News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1041 - 1065 of 3210
Please vote. (I know many of you already have. Thank you!) That said, please vote no on CI-118 and I-190. Proponents of these initiatives receive millions and millions of out-of-Montana dollars. … over two-thirds of it. They say that marijuana is "just like alcohol." It's not ... it's opposite. The classic "Bell-Shaped Curve" exists for alcohol use: a few use none (or very little); most have "moderate" use; only a few are "heavy" users. There is a "U-shaped Curve" for marijuana: there is either no or rare use, or there are he...
Election ballots hit Montana mailboxes recently and many voters are scratching their heads in confusion over one measure in particular: LR-130. But, as confusing and poorly written as this measure is, the answer on how to vote on it is simple: Montana voters should vote “NO” on LR-130. The bipartisan Montana League of Cities and Towns, which represents all 127 incorporated municipalities in our state, opposes this dangerous measure, and you should, too. LR-130 is the product of lobbyists and politicians in Helena who wan...
Shutdown of schools I am disappointed in the decisions to close schools. In rural Montana, our students face varying degrees of connectivity and lack of appropriate device issues. This means that not every student has a device or internet connectivity and yet our schools are sending students to remote learning for semesters, quarters, or weeks at a time. The achievement gap is already huge, it is getting bigger by the day, and now, we are going to make it insurmountable by going remote without every child having a device or...
What is it with kids these days? These teenagers have been taking their game up a notch and it doesn’t matter if I compare teen-me or adult-me to them, I’m left nursing my pride. Livescience.com reported this week that 14-year-old Anika Chebrolu from Frisco, Texas, may have just helped to save our lives. No biggy. Whatever. I can flip my tongue over – both directions – so I’m not without skills. Chebrolu identified a molecule that can bind to and potentially disable the SARS-...
Dear Havreites and Montanans, By the time many of you read this, I will be on the road to the next chapter in my journey of life. Thursday was my last day at the Havre Daily News. I just want to thank the community for taking a chance on a girl right out of college to come to a new place, start a new life and a new job. I didn't expect to learn so much about myself, fall in love, go to work in 40-below temperatures, participate in pig wrestling and so much more. I might say,...
This morning, Leo brought me a box of 24 jumbo Crayola Crayons and a pad with a dozen dry cakes of water colors. Along with the requisite brush. Just like we used back in first grade. Oh, also a tube of school glue. Little girl stuff. Things change. When I was 6, our water paints came in a tin. The crayons smell similar, but I know from coloring with my grandchildren that some essential ingredient is missing because the colors are not as vibrant as they used to be and the cray...
“I’m hunkering down,” Rebecca told me. I know what she means. My friend Rebecca just returned from a road trip she made after a lot of careful consideration. First, her mother was sick. Then, she fell and broke her hip. Rebecca’s mother is 90 and she did not seem to be getting better. Rebecca decided she needed to go visit her. Rebecca and her daughter drove across three states for the visit. Rebecca said it was a wonderful trip and she bonded with her daughter as never b...
I love the Ig Nobel Prizes, which are a satiric spoof of the renowned Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Nobel Prizes — but I watched the 30th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony this week, and that’s one hour and 16 minutes of my life that I will never get back. This is the first time I have actually watched the awards ceremony, which was conducted entirely virtually rather than at the Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. Actual Nobel prize winners hand out the awards, whi...
I am supporting Mike Cooney for Governor. It was not a difficult decision to make. I’ve known Mike for decades. We worked together when I served as Republican president of the Montana Senate and as Montana’s secretary of state. Over many years I have seen firsthand Mike’s ability to bring people together for positive purposes. For our entire careers, Mike and I played on different teams, and we didn’t see eye-to-eye on many issues, but we always retained a good working relationship. In theses turbulent times that is certain...
On Canadian Thanksgiving Day, Kathy wrote with questions about our U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Basic “how does that work?” questions. I’d been in the kitchen preparing a more-or-less traditional Thanksgiving Dinner in sympathy with and support of our northern neighbor’s celebration. In the past many years, I have managed to celebrate two annual Thanksgiving Days, with friends in Vancouver, in Victoria and in northeastern reaches of Saskatchewan. While choppin...
Today I will get Blue again. Blue is the anxious Italian mastiff that I dog-sit on Wednesdays while his owner, Bill, works in the office. The new procedure is that I walk down to Bill’s house, fetch Blue, and bring him back to my home. This seems to work better than having Bill drop him off. When Bill does that, Blue hangs onto Bill’s legs and tries to avoid coming in my house like a petulant 4-year-old trying to avoid day care — which is exactly what he is. When I go to Bl...
Times are getting more difficult and the decisions we make now will have repercussions. For the first part of 2020, COVID-19 has largely slipped under the radar in Montana. This has cultivated a sense of complacency and skepticism. And for the most part, people have let down their guards. Large gatherings continue, mask wearing is still debated, and the lethality of COVID-19 is questioned. Why must something as potentially devastating as COVID-19 be so controversial? For the...
My editor in chief, and longtime colleague Tim Leeds wrote an op-ed earlier this week begging the question: “What’s wrong with people?” Of course, as opinion pieces do sometimes, the header probably ruffled some feathers, but, in my humble opinion, and given where our state, county and community is with COVID-19 right now, it was indeed an honest and valid question. And one I’ve been pondering myself for some time now, but in recent days, that question is one that is causing...
To be fair, my husband and I both knew it was just a courtesy when I offered to run to town with him to help find and fill out some paperwork because I’m about as attentive and effective at paperwork as the average 5-year-old asked to clean his bedroom. I stayed home to tackle something that suited my skill set: Clearing out a good-sized grove of dead chokecherry trees and saplings. Nothing like a good ol’ mindless physical task to give you time to reflect on your per...
“My need is such I offend too much. I’m lonely but no one can tell.” Ah, they were a great group, back in my time, The Platters. “Pretender” is the real word of the song, not “offender.” “Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal” so rather than pretend I took a deep breath knowing I was setting out to offend a friend. I stuck my foot in the sludge, big time. I have strict self-rules to protect myself from the COVID virus. Since I live on a walled property with hardl...
I get stomachaches. I get them with regularity and always have. “It’s just gas!” my mother says, and, of course, she’s right. My mother tells me I get stomachaches because I have the “Benson stomach,” by which she means that I have the same stomach she has, which is the same stomach her mother had, which my grandmother inherited from her mother — who was a Benson. It seems a little sad that the only time the Benson family comes to mind is when I have a stomachache....
Human expression is different from other more biological responses like sweating when we’re nervous, which is a primal response of the fight or flight kind. Probably the most common shared experience with the fight or flight response is public speaking — the thing that a majority of people fear more than actual death. What I learned in five years of teaching public speaking — and a lifetime of hating it — is that the thinking/feeling part of your brain says, “No. No. No, n...
In these perilous times, we must make our own fun. In the interests of pleasure and economy, aided by an unusual (to me) scientific bent, I set out to boil up some chemical experiments. A huge tree with giant orange flowers lifts arms to the sky just outside my northern wall, an African tulip tree, common in Jalisco. I gathered a bowl of fallen flowers, dumped them into a large pot of boiling water. What I hope for is a natural dye, a color in light shade of brown, to dye a...
Yesterday, I had a nice long Zoom chat with an old friend. I know this is nothing remarkable these days, but it was the first time my friend Andrew had used Zoom and I was frankly a little surprised. Andrew isn’t on Facebook. “It’s none of anyone’s business what I’m up to!” he tells me. I don’t think Andrew is “up to” all that much, but he takes a particularly fierce view on privacy. He won’t buy groceries with his credit card if they are going to track what he buys. “Why...
Early this week my husband and I had to say goodbye to the best dog ever. Cooper was complex, unceasingly faithful, funny, a bit of jerk, neurotic, sweet and adored by many fans and loved ones. He was the number one wing man in my posse, John's best little buddy, the supervisor on all work parties, a semi-professional trick performer and the finest example of how far a good attitude will get you. His early life unfolds like the dog version of a 19th century novel, maybe a...
Here in Montana, we are granted the right to vote on ballot initiatives once they clear a number of hurdles, including having the related petition garner enough qualifying signatures. Not achieved, however, is the ability to hold public hearings on the proposed issue — such as is accomplished during legislative debate, fiscal review and the amendment process. Nov. 3, we will be voting on CI-118 which would legalize marijuana here in Montana. Aside from what the proponents and opponents argue in the press about public h...
When I sit at a blank page with no idea what I want to write, I go through who, what, when, where and how of the past several days to see what might pop up and out. My life is simple. I read a lot. A lot. I read the phrase, “explains the real meaning of life,” in a book blurb. Blurbs operate as the worm on the end of the line that is meant to hook me into choosing to read that book. “Real meaning?” I kid you not. Is there other meaning of life? Several meanings? Isn’t l...
During six years of my service in the Montana Senate and all eight years of my service on the Montana Public Service Commission, I had a ring-side seat with four major bankruptcies that had huge impacts on Montana residents, and I helped Montana avoid being taken down by a fifth. The first four, in order, were Enron, Montana Power/Touch America, NorthWestern Corporation, and Southern Montana Electric. The fifth, and dodged bullet, was Babcock & Brown Infrastructure — BBI — an Australian investment conglomerate that pro...
The recent lawsuit alleging that Montana’s mail-in elections are risky discredits Montana’s election administrators. Montanans can vote safely and securely by mail in this election and every election. More than 70 percent of Montana ballots cast in the 2018 general election were absentee mail ballots. Montana’s June 2020 primary all-mail election had the highest voter primary turnout in recent history with a record-breaking number of ballots filed. Our county elections offices and US postal workers capably handled this surge...
My husband, Peter, is now at war with the mice. The mice (possibly with the assistance of a rat or two) have eaten the electrical wiring in our car, causing extensive damage. The coating on the wires is apparently tasty. I don't know any automobile engineers personally but, if I did, I would suggest that constructing a car out of tasty materials is probably not a great idea because now we have a lot of small creatures trying to eat our car, one piece at a time. We are not...
