News you can use
News you can use
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My friend Jim from Glasgow sent me a short video clip of the Little Rockies, Three Buttes, Snake Butte and the Bear Paws. Immediately, I yearned, homesick. I shared the video with friends. “This is my beautiful country.” Their response, not unexpected, “Ah, yes. Uh huh. Beautiful,” as they looked for an exit. Which brought on this following chain of thought. To some this will sound as though I am describing two foreign countries, and I am. Both countries have disappe...
Taxes were the topic of our Local Government Interim Committee. Recent home reappraisals have shown significant increases. In some areas of the state, home sale prices have more than doubled. With folks moving in from out-of-state to places like Bozeman, the Flathead, and other areas, and bidding wars leading to properties at twice the asking price, the committee clearly has a number of challenges to address. First off, locals cannot compete with the prices that Montana homes are reaching. The next issue is that our tax...
It’s important to have a good coffee cup. My husband, Peter, makes the coffee, and has since we were married. We will be celebrating nine years of marriage this spring, so you might not be surprised to hear that I no longer remember how to make coffee. This is called “learned helplessness” in psychology circles, and is certainly true in my case. Peter makes the coffee, and I drink it. This seems to me like a fair division of labor. And having the proper cup is essen...
There aren’t many of us here on the rancho. Not all of our houses have their people. But the last several days, we who are here, me, Nancie, Julie, Lani and Ariel, Tom and Janet, frequently found ourselves running up against, no, not a wall, but a hole. This hole has a specific size and shape, exactly the size and shape of Leo. Leo helps all of us with gardening, planting, pruning, mowing, cutting, watering. But Leo is more than a gardener. He has helped all of us, at one t...
In Montana, our strength lies in our sense of community. As a child, I learned this at my kitchen table, where my father instilled the significance of our democracy and the values that every Montanan holds dear. These lessons drove me to a life of public service and allowed me to form lasting relationships with people throughout our state. Honesty, respect, and altruism are the foundation of Montana, and they bind us together. While individualism is vital to Montana, it does not define us. Instead, our democratic values stem...
I just spent a wonderful long weekend with my sister and her son, Beau, “up north” at my parents’ cabin. Stubby the red squirrel is doing well. Since the tragic loss of the end of his tail (and his subsequent unofficial adoption by my mother), he has flourished. The end of his tail, while still cut off at a sharp angle, has sprouted an impressive line of dark fur, and he looks dapper, sitting on the railing, shaking his tail and showing off his new plumage. Mom still dutif...
No Montana community is untouched by the mental health crisis. Suicide. Addiction. Loneliness. The struggle to find mental health services or appropriate supports for individuals with developmental disabilities. Patients receiving care in places that aren’t best for them. The list of challenges facing our communities is long and years in the making, and the time for setting that list aside is over. This spring, Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Montana Legislature invested $300 million to reform and improve Montana’s beh...
Last week, a registered historic hotel in Glendive burned. The night the fire was started was also the night of the first winter blizzard. Firemen from a hundred-mile radius came to fight the fire which razed the hotel and a neighboring building. My daughter’s office is in the upper floor of a building adjacent to the hotel. Firemen battled the blaze all night and the following day to keep her building from burning. For three days the hotel fire smoldered and flared. For three...
Recently, opinion pieces and information sent to legislators regarding the counties’ decision to levy 77.9 mills instead of the state-directed 95 mills has been circulating in both statewide newspapers, and internal legislative correspondence. It appears that the message being distributed is counties are giving large tax breaks to corporations and out-of -state homeowners while doing little for the average Montanan. While the numbers can be interpreted to support that message, and they — the numbers — are in fact accur...
My Auntie Jo gave me a beautiful pair of gloves yesterday. They are elegant, with embroidery on the top, and I immediately did what I usually do — I put them away for safekeeping. “I’ll wear these to something special!” I told myself. I have a date to go with my niece to see “Peter Pan” in December. I decided I would wear those gloves when I go out with my beautiful 20-year-old niece before she heads out to Spain to study for a semester in Madrid. That will certainly b...
The recent announcement that Montana has been selected as a federally-designated technology hub is great news for our state. Our new tech hub status will lead to millions in research and development investments, particularly in photonics technology that has wide-ranging uses in self-driving vehicles and agricultural equipment, as well as national defense and natural disaster response. For those who don’t know, Montana already has 40 photonics tech companies employing over 1,000 people with high wages. Early projections are t...
I have a boyhood memory of the blockbuster award-winning movie “Exodus,” staring a young Paul Newman as the leader of Jewish refugees and Palestinian Jews in their epoch struggle to establish the nation of Israel. In commenting on the movie, my grandmother told me that her grandfather would sometimes disappear into the cellar of his house to read what I understand now was probably an English translation of the Hebrew holy book, the Torah. With the aid of research by my sister, we have discovered that the mother of the gra...
As a Republican candidate for Montana superintendent of public instruction, I have a simple, but clear vision for our schools: I want to bring education back to basics. It shouldn’t be controversial. But bringing education back to the core basics is crucial for the overall development of our students. Focusing on foundational subjects like reading, writing, mathematics, history, and critical thinking will provide a strong academic base that all our students can build upon. My goal is to ensure that each child receives a c...
Two of my friends are touring Italy. Their husbands did not want to go. The women said, “That’s okay. We will go ourselves. You keep the home fires burning.” When we get back, we will have so much To tell you. One friend, the one from Washington, Sends photos, photos of famous palaces, pictures Of hotel rooms, of food, of streets, of stores. Now and then we see a picture of each of them, Usually sitting at a plate of food, looking glad. Or looking exhausted. Or, one with...
I have always loved Halloween, and I love it now more than ever. I love to get in costume and have fun with other people in costume. People seem freer when they are dressed in different clothes. They seem to have a little more fun. I like the challenge of making or putting together elaborate costumes but, as the years passed, I’ve done less and less of it. Costume parties seem to be less common, and I don’t spend time in bars, so the opportunity to celebrate the holiday has...
The other day I found myself feeling a little low, a little down in the dumps. The problem is, I was enjoying the feeling, to some extent. The next problem is that I found it so dag gone hard to maintain the slump. We don’t come with an instruction manual so I figure it is high time somebody writes one. ***This does not apply to real depression. Depression is a serious matter. For real depression, see your doctor. Please. One of my friends said, “It’s your bio-rhythm. Wait...
My sister sends a text, telling me she is making lasagna, and asks if I will bring a cake. “Sounds great!” I readily agree. “When?” There is no response. I know we are celebrating my mother’s birthday early, but I have no idea when, so I don’t know when this cake will be needed. I could call my sister, but that sounds difficult. Will she be busy? She is a teacher, and she is busy a lot. She gets up early and seems to be in constant motion from the time she gets off work until...
The opening of Psalm 137 is haunting: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” In a few lines, the poem evokes the sorrow of a people defeated, and taken in slavery from their homeland by an enemy who slaughtered their loved ones, and now mocks the survivors. “For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ Still the wish of...
Dear Editor, I recently spotted an opening for a sports person for the newspaper. I didn’t read the description closely but am confident I could quickly polish and perfect my qualifications for the position. When I was 9 or 10 years old, before we moved to Montana, my dad took me to a Cardinal’s game at the stadium in Louisville, Kentucky, a skip, a jump and a slide across the Ohio River from where we lived. The game was at night and the field was well-lighted. I did won...
It’s no secret that I love dogs. I love dogs, and I don’t have one right now because, traveling as much as my husband, Peter, and I do, having a dog makes no sense. We know this. We have discussed this. There are times I would like to have a dog so much it makes my heart hurt. And then I realize how easy it is to get on a plane without worrying about the welfare of a dog, and I know we have — at least for now — made the right decision. And so my solution is to talk to other p...
There’s a lot of back-and-forth across the state right now about who is responsible for the property tax crisis that’s hitting homeowners in the wallet and making housing more expensive for all of us. Regardless of whether you own your home or rent it, skyrocketing property values in Montana are making it hard for all of us to find a place to live and afford to stay there. We’ve known that for a while now, and Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Republican supermajority in the state Legislature knew it too. They failed to act, plain...
The Hill County Commissioners have posted a call for applications for those interested in serving on the Park Board’s Grazing/Haying committee. The notice states there are four positions to be filled. The Policies and Procedures for Grazing and Haying state there will be three ranchers on the committee. For several years now the committee had six ranchers on the committee. Of the six, five have conflicts of interest in that they or their families have grazing and/or haying privileges in the park. Since grazing and haying h...
September ended here in my little patch of Mexico with record-breaking heat. The heat I can handle. The humidity is brutal. Early this morning, 70 F, humidity in the 90s, go hang laundry on the line, come inside with sweaty wet hair. In the afternoon, when it is 90, when I return to the house with dry laundry, I’m hot but dry. When we Montanans say, “Yes, but it is dry heat,” we know what we are talking about. October will be different. Won’t it? And the critters, oh, my, the...
Permitting reform is crucial to ensure the clean energy transition happens fast enough to get projects up and running and ward off the extreme weather, fire, and smoke events that affect all of us in Montana. We need to build transmission lines, improve early community involvement, and quickly build and deploy new clean energy projects. Big energy projects need written approval from local, state and/or federal agencies to begin construction. But it takes about five years on average for these agencies to complete...
I’ve been thinking about forgiveness. A lot has been said on the subject by people a lot smarter than I, so I don’t have anything valuable to add to the discussion at large, but I’ve been thinking of how it affects me, and what a powerful thing it is. I’ve had very little to forgive compared to most people. People have always been kind to me. I am always astonished by how kind people have been — for no reason. As a young person, I received help and advice from strangers...
