." Mr....
Chances are if you called the Havre Daily News during the last 15-plus years, I was the one who answered your call. During my 17 years at the newspaper, I have answered the phone thousands of times helping customers and directing telephone calls to my fellow employees. If you dropped off a payment or came in the office looking for an end roll, I was probably the one who assisted you. Over the years, I got to know by name many of our regular customers especially those who came in monthly to pay for their Havre Daily News...
Back in the dark ages when I was young and the internet wasn’t even a twinkle in Al Gore’s eye, my contemporaries and I would imagine what it would be like to read people’s minds. We were convinced it would be awesome to the nth power, even though many smart people who studied human behavior — like psychologists, sociologists, secret service interrogators and moms — all said that knowing what people are truly thinking is really not a good thing. We dismissed their warnings....
I want to introduce myself, and my goals, to the readers of the Havre Daily News. Some of you already know me. My name is Tim Leeds, a former reporter and assistant editor at the Havre Daily, and I took over as the head of the news department Aug. 5. Before I say anything else, I wanted to thank and congratulate my predecessor, John Kelleher, for his more than four decades, including nearly a decade here at the Havre Daily, in getting out the news. His dedication and hard work...
The workmen are finished. Thanks to daily rain my damaged lawn is repairing itself. No more mud and crud. My house is in order. Trees are planted. I’m weeding the neglected flower beds. Two-or-three-or-several times a week I am rendered speechless with gratitude with a-hit-me-over-the-head-look-at-how-different-my-world-is-than-it-coulda-woulda-been. Whew. Think about it. I grew up in Harlem, Montana, in the 50s and 60s. A trip to Chinook was a big deal. The Harlem News u...
The Universe has been conspiring this summer to make me long for one of the few things I miss about living in the mountains of western Montana: Clear water. Lots and lots of clear, cold water. It gathers in lakes, vast and small, roils and surges in wide rivers, tumbles down mountainside creeks, trickles up through fresh springs. It pours cool and remarkably tasteless from the tap and leaves not a single stain on the counter top or the laundry. I didn’t appreciate it enough, until I lived where bodies of water were scarce a...
A couple of months ago, Fortune magazine did one of its surveys on the worst jobs in America. For the third year in a row, newspaper reporter was listed as the worst job you could hold. The low pay, long hours, financial trouble of newspapers, stress of deadlines and almost always displeasing at least somebody were cited as reasons for my profession’s low job satisfaction. Today is my last day as a reporter. I’m retiring after 44 years as a reporter/editor in small towns from New Hampshire to Havre in Montana. Fortune mag...
My mind is a mess. Twenty-three days ago the men began work in my backyard, front yard, patio and, yes, even inside my house. Twenty-three days of mud and crud and cement dust, of men and tools and Mexican music, of piles of sand, water barrels, ladders and stacks of brick across my lawn. Did you know fresh cement has a distinctive smell? And handmade sun-baked brick has its own flavor? My wall is complete, my patios are finished. I can sweep, “rearrange the furniture” and “ha...
What do you do when your life is literally too boring for words? You turn to the weird news of the world: While the temperatures have been hot all across Montana the past few weeks, the east coast has seen some record high temperatures. With those stories dominating the news it makes sense that NBC affiliate WDSU in New Orleans thought to go “there.” By which I mean “down there.” You know, the unmentionable down there that you would find showing at a nudist colony — and they...
I’m the fish, pacing my casita. I feel like I live in an aquarium. Bubbles rise from my mind. Occasionally I gasp for oxygen. Three weeks, every day but Sunday, blessed reprieve of Sunday, workmen swarm my yard. The projects creep forward. Abel and his nephew, also Abel, called Pelon, which is a nickname that translates “bald,” along with Josue show up at eight in the morning and work until four or five in the afternoon. Pelon, a teen, has beautiful dark hair. I wonder if he acquired his name when a baby, born without a hair...
