News you can use
News you can use
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Maybe you don’t but I have a tendency to automatically and immediately attach a judgement to various happenings during my day. You know—that’s good; that’s bad. Usually I catch myself and adjust my attitude before damage is done. Usually. Today is not a “catch myself” day. Take this morning. Generally the sun hits my backyard patio beneath the jacaranda by 8:30. I like to take a book and cup of coffee out and bask like a lizard for half an hour, Mexican time, which often...
On a daily basis, we are inundated on both the local and national level with news of how the opioid epidemic continues to infiltrate communities across this country. Previously, over-prescription of chronic pain-relieving opioids was believed to be the main cause of this crisis. This lead to state and federal regulations applied to industry and government that have largely controlled the prescription pill abuse issue. However, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdose deaths were still 30...
Montana hunters have been afield pursuing deer, elk and other big game, just as we have done for decades. But new this year is the knowledge that chronic wasting disease — CWD — is present in our state’s mule deer and white-tailed deer. Last year’s first-ever detection of this devastating disease in Montana wildlife was a huge blow to our state, although its arrival was considered inevitable. This fall, more harvested deer have tested positive for this always-fatal neurodegenerative disease. For years, Montana has been su...
Every month, food pantries, meal programs and other partners of the Montana Food Bank Network distribute over a million pounds of food to those who are struggling in our communities. The impact of these programs is immediate and enormous, helping to keep food on the table for Montana families, seniors, underemployed workers, individuals with disabilities and anyone else in need of a helping hand. While much of this food comes from the generous support of donors, a substantial portion also comes through The Emergency Food...
In a world where it seems the only thing humanity has in common is our divisiveness, scientists from around the globe have met and shown the world that people of the human race come together in one voice to tell the world they can accurately measure the weight of their nerdiness. It’s the astounding news you likely A) didn’t know happened, and B) didn’t know affected your everyday life: Scientific and policy-making representatives from more than 60 nations voted unani...
Every year after Thanksgiving, Americans kick off the holiday shopping season with big stores advertising deal after deal. Not long ago, Americans during the holiday season typically would visit locally-owned small retailers in a downtown area to purchase all of their gifts. Business owners would decorate their shops with lights and ornaments or create elaborate window displays to grab the imagination of a passerby and encourage them inside. It was a magical time of year, and many of us still hold on to those memories today....
My daughter Dee Dee sent me pictures of Antoinette building a snowman, the falling white fluff thick on the ground, the tree branches covered with hoar frost. For a moment, just a moment, mind you, I had a twinge of homesick nostalgia, for snow. I have a theory. Since snow in inevitable in our northern climes, in order to find a marginal ability to tolerate the slick, nasty frozen stuff — as opposed to the genius of ice-cream — we inventive humans, creatures without ben...
Although the session doesn’t start until January, this past week, I was in Helena for the legislative caucus elections. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity last term to be involved in this part of the procedure. It was interesting to see how the process worked. The leadership has pretty much stayed the same as it was the last session. At this point, it looks like my committees will stay the same: Tax, Education and Cultural Resources, and Energy and Telecommunications. It was good to see the staff and legislators who...
Montana appears well down the road to becoming a one party Republican, deeply conservative state, like the states that surround us. Jon Tester’s survival was an anomaly best explained by his personal popularity and his opponent’s weakness. In the late ’60s, and ’70s, when I was first cutting my teeth in politics, the Democrats were Montana’s dominant party. They controlled the statewide offices, including the entire congressional delegation, the legislature and the office of governor. At Republican state conventio...
Sometimes I believe all the people who love me beyond my faults, and those people who just don’t know me well enough, when they say, “Oh, it’s too bad you didn’t have kids. You would’ve been a great parent.” Nope. My animals, aka the four-legged family, often remind me of my weaknesses, which make pet ownership complicated. In the higher-stakes game of parenthood, though, these failings most likely would have proven fatal. Not so much for the kids, but me. I am, by my very...
In other words, “The older the mango, the sweeter the fruit.” Words by which to live from Leo’s Aunt Cuca, 100 years old. Sundays she walks five kilometers to church, refusing rides from neighbors. Señora Cuca Chavez lives on a small farm, alone, near San Antonio de los Vasquez, about an hour north of Guadalajara. I cannot find the tiny village on any of my maps. It is near Cuquio, toward the river. I had written to my son, “Not much to report. Guess my life is boring.” Ben im...
The elections are over and many will probably say they are happy to have it over with: the calls at dinner time, the basket full of flyers and knocks at your door in the middle of the evening news. As a candidate, we also get to a point of feeling that campaign grind. As I pulled the last “Vote Tempel” sign from the ground, Judy said, “This is it.” My wife of 48-plus years has been a real trooper in all of this; have to love this gal. My kids have also been very instrumental in my campaign, not only keeping me on task an...
Editor, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s acting Director Mick Mulvaney and deputy director Brian Johnson are at it again. When Mulvaney was in Congress he represented one of the largest payday lenders in the country and took in $62,000 in campaign contributions from them. It makes sense that as acting director he would see to their best interests and not those of the consumers the agency was created to protect. In 2017, the consumer bureau issued a rule to protect Americans from predatory payday loans by r...
Just like I prepared our property for winter by clearing the driveway verge of vegetation that would cause drifting and other problems when the snow and cold hit, my mental and emotional preparedness for winter weather was impeccable this fall. By mid-September I had myself in an admirably zen-like mental state about winter — not capital-letter Zen as in of the school of Mahayana Buddhism, but lower-case zen in the Western sense of being in the moment, accepting, open-hearted...
Confusion seems to have arisen in the area about a possible connection between The Havre Daily News and the website The Havre Herald. The answer about the connection is simple: There is none. Three former employees of the Havre Daily News, who had resigned their positions over the last 27 months, started new endeavors in Havre. In or about May of this year, John Kelleher, Teresa Getten and Paul Dragu started the website The Havre Herald and its associated Facebook page and started posting stories and photos. Over the past...
Crin wrote, “Look at the nice young man you can get online these days.” A photo accompanied her note. Ah, Crinny, it’s been done. Mail order was quite a popular movement back in the late 1800s, after the Civil War, when settlers began homesteading the great western reaches of the country. The men sent off ads for brides. Generally, I understand, once the package arrived, usually by train, parties on both sides of the fence were in for an unpleasant surprise, as the promi...
Halloween has brought out all the spider decorations, but a man in Fresno, California, who was house sitting for his parents, had a problem Oct. 24 with real spiders, a problem he felt compelled to take care of himself. With a blowtorch. To be honest, the story, the visuals, the laughs, they just about write themselves after that last part. The details are pretty standard and, frankly, on the lighter side of tragedy. No one was killed or injured, no other structures or...
They flapped a clamor like rain drumming on my roof. The day is sunny and bright. Overhead, a gigantic thundercloud of blackbirds shadowed the sky in annual migration. I like to imagine these are the same blackbirds I see gathering in the wheat fields around Havre in September, eating grain, preparing for the 2,500 mile flight south. I will see these flocks daily until spring, moving between feeding grounds in the valley and night perches in the hills. Jim was here with his...
As a former sheriff and the mayor of a Montana town near our northern border, border security has always been in the forefront for me. It takes resources to keep Montanans safe, combat drug trafficking and secure the border and local government can’t do it alone. We need a partner at the federal level who is willing to fight to get us the resources we need to secure our border and keep our state safe. I’m glad to say that Sen. Jon Tester has been that partner. Jon has always been willing to listen to our concerns and tak...
As the Nov. 6 election nears and we watch the political process unfold, none of us are surprised by the steady onslaught of attack ads. However I was surprised and very disappointed by the recent mailers attacking Russ Tempel. The attacks on Russ are simply not true. Saying that Russ “just doesn’t care” could not be farther from the truth and shows how desperate Russ Tempel’s attackers are to find something negative on a fine longstanding public servant. I served with Russ in the last legislative session, as well as serving c...
In the past couple weeks, I have attended a Land Owners Mineral Association meeting, The Milk River diversion project meeting, addressed history and government classes and took in the Triangle Telephone Cooperative annual meeting. These groups all have their individual issues, be it cost of education, cell tower location costs, replacing structure costs or pipeline ownership costs. It seems they all have a common issue, funding. During this same time, I attended three celebrations of life. This whole mix makes one weigh in on...
Happy Halloween from the Havre-Hill County Library. Whether you’re dressing up and taking the family trick or treating this year, throwing a party and handing out Halloween candy at home, or turning off the lights and having a scary movie marathon, don’t forget about the Havre-Hill County Library when you’re making plans. Boo! Books and Babies is every Wednesday at 10:15 a.m., and Story Time is every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. This week after reading books about Halloween we will be playing some fun Hallo...
I’m not a fan of reality TV because I can’t stand all the drama, worse, it’s manufactured drama. That is just not my thing. I know that makes me sound old and stodgy, but I was there and of that age when MTV descended from music video television to reality television. I hated it then, too. Reality TV programs are like an online comment section come to life, only you can’t easily skip across the nonsense you don’t want getting into your brain. Plus, it’s so much worse to pu...
I woke up grumpy. Not normal. Beautiful sunrise. Normal. After coffee and Qi Gong with Jim, I still felt out of sorts, no energy. I sat; he gonged. Decided to go to the doctor. Definitely not normal. Leo, who came to see if I needed anything from town, offered to take me and be my interpreter. “Do you want to see the cheap doctor or the good doctor?” “I don’t care. I just want to make sure I don’t have pneumonia.” The “cheap” doctors are those who are working off government...
Right now, somewhere in Montana, there are two families who may never meet — and yet will profoundly influence each other. Like many people these days, one needs a little extra help to get on their feet and may struggle to get by. The other has been fortunate enough to be able to provide for themselves and their future, and now they are eager to give back. As the president and CEO of Montana Community Foundation, I have the humbling job of interacting with both of these types of families firsthand. It reminds me that even t...
