News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1749 - 1773 of 3221
If sympathy was a tangible thing that you could use to fill a room, all the sympathy my siblings and I got from our parents when we were children would amount to a vast, empty hall filled with nothing but echoes of our complaints. Maybe a few crickets taking advantage of the awesome acoustics. I claim three parents so, sure, the odds are that there were moments of sympathy. Let’s put one box of sympathy in that room, in a far corner — one of those sturdy, but little, box...
Setenta tres. Seventy-three. I bought a fancy chocolate cake yesterday at my favorite pasteleria. I’m invited to dinner at John and Carol’s house tonight. Nobody knows it’s my birthday and I ain’t telling. But I’m taking my cake to share and will get great and secret pleasure from having a party when nobody else knows it’s my party. Day on top of day, the years have a way of rolling past. Getting older doesn’t hold the same pizzazz and crackle for me that earliest year...
The East Fork Fire Foundation Board is pleased to announce that funds so generously donated by our community have been dispersed, and all funds have been allocated. We wish to thank the Hill County Commissioners, with cooperation of the Blaine County Commission, for allowing our board to appoint individuals to evaluate applications and award funds based on those applications. Hill County had not removed any funds from the account and allowed us to disperse 100 percent of the donated funds. We asked that our board who made the...
As much as I am totally into dramatics, I do not think my adopted hometown of Havre deserved to be labeled as the worst city in the whole United States of America this winter. Yeah, I get it, our weather has sucked this year, truly, I’ve lived through it, but the worst, as in THE worst is a stretch —by hundreds of miles. I think it’s an ill-disguised attempt by those Weather Channel people to get more mileage out of the video they shot last year of the aftermath of the Oct....
Have you had “the talk” with your mother or father? You know, the one where you try to convince them to quit driving? It represents everything we fear about aging. How can you stay in the house you have lived in for years if you can’t drive to the grocery store? How can you keep up with your friends and family? What about getting to doctor’s appointments? How can you afford it? Some older people have the resources to afford appropriate housing, transportation and healthcare. Even then, helping a parent or loved one deal wi...
Over the years we inhaled plenty of Montana wilderness trail dust. We’re a couple of long-in-the-tooth recreational horse and mule packers who enjoy wandering in our Montana public lands. We have a few bones to pick with Sen. Steve Daines and Rep. Greg Gianforte. Mainly, we don’t approve of their land grab of the people’s Wilderness Study Areas, or WSAs. Sen. Daines’ bill S2206 is titled, “The Protect Public Use of Public Lands Act.” Sounds benign right? It ain’t. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This bill was introduced to...
That iguana spit on me today. I stood below him, next to the wall in my front-patio courtyard, watching him soak up the sun. He turned his head, looked me in the eye, and spit. Well, that’s a fine howdy-do. No manners. But, maybe, like many a youngster, he had a valid complaint: “She looked at me.” There’s a pair of what I call teen iguanas, middle-sized, who sun at the top of that particular section of wall. You should see them skitter up — or down — a vertical wall. Yet,...
It's just another week in weird news. First, some people really know how to celebrate the holidays, and some people are just a train wreck. We all know folks who go all out for the Easter holiday with colored eggs and an 8-foot blow-up Easter bunny, or multiple church services or a to-die-for-and-get-resurrected lamb dinner. But we don’t all know Ladonna Hughett, 54, from Ohio who really got into the Easter spirit this year, or should I say the Easter spirits. Hughett showed u...
We have talented people, great businesses, and an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit in Montana. By raising capital, Montanans can leverage those assets to start new businesses, expand existing ones, and create more good-paying jobs in every community under the Big Sky. As your securities commissioner, one of my jobs is to encourage and help facilitate investment in Montana’s businesses. That’s why I launched my statewide “Invest in Montana” tour to promote capital formation. At our recent Invest in Montana event in Havre,...
This morning after Qi Gong, I told Jim, “I write my column today and my mind is blank. ” “Easy,” his reply. “Write about purple.” We were beneath the Jacaranda, which this week is a purple umbrella, sheltering 50 shades of birds burying their heads in each blossom, milking the honey-nectar. In that disconnected way that one thought leads to another, I knew that what I really wanted to write about is my simple life. “Jim, the more I pare down my life, the more important small t...
Banks and credit unions don’t always agree on much, but they agree on this: Sen. Jon Tester stood up for Montana’s communities, and their small banks and credit unions, when he helped author a bipartisan bill to provide regulatory relief to certain financial institutions. The Dodd-Frank Act was a “one-size-fits-all” congressional response to the 2008 financial crisis designed to address the risky decisions made by “Too-Big-To-Fail” Wall Street banks. It was 2,300 pages long and created more than 400 new regulations...
March 20, I read in the Havre Daily News yet another article speaking out against gun violence toward children. Here again, like so many other letters and statements, it's only against the gun. And it's always the same answer, ban guns. Some blame video games, others, drugs and cults. bullying has been mentioned as well by our top shrinks. Never once have I ever heard that parental guidance was needed or was lacking. Not only are parents needed, but mentors and adult role models are critical for young development. From birth...
Local input is a hallmark of democracy. Good laws should and do bubble up from neighborhoods, country churches, and bar stools, just as bad ideas are often killed by the folks who have to live with the results. That’s why, if you’re running for public office, it’s a smart idea to say that you’re in support of local decisions. Imagine the alternative: “I’m from the distant government and I’m here to tell you how to live your life.” You probably wouldn’t win many votes. But that alternative is precisely what our lone U.S. Con...
I was never one of those chicks who had guys rushing to do things for her or even to save her from herself. I wasn’t one of those uber-pretty and delicate girls for whom guys fell over themselves, and I had enough sarcasm and swearing to make anyone possible rescuers think twice. Plus, my ridiculous parents raised me to be independent. What was that about? That said, I was raised to expect some coddling from loved ones, as I should do for them. My husband, John, does a fair j...
The Rail Passengers Association — a 50-year old passenger train advocacy group — is “pulling the alarm bell” regarding the future of Amtrak long-distance services. There is good evidence that a major discussion going on within Amtrak to consider cutting and reconfiguring its long distance trains — including the Empire Builder across Montana’s Hi-Line — to operate but 3 days a week. These discussions are apparently happening due to presidential influences in the White House, in the U.S. Department of Transportation and Amtrak...
Two weeks ago the neighboring trees out my east window were naked sticks. Today the same sticks are tricked out in every shade of leaf, heavy with green. Most trees here shed their leaves in spring; the old brittle leaves pushed off the branch willy-nilly by the new sprouts. The Jacarandas are still naked, just budding into flower. By next week a giant purple umbrella will fully cover the northwest corner of my yard. The Prima Vera wear great daubs of primary yellow. And over...
I waited for my friend — a combat veteran of the First Gulf War — at a restaurant. As I sat there, my Twitter feed was lighting up with news of Dana Loesch of the National Rifle Association who had put all of us lyin’ journalists on notice that our time was up. The practitioners of the First Amendment were being strongarmed by those who love the Second Amendment even more. And as someone who cherishes the First Amendment, I support her right to freedom of speech. I also have a message for Loesch and her NRA zealots: Right...
Congressman Gianforte is proposing two bills in Congress that amount to the largest reversal of public lands protection in Montana’s history. From the Upper Missouri River Breaks to the most remote corner of the Bitterroot Mountains, Gianforte seeks to open the door for mineral, oil, and gas exploration in 28 wild and remote places where many Montana families now hike, hunt, float, fish, and camp. Our lone congressman is not only assaulting public lands, he’s also assaulting public process and our way of life. Taken as a who...
I support all the students in Montana and across the country who are voicing their concerns about gun violence. The walkouts and March for Our Lives deserve our respect and recognition. We should be embarrassed that teenagers are showing the courage it takes to stand up to groups like the National Rifle Association and demand policies that prevent gun violence in our schools. We need to ask ourselves, how many innocent lives are lost before we do something meaningful? Have shootings at schools become normal, acceptable? When...
In 2018, we are at a crossroads for women’s rights and reproductive health. Who we select in the election for the U.S. House will have immense consequences for women in Montana and across the country. We have been here before. Forty-six years ago this very month, I was serving my first term in the Montana House of Representatives. I was a 23 year-old political rookie — the only woman in the chamber — with a head full of issues affecting our beautiful state that I thought needed addressing. At the top of that list was women...
This is another election year and my heart would be filled with a sense of dread and foreboding sauteed in a tangy brine of bored cynicism, if it weren’t for a few bright spots of hope. Hope for hijinks, pratfalls and a little bit of “what the what is that about?” already forming. Elvis Presley is alive and well in Arkansas, of all places, and looking for his magic moment in the Arkansas State House. The Associated Press reported Feb. 27 that Elvis D. Presley, who is a professional impersonator of famous rock crooner Elvis...
I feel sad. This morning I made a list of things I wanted to buy in Etzatlan. Since I don’t have a car, I rely on taxi service or a friend or one of the workers here on the ranch to take me around. I had asked Leo, my gardening helper, to “bring your car and let’s go have breakfast at Dona Mary’s before we shop.” It’s been easy for me to swing into the Mexican way of eating. Early morning coffee with a small snack, fruit or a biscuit. Mid-morning, a breakfast meal, somet...
Hiding under the labels of “conservative,” “Republican” and “federalism,” Broadwater County Attorney Corey Swanson attempts to justify his support for the CSKT Compact in a column in the Havre Daily March 2, 2018, and carried in the Helena Independent a few days later. Swanson’s taunting of conservatives who oppose the compact as being opposed to federalism is misplaced. The compact does not embrace federalism; it embraces federalization — or federal control of the waters of western Montana! Most conservatives,...
The following is my personal opinion and not that of Montana State University-Northern nor any of its other employees. Reference to letter to editor Feb. 28 which presents itself as a “challenge” to Professor John Snider but is actually a fact-free, logically challenged personal attack on the man. The Feb. 28 letter claims Snider has never written anything positive about Northern in HDN. A quick look at the archives shows that this is the first of many false claims the letter makes. For a comprehensive list of Snider’s many...
Seniors will be watching closely as Congress engages in ongoing federal budget and policy deliberations in the coming months. At AARP, we will continue to monitor any proposed changes to Medicare, Medicaid (including long-term care benefits), Social Security, and other programs that so many of us, our children and grandchildren rely on to maintain the our health and dignity. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) can be a critical piece of that equation for many Montana seniors....
