News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2561 - 2585 of 3212
April is National Autism Awareness month, which raises the question – what is autism? First, understand the misconceptions about autism. People with autism do not have a disease, and they aren’t broken, so they don’t need to be fixed. There is no way to protect your child from it and no diet or vaccine that will prevent it. Kids can’t catch autism at a play date, and no racial, social or economic class is safe from autism. There is no medical test for autism, and there isn’t a “cure,” despite what a celebrity talking head...
It’s not that I’m afraid of change or that I hate change. I’m just highly suspicious of change, and when I say highly I mean it in a big way that’s in all capital letters — and italics — like HIGHLY suspicious. Change operates under its own motives. Change is amoral. We know these things instinctually. We have the saying: Change for the sake of change is … bad, stupid, pointless, wasteful, insert your negative word of choice here. I know, I know, people also say change is inev...
People frequently say to me, “You are so courageous. I could never do something like ‘that.’” (“That” can mean any number of things, some crazy indeed!) I’m puzzled. Often, but not exclusively, I hear these words in relation to travel. For example, my cousins in Indiana are horrified that I drive the miles from Montana to their homes by myself. I could fly but I like to see the country between hither and yon. The solitude gives me opportunity to process the sights I see....
Want to make your voice heard on a deal which, if approved, will affect your power bill for a generation to come? The Public Service Commission is holding 19 public meetings throughout Montana to take public comment on NorthWestern Energy's proposed purchase of 11 hydroelectric generating facilities currently owned by PPL. In Havre, the meeting will commence at 5 p.m. and end by 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the Student Union Building's Ballroom at Montana State University-Northern....
Want to make your voice heard on a deal which, if approved, will affect your power bill for a generation to come? The Public Service Commission is holding 19 public meetings throughout the State of Montana to take public comment on NorthWestern Energy’s proposed purchase of 11 hydroelectric generating facilities currently owned by PPL. In Havre, the meeting will commence at 5 p.m. and end by 7 p.m. April 9 at the Student Union Building’s Ballroom at MSU-Northern. Whether or...
Montana’s wilderness. That’s where my mind went to most often while I was deployed in Southern Afghanistan as an explosive ordnance disposal operator in the summer of 2009. Some people missed their families, others had a sweetheart or spouse back home whom they missed, and others just longed for a good meal and a comfortable bed. But for me it was different. What I missed most were Montana’s wild open places. In Afghanistan I quickly learned that the most important thing was the people fighting next to me. Getting kille...
Looking out the window, and cautiously waiting for the moment when his father gets home, the fear begins to set in. Many reoccurring questions start to develop in his head; “What will he do this time? Was it my fault? Will it hurt?” Fear and anticipation begin to take over while his dad’s car starts pulling into the driveway. After noticing the angry look on his father’s face, the fear takes over. The boy jolts for the best hiding place before the father gets to the front door. The boys slides under his bed as the door be...
Last week was another landmark in the long and sad epic of the Rocky Boy scandal. Tony Belcourt, the once up-and-coming state lawmaker, and several other people, have pleaded guilty to felonies in connection with a series of bribes and thievery of federal funds that were designed to help residents of Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation and other areas of north-central Montana. Belcourt says he’s ready to tell his side of the story of his sentencing hearing, but few people can imagine he could say much to change public opi...
This morning I sat in front of my casita, reading a book, sipping tea, enjoying the breeze on my face, when suddenly five truckloads of Mazatlan Policia screeched around the corner and, positioning the trucks to face both directions, blocked the entrance of our street. Without hesitation, I abandoned book, chair and teacup and melted through the screen door into the inner recesses of my apartment. I didn’t bother to lock the screen or shut the door. Why would I? These p...
I am here to say that I suffer for my art, not quite the cut-off-my-own-ear suffering of Vincent van Gogh, but I suffer nonetheless. Sure, like many artistic sufferers, I brought on some of the troubles myself. I had waited until I had 10 days to do work I could've gotten done in a leisurely two months, but I had a plan, an elegant plan for completion of said duties by said deadline. And, like all fool-proof plans, it had underestimated the fool. On the evening of Day Two it...
It is quite possible that, since the age when mankind invented ways of making fire on demand, science exists solely to make life more awesome. Carrying stuff around on your back? A big drag. The wheel? Awesome. A four-wheel drive pickup? Awesomer, of course. That fire? It not only cooked the food to bacteria-killing temperatures, but it also kept you warm. And you could stay up after dark. Aaaawesommme. Electricity? Awesomer. It’s fire in a light switch. How can you p...
Last year a 62-year-old Martin City woman was reduced to thrashing on the ground, covered with blood from her snapping, wounded dog while her 5- and 6-year old grandchildren looked on, crying in terror. The family was out for a walk. Their dogs were both caught in foothold traps hidden within feet of the road the children were running on. The grandmother was trying free her 100-pound dog. She did, finally, with a superhuman effort. The incident was reported to Fish, Wildlife and Parks in November 2013. They told her the set...
It was close to 4 o’clock when I left my apartment to walk up the street to get a liter of milk, no specific destination in mind, just a purpose — buy milk. I could go to the frutera and buy milk and fruit. Or to the Farmacia for milk and an apple turnover. Or to the Oxxo for milk and pan dulce, a sweet treat for the next morning. Or to any of a dozen other small markets for milk and whatever might catch my eye. Instead, I crossed the street to Tony’s on the Bay, seated mysel...
It was an honor to attend the community meeting held at Stone Child College on March 11. An amazing movement is being created by the people from a broad sector of Hi-Line communities. The meeting demonstrated an excellent format by allowing individuals from the communities to take the lead. Proactive and positive change always comes when individuals and communities empower themselves through a passion to see change become a reality. The meeting displayed the following elements commonly found in successful groups which I have...
With a high level of self-entertainment and very little sense of self-preservation, my husband told me that I should teach a course on how to effectively torture and kill plants. Everybody’s a comedian. Too bad he isn’t good at it, I say. To be fair, evidence of my, um, expertise in this matter abounds in our household. And to be honest, he did just overhear me in my home office struggling, ineptly, to interview two greenhouse owners and letting slip a few stories of said tor...
“In my next life, I’m going to be a man. When I’ve punched the time clock, I’ll be off work, done for the day. Go home, grab a brew, the remote, grunt, and wait for dinner to appear. I won’t cook. I won’t clean. I won’t do dishes. Mess, what mess? Do laundry? I’ll wear them again tomorrow. Fold clothes, why? Prepare lunch to take to work? Nope. I’ll buy something at the store. I’ll scratch my privacies in public and grin, think it’s normal. Think burping and passing gas is sex...
Since 1990, culminating with Obamacare, progressives progressively destroyed health insurance. How? By switching definitions. Old Definition: Insurance — current fixed, smaller payments to protect yourself from future potential unforeseen larger catastrophic events, based on actuarial equations. The potential future loss times percentage probability of occurrence equals cost of insurance. Example: $1 million catastrophe exposure times 1 percent probability equals $10,000 insurance cost. The equation was a square deal … not...
Next week is Sunshine Week, a time set aside by the American Society of New Editors to discuss issues of access to public records. Montana has some of the best laws concerning the public’s right to know what state and local governments are up to, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to get access to records that ought to be public. The 1972 constitution and subsequent legislation guarantee the public’s right to information that was closed to the public in Montana. If you want to see what governments are doing, where they are s...
I wonder about people. I wonder so much that sometimes I think a childhood accident must have stunted the growth of that brain part that reads body language. I can read animals better than I can people. Except cats. Cats make me wonder, too. Like when my cat sees a bird he’d like to snack on but knows he can’t get to, he drops his mouth open into a stiff, gap-faced smile, emits a raspy chatter and twitches his face so hard his whiskers bounce, all while staring at the bir...
"This is my new horse Taz," says I. "What kind of a name is Taz?" says John. "I dunno," says I. "It's just the one he came with." "I don't like it," says John. "It's just a name," says I. "Sounds like Tasmanian Devil. Doesn't bode well for the future," says John. "Well, maybe he's a Tasmanian Angel," says I. "Ha, ha, haw!" says John, as he ends up getting the last laugh after all. The list of this horse's apparently uncontrollable quirks is long - from his joy of packing...
I perch on that edge, jump back and forth across the line, ignore it, bow to it. Some days I refuse to recognize possibility, let inertia carry me like a raft on the Pacific tides, beyond sight of land. Last night I could not sleep. Instead of counting sheep or getting out of bed for a glass of warm milk and a game of solitaire or even arguing with a Higher Power which I could not describe coherently if my life depended on it, and it does, I borrowed a long-time friend’s m...
Finland’s Reindeer Herder’s Association is trying something new this year to help save reindeer lives: glow in the dark reindeer. The story was originally reported Monday by Finnish national broadcaster YLE, but the title read “Poroille tarkoitetun heijastinsprayn tehtävänä estää liikenneonnettomuuksia,” so we hear straight from BBC.co.uk translators Tuesday that “Reflective reindeer antlers aim to stop accidents.” Apparently, as many as 4,000 reindeer are killed in traffi...
The Association of Montana Retired Public Employees is standing up to protect the legal rights and pension benefits of thousands of state and local government retirees The association is not a group of highly paid members with a big support staff. Just the opposite. The organization’s leaders are volunteers donating their time because they care about retirement issues affecting all Montana public employees. They care about government not reneging on its promise to those workers. And they have been very busy. The 2013 L...
Some day, generations down the road, people will be mining the area where the landfill east of Havre is now located, Hill County Sanitarian Clay Vincent believes. They will be looking for things of value — the cans, bottles, plastics — that we now bury at the landfill. So Vincent, who supervises the landfill for the Unified Disposal District, has an idea. Why don’t we mine those materials today? We should make sure they don’t end up at the landfill. Instead, we should recycle the plastics, glass and other materials that no...
I am tired of the gradual short-changing of America. Yes, yes, of course, we’ve heard it all before about how everybody wants a job, a job that pays a decent wage, and everybody who’s anybody knows that the only way that’s going to happen is for the wealthiest of the wealthy and those rotten over-paid CEOs to share the wealth, but I think that’s a little shortsighted. Yes, folks, get those jobs lined out, and the ultrahigh-minimum wage paychecks, too, but make those corporate...
