News you can use
News you can use
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Lynn Hamilton Another litany of constitutional arguments from the gun lobby, Senate Bill 143, The “Higher Education Rights Restoration Act,” is designed to promote fear, grab headlines, undermine confidence in government institutions and public safety and boost gun sales. This is a bill looking for a problem. Statistically, college campuses are significantly safer than their larger communities. Campuses regularly examine safety and security and have invested millions in improvement projects recommended by students and emp...
March is upon us and with the change of calendar comes the dawn of springtime and many decisions for Montana farmers. And this year, these decisions include several important choices on federal safety net programs that could make a big difference for you, your family and your farm through 2018. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency is urging you, and farmers and landowners across the nation, to finalize your decisions on updating crop yield histories and reallocating base acres for new safety net p...
Last week I explored, in part, the idea of who knows me better: the people doing the health screening who said I’m now short and fat, or my Chinese Zodiac which says I’m “vain and high tempered” and the boar is my enemy. This week, I’m giving the Internet pop-quiz crowd a chance to tell you: Who is the real Pam Burke? These quizzes are one of the latest rages on the Internet. Working off your answers to a few simple questions, they tell you really important things like: Wha...
Laurel — Leroy Keller should make us all proud. He donated blood this week, just as he has done frequently for almost 60 years. As of this week, he has donated 35 gallons of blood. That's a record for the Havre area, and we’d bet it’s close to the record for Montana. Giving blood is not that difficult. It just takes a little while. It’s not painful. And people feel good after doing it. We hope more people follow Leroy Keller’s lead. Laurel — Janna Hoehn of Hawaii has volunteered countless hours in an effort to locate photos o...
Health screenings are meant to tell you, and others, important things about yourself, but really, I’m more than just a list of numbers on a page. Why just this week I took a 12-question quiz and found out that I am an “enlightened grammarian,” which means that I know proper grammar, but am accepting of the fact that language evolves with the times. I have “balanced the standardization of language with the practical usage.” That made my inner nerd feel awesome. Then came the...
Ai-yi-yi! I don’t know what to do. One minute I’m happily married, the next minute I’m headed for divorce court. You know how I’ve been purging drawers and cabinets, throwing away useless, outdated and un-used stuff — the stuff we tend to shove away to deal with later? Maybe I got carried away. Maybe I went too far. I didn’t mean anything by it. (This message was sent to me by Kathy, my friend, who with her husband Richard, lives on Pender Island in British Columbia.)...
Rep. John Brenden, R-Scobey It is halftime at the Legislature and they call it transmittal. The Legislature has a few days off until March 5. This is when all the general bills have to be passed from one house to the other in order to be heard in their respective chamber. This first half went much better than the 2013 session. There were some disappointments in my mind. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Water Compact passed the Senate, and I did not support the compact as I thought it was too much money and a...
I think that because my typical day starts before most people’s does, before the noise of civilization in motion, it’s the sounds of morning that captivate me most. I am used to the beloved sounds of home, which, on a Friday in February, start around 4 a.m. There's the squeak and groan of our home's old floorboards, the quiet padding of dog feet, horses nickering in anticipation of food, the cat's faint “mroww, mroww, mroww” growing steadily louder as he announces his approac...
The CSKT Water Compact is just one of the many important negotiated agreements that our state has entered into over a long period of time with the Indian tribes of Montana. Through the years, numerous water compacts and other state-tribal agreements, such as the Flathead Hunting and Fishing agreement, which I reviewed as attorney general for legal sufficiency and Gov, Stan Stephens signed in 1990, have been negotiated and passed with the best interests of all Montanans in mind. The compact that is now being considered by the...
Recovery from surgery has multi-faceted aspects. In my considered opinion, most aspects don’t bear the attention we tend to give them. The grim reality is that we get to go through the discomforts, fears, outright pain, immobility, etc., whether we want to or not, whether we give energy to the process or not. Eventually, discomforts pass. Take a simple thing like learning to walk. When an infant learns to walk, she is cute. The baby pulls herself up onto the lip of the c...
As the Hill County sanitarian and a lifelong pet owner, I would like to make my thoughts known on the issue of urban chickens. I have owned dogs or cats all of my life and only until recently did I lose my dog due to old age. Pets are a part of our family, and it bothers me to see many dogs or cats abandoned or running loose. I do not see a lot of individuals purchasing chickens as a pet, but more for eggs and meat. I have researched this idea of urban chickens and find that...
When you suffer from what I like to call random obsessive compulsive disorder, as I do, there’s no telling what idea, concept, image, worry, question or song your brain is going to take hold of and run with — whether it’s actually important or not. Plumbing, the conduit which allows for the safe passage of both potable and waste waters, that’s important, right? I mean, if you are old enough to be reading this, you are old enough to be living as a potty-trained human individ...
The 117th annual Carnaval. This year the theme is Los Suenos del Rey Momo — the Dreams of the King. Momo — a mythological Greek god who wore masks of satire, mockery and censure, the god of writers and poets. arnival in Mazatlan, similar to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, is a riotous round of celebration and merry-making with abandon, which screeches to an abrupt stop Tuesday night. Ash Wednesday ushers in Lent, the 40-day period of penitence and fasting in somber preparation for...
(The following piece is writtenn by Sen. Fred Thomas, Rep. Art Wittich, Rep. Nancy Ballance, Rep. Ron Ehli, Sen. Matt Rosendale, and Sen. Cary Smith, Republican members of the Montana House.) We recently introduced our Big Sky Health package, which was developed over two years to address our state’s most serious health care concerns. Montanans have spoken loud and clear, for years, that they don’t want to accept overreaching federal health care programs like Obamacare. Instead, Montanans want a solution that works for our...
The Montana legislative Judicial Committee quickly shot down an indecency law referendum proposed this session. In this display of infinite wisdom, it has also shot down my chance at a job upgrade. Thanks for sucking the joy out of my life Congress. House Bill 365, sponsored by Rep. David Moore, a Republican from Missoula, proposed to the House Wednesday that the state’s indecency law be changed from practical language about criminal deviancy to, well, totally awesome language...
Upbeat. Uplifting. Positive. I like to fill my weekly articles with humor and hope. Re-read the title, an ancient Hopi expression. That’s all the hope I have to give you. This is my second week under house arrest, chained to my walker. I know I am healing. I know it is a slow process. My mind knows. My heart is unrealistic. I want surgery last week followed by entering the 10 K this week and perhaps a full-on tri-athalon next week. I feel like Snow White with the six d...
Because we have now reached a critical point in the aging process of our white trash mansion, my husband and I are now considering the possibility of looking into maybe sometime soon upgrading, or “swapping out,” our living accommodations. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a commitment, but we do have some time before our current home starts to actually decompose. Months and months, at least — or possibly May when the temperature rises. Even then, it will just be the beg...
With a bit of lyrical jiggling, I could write a new hit song. OK. So I’m not Tony Bennett. OK. So not all my good ideas work. I’m happy to be back in my casa. My bionic knee, Ruth, acquired in India, is bonding with my new bionic body part, Rose Hip. With every step, I lean onto the arms of my new best friend, Hopalong Cassidy. I have another supportive friend who lives in the bathroom whom I call Howdy Doody. This sounds like my body is quite cosmopolitan, chic mul...
Cognitive dissonance is just fancy talk for the brain hurt you get from thinking two conflicting thoughts at the same time. I think by natural design I would have no problem with this occurring because A) I’m not that deep of a thinker and B) I am instinctively a self-centered person, so naturally the only thought I would have in my brain is about me and my needs. Of course, my parents had to mess that up. Technically, I am well beyond the age that I should be affected by a...
Holy Smokies. I never know which way the ball will bounce when I get up in the morning. Hey, keeps me on my toes. When I saw my x-ray, I knew I’d soon have to go under the knife, become more bionic than I already am. My hip joint was shot. Hip shot, get it? Whoops! Is it even legal to use “hip” and “joint” in the same sentence? Despite instant knowledge I decided to live with the painful hip as long as I could stand it. Stupid, yes? Why would any normal person make that deci...
Sen. John Brenden Hello again from the Capitol. We are now starting our fourth week in Helena, and the pace is getting faster. Gov. Steve Bullock has a proposed two-year budget of almost $4.5 billion in the general fund. This is $359 million higher than the Legislative Fiscal Division which works for us legislators. The last revenue forecast for our budget is $145 million less in income tax collections and $45 million down in oil and gas receipts. For the love of me I do not know when income is down why the governor wants to...
Mark Douglas The radical attacks in Paris touched the world. In hopes of minimizing the pain, people around the world, in the streets, in parks, and in the virtual commons of Facebook, declared “Je suis Charlie” — “I AM Charlie.” Recently, as we’ve learned more about the attackers, it has come to light that the Kouachi brothers shared a hauntingly familiar background: homeless, abused, neglected, in-and-out of foster care, orphaned with no family, and ultimately graduating into prison and a culture of incarcerati...
I recently took a trip to visit friends, “those” friends, the kind of married friends who get along — even while installing plumbing. It’s sick and a measure of my capacity for tolerance that I like them anyway. When walking through their house and seeing all the remodeling projects they’ve mastered, it’s beyond my comprehension to think of the genuinely reasonable discussion and negotiation skills they demonstrate to complete these projects amicably — without intervention...
When I moved from Montana to the Seattle area in 1984, not my first relocation by any means, I knew it would take a while to develop friendships. Two years later, coffee outings with a couple of women eventually led to trips to Seattle for the symphony or Elliott Bay Books with Lynn and to picnics or family dinners with Karen, who also had children. A couple more years and I had many friends; men, women, couples and singles. Friendships take time to develop. I sorted through a...
I’m glad to see an increased effort on anti-bullying campaigns in area schools and youth organizations. It was a long time coming. Havre Public Schools and most schools in the area, the Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Line, Scout groups and many others are putting emphasis on the long-range effects of being bullied. All of this is a little bit late for a girl I went through high school with. Sheila, I’ll call her, was not especially attractive, a bit overweight and may have had some minor psychological problems going into jun...
