News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1198 - 1222 of 3210
While Americans focus on the coronavirus pandemic and the mounting economic crisis, top Republicans in Washington are taking advantage of this situation to attack one of the constitutional pillars of American democracy: our free press. America’s founders knew freedom of the press was so important that they enshrined it in the very first amendment to the United States Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791. Since then, our nation’s free press has defended and strengthened America’s constitution and our d...
In less than two weeks, ballots will be mailed to voters throughout Montana, and Republicans will have an important choice to make. After 16 years of single-party control of the governor’s office, we can win in November and put Montana back on the right track. I support Greg Gianforte for governor because he offers a positive, hopeful vision for what we can achieve and where he will lead our state. I’m disappointed, though, by some of the outrageous, false charges I’ve seen against Greg Gianforte — particularly by fellow...
Allow me to sound like broken record for a few minutes. But, I promise, it’s for a good cause. Last week, I wrote a column imploring residents of Havre and Hill County, and really, residents of humanity, to continue following the basic guidelines that help stop the spread of COVID-19, so that we can protect our health care workers. The timing of that column came as Montana Gov. Steve Bullock announced his plan for beginning to re-open our great state of Montana. Now I’m asking for the same thing, but with an added mis...
Whether you are still trying to fill the void of things canceled or postponed because the the pandemic, you are still being strict about self-isolating, or you just long for those weird and wacky stay-at-home days of yore, I have a list of activities to fill the need. Are you a horse racing or betting nut suffering withdrawals over the loss of this spring’s Kentucky Horse Derby which should have been running this weekend? Well, dust off your big bonnet and whip up some mint j...
We have numerous ways of fooling ourselves; at least I have. Little things, like “A change is as good as a rest” for when I get bogged down on a project. Or, “If I take a walk, I will no longer want to piggy the rest of the liter of ice cream.” Good luck with that one. In the interest of changing up my daily routine, this morning I put on my green dress. This is not just any green dress. This is an elegant green dress. It flows in simple lines all the way to my feet. The fab...
The ravens are back. Last year, they had a nest right on my hiking trail but I didn’t notice them making it. I didn’t notice when they started guarding it or when the female laid eggs. I didn’t notice a thing. I never saw the nest—which is almost five feet across—and I’m not feeling too stupid about that because the nest is more than 100 feet in the air. I didn’t notice a thing until the chicks were hatched. Then I noticed. A baby raven is a lot closer to a baby pterodactyl th...
In the April 2, 2020, Community News (a Roosevelt County publication), Austin Knudsen, one of the two Republican candidates for Montana attorney general, gave some advice on dealing with the COVID-19 crisis and boiled it down to one thing: “Basically, be a decent neighbor.” It’s a good perspective, but I wish he would take his own advice. You see, Austin Knudsen and his family, Knudsen Limited Family Partnership (KLFP), have not been decent neighbors when it comes to their own home town and a park that is owned by the Ameri...
Easter Sunday, 11 years ago, I was in a bad car accident on Highway 93 in the Swan Valley. True story: A pastor’s son was running late to his family’s Easter celebration. He was passing my truck on the left. Unfortunately, I was turning left at the time. I wasn’t injured, but I had to find help for the others. I ran four miles up the road to get to the nearest cell service. This isn’t an unusual story for Montanans. We live in rough terrain, and we’re used to taking care of each other. This year, I spent Easter packing F...
Over the past several weeks, Montanans have faced unprecedented challenges. Our way of life has changed rapidly. Like every corner of our country, our once thriving economy is ailing. We’ve lost family members and friends. As we have aggressively managed the virus over the past five weeks, we have bought time for our health care workers to prepare and respond, we have protected those most vulnerable to illness from this disease particularly in our nursing homes, and we have been able to increase our testing capacity and secur...
When the Great Recession happened in 2008-09, resulting in double-digit unemployment and the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth, few economists, including Nobel Prize-winning laureates, had seen it coming. And, those who had, like the University of Chicago’s Raghuram Rajan, had been widely mocked by their fellow economists for being alarmist. Of course, just as a good doctor can’t always predict her or his patient’s deep illness and a good mechanic can’t always anticipate a spun rod bearing in a car engine,...
One of the many age-old questions is this: Is it better to do the right thing for the wrong reason, or the wrong thing for the right reason? But I’m here to ask this sidebar question: If you do the right thing with no thought behind it whatsoever, is it wrong to later claim you did it for all the right reasons? I’m asking for a friend — just kidding. I’m not going to give any of my friends credit for being thoughtless. I planted four trees on Earth Day. I thought it was just W...
So, we’re going to start to open back up. That’s the announcement by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock Wednesday, though, Bullock did ultimately leave all decisions on opening, or not opening, the services in his Phase I up to counties and cities and school districts. So now the question becomes, is Montana ready? That’s not for me to say, and that’s not what I’m debating. Instead, my question is, are we, as residents of Havre, ready to open back up, but still do our part to keep coronavirus under control in our neck of the woods...
As a Montana physician practicing in a rural community I feel it is timely to share my thoughts and feelings with all my neighbors as our state prepares to transition from shelter-in-place to the next phase of our battle against COVID-19. My strongest feeling is one of gratitude. I am grateful for all my fellow citizens who did their very best to follow the guidelines laid out by Gov. Steve Bullock. I am grateful for my fellow healthcare workers. Many have put themselves on the front line to identify and treat the illness...
Earth Day 2020 was April 22 — that date marked 50 years since the first Earth Day in 1970. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans — 10 percent of the U.S. population at the time — took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet. The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and is now recognized as the planet’s largest civic event. This led to passage of landmark environmental laws in the United Stat...
I am unhinged. This morning my daughter sent me a picture of a lap blanket she bought me. I am in tears. The blanket, purple and turquoise, with feathers and butterflies and such, is beautiful. Beautiful. You know who uses lap blankets? Old women, that’s who! Old women! A few days ago I had another birthday. The good news is that this morning I woke up still alive and grateful. The other side of that coin feels like a slap in the face. These last couple weeks have been hard. I...
It’s safe to say everyone is getting a bit tired of it. My parents, both in their 80s, were going a little stir-crazy in Florida. They missed their house in the woods and so they filled the RV with food and water and drove 2,000 miles north. I was worried about them, naturally, but they only left their RV to fill up with gas and they are now in their home up north and a lot happier. My mom explained how they were able to make it in record time. “Usually, your father would wan...
Last week Legislative Council met virtually to discuss COVID-19 and the fiscal situation for Montana. Administrative committee chairs from finance, audit and revenue were also invited for information purposes. Todd Everts, chief legal counsel for the Legislature, briefed members on the powers of the governor and the legislative body when there is an emergency. Throughout the years, the Legislature has delegated broad authority to the governor in dealing with emergencies such as fire, flooding, drought and energy issues....
We all know spring weather can be rough around these parts. And April has been exactly that. This month has been rough. Because it can be so bad, often times, we want to “kill the messenger” so to speak when it comes to meteorologists and forecasters telling us “don’t put your shovels away just yet.” Yeah, how often do we hear that here in Montana during the months of March, April and May? Of course, deep down, we understand that the folks who tell us what the weather may or may not do, don’t create the weather, they just r...
I am very pleased to announce that despite, and sometimes even because of, the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is still generating odd news. This fact alone made getting up and putting clean clothes on this morning worthwhile. My intent today, then is simply to cram as much of the latest pandemic-related news as possible in to my column and see how far it takes us. People around the world have been sharing photos of how wildlife has moved back into their mostly abandoned city...
President Donald Trump has rightly described the national effort to defeat the coronavirus epidemic as a war. Many have already died, and many more will die in this war, but we may be confident that we will ultimately prevail. Unfortunately, as we battle the invisible enemy, Asian Americans across the country have been subjected to a wave of hate crimes, bigotry, and physical and verbal aggression by not a few of our fellow citizens. Asian Americans have been physically assaulted, spat upon, cursed in public and treated as if...
Occasionally I pick up one of the classics in literature for a re-reading. I don’t recall what prompted me; it wasn’t the virus. Several weeks ago, in the interests of perusing a translation I’d not read, I chose the Ignatius Bible. The Bible is a daunting big book. I begin at the beginning. Granted, I skim the genealogies and speed through pages of dietary laws and building codes. But otherwise, I read a few pages at a time, slowly, pondering. That Moses is quite the dude....
“I love seeing all the people in the park,” my sister told me on the phone the other night. “I can tell who is together because they are walking in little clumps!” I love that idea: Little satellites orbiting the park — usually with a dog — keeping a safe distance from the other orbiting clumps nearby. My sister is in a clump consisting of herself, her husband, their two children, a dog and a cat. (I’m not sure if the cat considers himself part of the clump or not. Possibly...
Montanans are doing our part in this very difficult time to help each other out and curb the spread of the COVID 19 virus. We come together and look out for each other, as we always have in times of crisis, and in this case that means practicing social distancing to slow the spread of this disease. It is times like this that we as Montanans are even more appreciative of our public mountains and foothills, forests and prairies, and rivers and streams. Montanans recreate in the outdoors at as high of a rate as any state, and...
Knowledge gives me comfort — but I think that’s true of everyone. Think about parents with their first child. Everything the child does is interesting or worrisome, and studied for understanding. The second child is a lot more boring, and if they get up to, say, six children then that last one can be running feral in the street with grapes stuffed in its nostrils and pencil firmly grasped in one hand, and the parents are, like, “Meh, it’s OK. Kids are resilient. Remarka...
It must have been the winter of ’65-’66. I was pregnant with Dee Dee, who was born in April. Harvey and I lived on the ranch south of Dodson. A mile-long dirt drive with three “farmer gates” of barbed wire strung onto diamond willow sticks separated us from the highway, only three more miles from town. That grim winter we were snowed in for 90 days straight. Every day of that time our thermometer on the post registered below zero. Wind drifted each snowfall until packed...
