News you can use
News you can use
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The dangers of lead exposure for children are well known and many schools across Montana have made great strides to protect students and staff from lead in drinking water. But a number of Montana schools have not yet taken action and the possibility of lead in school drinking water continues to be a serious concern. Children are particularly at risk because their growing bodies absorb more lead than adults and the risks from lead include anemia, kidney and brain damage, as well as learning disabilities and decreased growth. B...
Truly. I’ve nothing to say. My mind is fried, blackened to a carbon crisp beneath the unrelenting heat dome. The way it is today is the way it will be forever and ever, amen. I know that is a big, fat lie, but it is the way I feel. Discouraged. Every morning I scurry to get basic cleaning done before 9:00 because three-digit heat comes with companionable dust. I knock back the most visible dirt and mop the floors because that layer of dust is slick and slick is dangerous to o...
We’ve most of us inadvertently swallowed a bug or two, usually a mosquito. Right? Here the gustatory bugs are most likely Argentine ants. They are taking over the world, by the way. Saw that on a You Tube documentary. Moving north, house by house. It is so. You might not even notice them, they are so tiny, like a speck of dust on legs. Anyway, what happened that busy morning when I was sewing a tunic top, is that I sat my glass of agua fresca, a fruity drink of papaya, p...
“I don’t even know what game we’re supposed to be playing!” my husband, Peter, told me. He and our cat, Felix, have been playing their nightly game of chase and tag. Peter always loses. This might be because Felix makes the rules — and is the referee. “When is the game over?” I asked. “Whenever Felix wins!” Last night, I was already in bed while the game was wrapping up. Felix was nowhere to be seen. Peter was silently creeping around the bed and out the bedroom door. Sud...
If there is one thing every business owner, rancher, and manager agrees on, it’s that if you don’t have good people, you don’t have much. And if there’s one thing Montanans (and, increasingly, outsiders) know, it’s how good our hunting and fishing opportunities generally are. They make life here special. They feed our families and shape our lives. We tend to assume these same opportunities will continue for our kids, regardless of income—but Governor Gianforte and Fish, Wildlife & Parks Director Dustin Temple have shown...
I never learned my multiplication tables. Not really. To this day, if you ask me, “What is six times nine?” out of the blue, with some urgency, I will panic. (Please don’t do this.) The troubles started when I was transferred from one math class to another in the third grade. I now understand that this was some sort of promotion from lower math to higher math, but it did not feel like that at the time. Almost immediately, I realized everyone around me was privy to some secret...
Growing up as a kid in Big Sandy, I learned from a young age about the incredible service and sacrifice of our servicemembers when I played Taps at the funerals of veterans of both World Wars. It’s something that has always stuck with me, and I carry with me every day. Montana is the greatest state in the greatest country in the world. But it didn’t get that way by accident. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have fought to defend our freedom and protect our democracy, with many paying the ultimate sacrifice to keep us free....
All things being relative, we have water. The drought is not over. I’ve forgotten what a cloud looks like. However, the valve directing water to the ranch property has been fixed, replaced, repaired, and, just like that, we have more than a daily dribble. I still judiciously use water. Mop water, dish water, still get dumped on potted plants, whichever ones look most thirsty at the moment. I still have brown grass and dusty patches and will have until the rains come. If t...
Dear editor, May 12-18 is National Stuttering Awareness Week. One in every 100 people stutter. That’s 80 million people worldwide! Yet stuttering is often misunderstood and even laughed at. To address the many myths surrounding this complex disorder, the Stuttering Foundation has compiled a list of “75 Must-Use Resources for the Stuttering Community”—available free on our website: StutteringHelp.org. The Foundation’s most popular content represents a mix of time-tested favorites and newer innovations: Drawings and Letters f...
My hen-and-chicks, a succulent in my rock garden, is burned to a crisp. The leaves look like ashes. While April, May and June are our hottest months, here in Jalisco, relieved by a welcome cool-down when the rains begin late June, the old-timers tell me this we experience now is extreme, unusual. A day or two of ultra-high heat followed by a windy reprieve; that is the usual. The old, former usual. We have experienced weeks, multiple weeks, where the daily temperature climbs...
My Aunt Ruthie used to make the best pickles ever. Ruthie was my mom’s sister, and she died a few years back in a car accident that left us all sad and shaken and filled with memories. I remember her dry humor and her sharp intellect and her voracious reading habits. I remember her never-ending kindness and resilience. And I remember her pickles. Ruthie always gave me a jar of pickles whenever she made them. They were a treasure. One year, the glass Mason jar filled with pickl...
New York has been voted the ugliest American city, not because of its architecture, but because of its people. Just kidding. It’s because of its architecture. Probably. Europe does things a little better, but not by much. There’s a building in London called The Walkie-Talkie, presumably due to its resemblance to a refrigerator. So neither of these two major cities is wholly pretty. But I have to be fair. There’s not much to brag about in my home state of New Jersey, unless you count some oddly-shaped potholes. When did we de...
"In my next life, I want to be a tree." "A tree? Why, Mom, would you want to be a tree?" "Because they are more intelligent and kinder than humans." "A sycamore, Mom. Be a sycamore. I don't even know what one looks like but that tree popped into my mind." We each went to our computers and landed on the same site. Though we are 2,500 miles separated geographically, we are otherwise quite close. "Holy guacamole, these trees are beautiful." "Ooooh, I want to be a sycamore." I...
It may be that Stubby is gone for good. In the summer of 2022, I started writing about my mother’s new pet, a red squirrel who she reluctantly began to care for. My parents live on 20 acres in the woods up north in a house my father designed when he retired 35 years ago. The house looks over the lake and, for most of the winter, my parents have few neighbors, except for the birds at their feeder and the deer making their way through the deep snow and, of course, red s...
If you want to see a flying whale, go to the Natural History Museum in London. Well, the whale isn’t technically flying. That’s because it’s dead. Even live whales don’t fly, unless there’s something David Attenborough hasn’t told me. Right when you enter the museum, you see that enormous skeleton suspended from the ceiling: a whole blue whale, or what’s left of it. Gazing at this miracle of creation, you forget your dull, everyday concerns. It doesn’t matter where you’re going to have lunch, or what day of the week it is, o...
With the completion of the poll of the Legislature on whether to override the governor’s veto of Senate Bill 442, I want to explain my consistent opposition to the bill, including voting against overriding the veto. The bill would have incorporated $ 16 million in annual expenditures for county roads into the existing allocations of marijuana tax revenue with corresponding reductions to the general fund. When the voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2020 through initiative (I-190), the ballot language read: “I-190 leg...
Editor, Montana’s veterans deserve to live with dignity and independence. The Department of Public Health and Human Services is conducting an important survey to understand and improve the living conditions for our veterans. We at the Veterans Navigation Network encourage every veteran, caregiver, and family member in Montana to participate. This survey will help the state understand what veterans need to live well in their communities. It looks at healthcare access, financial stability, and opportunities to connect with o...
Like Alice, now and then I take a dive down a rabbit hole, purely for entertainment. Oh, well, and so I can feel superior, yes, smug in my own knowledge. I’m not on Facebook, but when I check weather on my computer, I get a sidebar of widgets, (love that word), that is every bit as good as FB for misinformation, from what I’m told. So, there I am, trawling along through non-news, political rants, hundreds of chocolate-chip cookie recipes and other trivia, when I spy a hou...
Our cat, Felix, has a new home. We adopted Felix in Mexico while we were staying there. The woman who fostered him, Marcela, thought he was a kitten because he was so small — except for his tail, which appears to be intended for a much larger cat. But when I took him to the vet, they said he was two years old. I worried he was going through a lot of changes rather quickly for a two-year-old. He lived on the streets until he was picked up by Marcela, then he came to live with u...
The two of us are from different political parties, don’t always agree on legislation and actually ran a spirited campaign against one another several years ago. Having said that, we are not enemies. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We are friends that actually get along and work together as much as possible for the betterment of the Hi-Line and those who live and work here. One legislative proposal we both were pleased to enthusiastically support, along with 86% of our House and Senate colleagues, was Senate Bill 442, spo...
The other morning, I visited with a long-time friend who lives in California. We don’t visit frequently, but when we do, it’s always good. Ideas fly and grow and develop and land in our deep hearts. My friend Anne belongs to a small church with an aim to make a difference in their community, to really matter to those they serve. With all the best intentions in the world, they formed a committee to put together gift bags for people in their area with no fixed abode. “Ho...
More than 100 years ago, my grandparents made a life for our family on a homesteaded plot of land outside of Big Sandy that we still farm to this day. I’ve been blessed to call Montana home my entire life and to always have a place to rest my head after a hard day’s work. Unfortunately, finding an affordable place to live has become a challenge for far too many Montanans. As I travel across Montana, I hear about how housing challenges are hurting working families. From Missoula to Kalispell to Bozeman, all the way to sma...
I ordered the sofa cover as soon as we adopted our new cat, Felix. The sofa in the little apartment my husband, Peter, and I rent in Mexico has seen better days, but we didn’t want to be responsible for ushering it into an early retirement due to cat scratches. So I bought a beautiful turquoise handloomed bedspread from a woman across the street to use as a throw. And the job would have been done right then and there if I’d kept my mouth shut. Instead, I asked the woman if...
To our readers, Today will be my last day as a reporter for the Havre Daily News, and I want to bid the paper and the community it serves a fond farewell. I want to. I want for my final thoughts to be about the people I’ve met, the community I did my best to serve, the memories I’ve made and how thankful I am for them, and every word of the parting letter I want to write would be true. However, I’m afraid my final thoughts cannot be about those things, at least not entirely, because a recent change announced at the paper...
Dear Havre residents: The Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees seeks your support for the Elementary District General fund Mill Levy on the May 7, 2024, ballot. Approval of this levy will allocate an extra $138,615.45 to bolster educational initiatives for K-8 students in Havre. Passage of this proposal will result in a tax increase of approximately $7.40 per year for a home valued at $100,000, $22.19 per year for a home valued at $300,000, and $44.39 on a home valued at $600,000. HPS has diligently pursued grant funds to...
