News you can use
News you can use
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It is a well-known fact that we are allowed to chew out the people we care about. Most recently, this came to mind when I gave my old friend, Andrew, a serious tongue-lashing. Andrew is a lifelong bachelor, and a committed curmudgeon. He is better than most curmudgeons at being curmudgeonly because he started young. Andrew showed signs of being a grumpy old man when he was still in his 30s. But Andrew is no longer in his 30s, and this is what brought us to our recent conflict....
“You Bugger!” This is my favorite expression used by my dear friend Loretta Loftus who passed away last week. I counted it a real coup when Loretta and her husband Kermit walked into Community Alliance Church one Sunday. They had been faithful members of Calvary Baptist Church but when that church closed, they came to us and they stayed for many years. Not only did they stay but they also brought family and friends and invested themselves into the life of the church. My wife, Karen, and I spent many hours with Loretta lis...
Concealed weapons on campus? HB102 directly raises that issue. But in spite of arguments to the contrary this is not a Second Amendment issue as it relates to campuses. What is at issue is the Regents constitutional right to manage Montana’s University System. Our history is rife with examples where politics and vested interests have interfered with our higher education system. In 1915, at the behest of the Legislature and the Anaconda Company — ACM — University President Craighead was fired for not towing the ACM line....
We’re all getting excited up here that it finally feels like spring, but some homeowners in Southern California are having a hard time with the backlog of migratory birds coming home to roost. UPI reported Wednesday that a family in Torrance, California, near Los Angeles came home to find that hundreds of migratory birds called Vaux’s swifts had flown down their chimney and were swooping and flitting around the family’s home. The birds showed no desire to leave, and they are, apparently, harder to herd than cats. And for t...
• Take the time to thank the people who have helped you to get to this point in life. • Appreciate the path you have taken to get where you are right now. Life is a journey not a destination and everyone has their own journey. • Tell your loved ones that you love them. Tell them often, show it and mean it. You just never know when that last time will be. • Always keep learning and moving forward. Life will throw things at you, but keep moving forward and learning. Not everyone will take the same path and that is ok. • Do no...
I ask for people’s votes to let me continue in the position on the Havre School Board I was appointed to this year. My tenure as a 40-year veteran educator will help bring education and experience to the board. I taught special education and worked as the school psychologist for the district and also worked with non-special needs students. I also have experience from when I coached track and girls basketball and spent time as the area coordinator for Special Olympics. Being an active listener to parents, and a...
I was going to write about the morning symphony, featuring “Variations on a Theme at Sunrise” with Bell-ringing Bird on timpani. This music assured me that the huge black cloud in the western sky was not a slow-moving tornado but a cloud of smoke coming from the landfill, recently plagued by brush fires. I was going to write about “The Rule of Three,” a phenomenon in my family that mechanical failings trundle down the line in triplicate, always. This past week my washing...
I finished my bath and saw that the rust-orange towel had molted all over my body. I was covered with tufts of orange fur. It was not a good look, and it felt worse than it looked. Worse yet, it gave me a taste of what the next two months would be like. My husband, Peter, is a man of many systems, and I have learned to appreciate this over the six years we have been married. He has a particular way to do nearly everything, from making coffee, to washing the dishes, to...
Week 16 was a marijuana-intensive week. Early in the week, we were given an overview of what was in the 260-some page SB-701. There were many questions and some of the last-minute requests were also addressed. Fortunately, a special committee was assigned to take care of the recreational part this issue. When the medical marijuana bill came to be a couple sessions ago, it was assigned to the Tax Committee, of which I am a member. We had to figure out how to make a law that not only worked and made sense, but was also...
For decades, Montanans of all stripes have worked to create a responsible and commonsense pathway for the restoration of wild bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. But Gov. Greg Gianforte just sunk those efforts. In doing so, he has allied himself with a fringe wing of political operatives who are highly motivated to privatize Montana’s wildlife and limit our access to land and water. This is a very dangerous signal of things to come. All Montana hunters and anglers who remain proud of our wildlife h...
Freedom was at the forefront last week in Helena. This week at the Legislature, we made significant progress in ensuring freedom and protecting liberty for Montanans all across the state. House Bill 702 prohibits discrimination against all Montanans based on their vaccination status. That means employers may not punish or fire employees for personal medical decisions, nor can they require employees to get a COVID vaccination. However, employees must understand the policy manual of the employer. This bill is not an attack on...
I got to pull stitches out of my husband’s face Wednesday and I was so excited about it I did a happy dance while he wasn’t looking. He never wants to let me play doctor on him. I get it — and by that I mean I get it, and I don’t get it all at the same time. John is, let’s say, sensitive. He lives with pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I get that. So a new pain, even — or maybe especially — little pains like from a sliver, cause a sort of excited nervous system respon...
April 3, Montana lost a wise and deeply decent public servant. Stan Stephens, our state's 20th governor, passed away at the age of 91. A native of Calgary, Stan's father suffered a debilitating illness when Stan was a small boy, leaving Stan's mother and her five young sons in perilous circumstances. Trained by his musician father, at the age of seven, Stan was able to use his remarkable gift for music to play trumpet solos in the Calgary Symphony, and soon after as the child...
I’d been out of bed five minutes when I heard the clang-rang of my gate bell. We respect each other’s boundaries. When neighbors visited, they stood out by the gate and yelled, “Sondra, are you home?” I’d lived here a year when I figured there must be a better early-warning system. At the tianguis in town I bought a goat bell. I had a welder make an arch and attach it to the gate so the bell would hang free. When I hear the bell, I go out to the gate and open it for my guests....
“Oh my gosh. I don’t want to open that box.” Moving furniture and books and clothing is easy. It’s moving memories that is hard. I am going through the last of my boxes. I used to say I was not a packrat. I thought I was more like my mother than my dad. My dad might tuck a piece of wood away, thinking it would find a use someday. My mother would be of the opinion that it’s easier to buy a board when (and if) it was needed. Generally, it wasn’t. This approach keeps my parents’ house very tidy — with the possible except...
Montana’s response to the COVID pandemic has put our state’s public health system in the spotlight, as well as into the crosshairs. Through numerous bills this session, members of the Montana Legislature have sought to attack our state’s public health system and insert politics and bureaucracy into the process of making decisions that keep our communities safe and healthy. However, a new poll indicates that these efforts by legislators are driven more by special interests and ideology than by what Montana voters actually want...
While much ado has rightfully been made of the repeated attempts to undermine and privatize Montana’s wildlife hunting access and privileges, less attention has been paid to numerous dirty water bills working their way to Gov. Gianforte’s desk, each of which threatens fisheries, clean water, countless jobs and businesses, and our way of life. Recent rhetoric about cutting the proverbial government red tape is a nice soundbite, but in practice will have the opposite effect of the so-called jobs and recovery focus of this ses...
The issue of plastic bags and garbage blowing out of the landfill has been an ongoing problem from its creation, and a timely subject since Earth Day is April 22. As my husband owned land adjacent to the landfill, we were continually picking up garbage, mostly plastic, from the property and fence lines. Checking cattle one day we discovered a calf nearly dead from trying to ingest a plastic grocery bag sticking partly out of his mouth. Plastic is toxic to cattle, every other type of animal, bird, and fish because of its chemi...
April is always a fast-paced month at the Legislature, and this year is no different. The Senate has been busy voting on a lot of bills that covered a wide variety of topics. I am confident that the bills we passed will improve lives of Montanans in many ways, however nothing is perfect. This past week the Senate passed two critical appropriations bills that will help our state move past the pandemic and sustain prosperity for decades to come. As we decided what to do with the federal stimulus money, Republican leaders in Hel...
The 67th Montana Legislature is turning its back on Montana voters and the public lands we rely on. From Billings to Butte, Great Divide to Glendive, Helena to Havre, Montanans of all stripes find pleasure, beauty, and much of their protein outside. In Montana, we know that our public lands can’t just serve as an empty slogan for politicians to lean on during campaign season. Public lands shape our way of life, our dinner plates, our economic health, and the state we pass down to our children. Back in November, Montanans o...
Apparently, this last Thursday there was a positive COVID test in the Capitol. I was notified late in the day Thursday, and, as of this writing, what will happen this coming week is up in the air. Friday’s Senate floor session and committees were not held. It has given me free time to catch up on communications. I have been getting so many emails this last week for a variety of bills, many in support of or against the same bill. It is clear which bills are controversial to all. With this unprecedented number of emails coming...
We all have a voice, and for good, bad or weird animals do too. NPR’s Madeline Sofia talked March 25 to U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Sammy Ramsey about cicadas because the annual cicada hatch is coming up soon, and this should be a big year — a big, noisy year, even for the notoriously noisy insect. Cicadas, Ramsey said, come in 23 different broods, or types, that hatch every 13 or 17 years, depending on the particular type of cicada. Brood X, which stands for...
Some days I can’t lose for winning. Sunrise, up earlier than I wanted. I moped around, felt mildly depressed. Not real depression. Real depression is serious stuff. Me, I’m in sort of a down-in-the-dumps lite. Ice-cream for breakfast sounds good. Will ice-cream help? But my freezer is empty. I haven’t had ice-cream for weeks. Back in the easy-peasy days before COVID, I bought hand-packed ice-cream from a woman in town. But knowing precautions were loosely held in that tiend...
The tree was lying on its side when I got to it. It was a nice-looking pine tree, fluffy and full and as tall as me. The strong winds coupled with some unstable footing had caused it to fall over. This seemed too sad to simply walk by. I went over to the tree and, with a little effort, got it standing upright again. It looked much happier. I finished my walk, feeling I had done my part. The next day, it was lying on its side again. I examined it more closely. It had been...
This past Friday was the 68th Legislative Day in Helena. We have 90 days per session to accomplish all we set out to do at the legislature, so that means we are quickly approaching the end of the session. But I am proud of what we have accomplished so far. This past week, the Senate passed House Bill 2, which is the bill that decides the state budget. The budget is split into separate sections, A through E. I presided over the debate and passage of Section A. Section A funds the legislative branch and all the essential parts...
