News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 674 - 698 of 3214
Feb. 14, four days after President Joe Biden warned U.S. citizens in Ukraine to leave because a Russian invasion was imminent, Hudson, Ohio, Mayor Craig Shubert resigned over the kerfuffle he caused by arguing, with straight-faced sincerity, that ice shanties, aka ice houses, should not be allowed on the pond at Hudson Spring Park because they attract prostitutes and combating that issue will burn up too many law enforcement and judicial resources. Apparently the heckling...
It’s no secret that I love the English language, despite all its frustrating faults. You can really do some magical things with it. The versatility of English by sound alone is a real asset for the language. Compare the sounds of “The drip pooled in the sink, then trickled into the pipes” to “Water gushed from the faucet, showering the walls and flooding onto the floor.” Yeah, yeah, it’s not magic, but listen to the words, how sound adds meaning. In the first sentence th...
It happens on a weirdly frequent occasion that I write on a topic one week and the next week that topic becomes quite relevant to my everyday life. So it is that — in relation to last week’s column about everything in life being a matter of perspective — I am bewildered to announce this week that due to an alteration in perspective I now know what it’s like to live life as a short person. It’s hard work being short. I didn’t expect that much challenge and, yet, here I am t...
Since its formation in 2020, the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority — BSPRA — has been successful in touting its mission to re-establish rail passenger service through Southern Montana. Enthusiasm for the project was heightened in November 2021 with the passage of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which — for the first time in the service’s 51-year history — has designated significant funding for Amtrak, America’s intercity rail passenger service. But often lost in press releases by the BSPRA and in recent news articl...
A year ago, we launched the Snowbird Fund to help families and friends of missing and murdered indigenous persons by offering immediate cash assistance (no questions asked) to search for their loved ones. Since then, the fund has not only survived but it has doubled its cash amount and increased its funding capacity — all during a pandemic and tough economic times. Meanwhile, through the tenacious efforts of native communities and families around the state and country, the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons h...
We became acquainted over half a century ago and have always shared a keen interest in government and public service. In our lifetimes of serving in public office, and being close observers of the political process, we have never so regularly heard deep expressions of concern from our fellow citizens about the declining state of our political system. Believing that individual freedom is fundamental to our system of “government of, by and for the people,” we are proposing here an idea to expand freedom within our system that w...
We sing the praises and glories of spring. Really, we ought to be more careful. Spring ought to come printed with a warning label, beware, danger of erratic behavior. Spring is warm and wanton with promise one day, and cruel and cold, withholding favors the next day, spurning all pleading and imploring with an imperious frosty demeanor. Like many things, Spring also has a use-by date and just like that, go to sleep one night much like any other, waken and summer has arrived....
I have no doubt that we are all watching the the events unfold in Ukraine with heartbreak and horror. And yet, we are seeing the inspirational courage of the Ukrainian people as they take up arms and fight for their families, liberty and their land. The Biden administration’s retreat and failure in Afghanistan coupled with their inability to deliver any meaningful deterrent to Putin’s onslaught over the past year has given the world a clear message: America under Biden will not or cannot protect and defend freedom. Our allies...
My great-uncle John never buttered his bread. “I don’t have time for butter!” he insisted. I never knew how much time butter took, but apparently it was more than Uncle John could spare. Time passes so often without notice. A day seems to pass in the time it takes to butter a piece of bread. Last night, my husband, Peter, said that we met seven years ago. “Eight years,” I corrected him. We will celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary next month and, while the romance w...
For an alarming moment reading the Friday editorial in Havre Daily News on Montana politicians bashing the president during the Ukraine crisis, I imagined the United States already at war with Russia. It is true that in times of war American politicians are expected to follow the leader, whether in the case of WWII (with rare exceptions like Montana’s Jeanette Rankin), or our more recent crusade to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Once we are in the fight, a political leader who makes pronouncements a...
In Montana, cattle outnumber people by nearly three to one, so it’s no wonder that Montana beef plays such a large role in our rich legacy of agriculture and our economy. Montana ranchers take pride in producing the best cattle and highest-quality beef in the world. The last thing they should have to worry about is getting a fair price for their product. I’m hearing concerns from hardworking Montana cattle producers who are struggling to compete with the four biggest packers who currently dominate the market. These large pac...
I thought long and hard before taking on the responsibility of adopting a pooch. Lola has proven to be an asset to my life. If nothing else, she gets me out the door several times a day for short walks, for little chats, for daily interactions. She’s taught me when she wants to be brushed, when she wants a walk-about, when she wants her belly scratched, that sort of thing. My neighbors, Josue and Erika, have two small poochies, Snowball, aged and toothless, and Princess, w...
“I can always sleep in my rain jacket,” my husband, Peter, announced. Vacationing in rental homes is usually a bit of an adventure. We don’t need luxurious digs, and instead look for apartments offering a hefty discount if we stay for a full month. We did this three years ago in Pamplona, Spain. The apartment required climbing six flights of stairs, but it had a great view of the city — because we were right in the center of it. Only at night did this become a problem...
My friend Cheryl, a former high school classmate, was talking with our “girl-group” this week. She expressed how all her life, when among certain gifted, professional, highly recognized and extremely wealthy people, she has felt inadequate. Haven’t we all felt that way? Isn’t that a universal feeling, to feel like whoever we are, whatever the circumstances, we are not enough? Is it just me, or have we all at times felt like frauds and if people find out, oh, my, what shall w...
The bells ring more or less all the time here. My husband, Peter, and I are in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a city filled with old churches. Every old church has at least a couple of old bells, and all the bells are rung frequently. Since there is so much I do not understand when I travel to another country, I assumed that the bells rang according to some sort of system that everyone else understood and I did not. (This is an assumption I’ve made about a lot of things over t...
You don’t have to be a parent to care about your local school. But recently there are groups popping up around Montana who refer to themselves as the “parental rights movement,” as though they have more of a stake in public education than those who don’t have kids in the school system. The “parental rights movement” is a relatively small group of people with an axe to grind and clearly don’t represent most parents. Recently they have been attacking masks, vaccines and how we teach history. In their view, they should be abl...
“Everything in life is a matter of perspective,” that’s one of my favorite quotes from myself — though, to be fair to humans of the world, I hardly think the phrase is unique to me. Still, it is one of my few, and simple, guiding principles for life. You just have to look at things the right way to see and understand them more clearly, or even just to feel better. Sometimes that act of seeing, that just-right perspective, is both literal and figurative. Like a horse I saw in...
I’m not the least bit enamored with “the good ol’ days,” which, to my mind, were rather rugged. Hard, one might say. I suppose every age is hard in its own way. You might think I’m crazy and perhaps you are right. A few months ago I was standing over the ironing board, dealing with the aftermath of cotton clothing sun-dried on the clothesline, letting all kinds of thoughts ramble through my mind when it seemed as if some of my notions coalesced into a decision without consulti...
One reason to travel is to discover how things are done all over again. My husband, Peter, and I are in Mexico, and I was thinking this as we stood, confounded, in front of the washing machine. It would not start. There was a dizzying array of buttons and commands. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I actually understood what almost all the buttons meant. Unfortunately, my Spanish skills were of no use whatsoever in making the machine start. “We need to put soap in i...
The groundhog known as Milltown Mel died just days before this year’s Groundhog Day. The first sentence of the death notice on his official Facebook page reads: “We Wranglers are sad to report that Milltown Mel recently crossed over the rainbow bridge.” I did not know the Milltown, New Jersey, weather prognosticator personally or professionally, but I should probably be sad and just let things go out of respect for the dead, even if he is a rodent. I just can’t let the opportu...
When I had cataract surgery a few years ago, when the pads were removed from my eyes, I felt like I had been given a new set of eyeballs. Suddenly the world appeared more clearly, more colorful than ever before in my clouded memory. Other gifts of new sight have happened more gradually, like this one I want to share with you. You all know I have quite an extensive array of plants in my garden. To some of the flowers, bushes and trees I’ve given names. I have a couple plants I...
In my dream, the jungle was thick and dark. There was a river running through it and I was on a small raft, careening down it. The current was flowing fast in the center and I wanted to steer closer to the banks, but the jungle was filled with monsters: prehistoric creatures that roared when they saw my little raft tumbling in the water. I never saw them clearly, but could sense their large presence. They reared their giant heads as I went by. The branches of the trees...
It is the time of year that agriculture, education, political, and any other meetings you can think of are happening. On top of that, it is campaign season. As I mentioned in my last article, I am again vying for the Senate District 14 position, and therefore fully into campaign mode. Campaigning is a busy season, but I appreciate the opportunity to connect with constituents both in person and through other media platforms. If there are issues you’d like to discuss or if you’d like to get involved with my campaign, ple...
Horses are psychic — if you don’t believe it, just watch them be jerks about it. I just spent three days researching, reading, interviewing and writing about livestock predation due to grizzlies, wolves, mountain lions and coyotes — which is the technical way of saying I was drowning in the details about large, wild meat-eaters making a meal out of livestock. The day I finished with the project, my horses spent the entire time I was out feeding them, in the dark, spook...
For the past eight year I served on the Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee, six as chair. When combined with my eight years in the House, I have spent more time evaluating the Public Service Commission’s regulatory duties and commissioners than anyone in the legislature. The PSC consists of five members, each elected from a distinct geographic Montana district, whose primary charge is keeping your lights on and power costs low. Previous efforts made by the legislature to redraw the PSC district boundaries to c...
