News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 2498 - 2522 of 3218
I am what could be called an indiscriminate eater because I enjoy eating, will try most anything and have favorite foods categories from cuisine and to gut bomb. I can be equally happy with a hot meal that’s taken hours to prepare or courses to serve and, on the flip side, pulling leftovers out of the fridge and eating them cold from the container just to kill my hunger pangs. I think of it as an asset to be so versatile, and in my youth my family called me a garbage gut. They were fond of calling us kids affectionate pet n... Full story
My friend Kathy and I lounged on the beach, mindlessly watching the waves roll in. Tide was high so the waves were literally underfoot. We each had a book open but upended on our laps. “I love it the way my mind goes empty while I’m on the beach like this. It is so Zen,” said Kathy. I took 10 seconds to give her statement thought, an uncharacteristic move on my part, before I replied. “Umm hmm. Sun, surf and sand seem to have that effect. ‘Living in the moment.’ It is a state of mind we are supposed to strive to attain. It... Full story
I’m not saying my childhood was any more awesomer than anyone else’s — certainly it had its share of dark points and failures, many of these self-induced — but my childhood had its amazing highlights that others would be hard pressed to equal or exceed. Specifically, I got to raise, care for and see up close a wide variety of wild animals. Did you get to raise black bear cubs and take them to second-grade show and tell? I think not. Even though one of them peed on a classmate’s desk, I still had plenty of playgroun...
Every house or apartment I have ever moved into had white rooms. Oh, I just remembered, that’s not totally true. One was shades of putrid pink. Sooner or later, I transformed every wall in every house with colors of my choice. Several months ago Gogi, my landlady, was sitting in my living room visiting. Gogi is Mazatleca but she spends most of the year in Sun City, California, where her daughter lives. I asked if I might paint. “Sondra, you may do anything you want,” I heard... Full story
Americans, like humans everywhere, love holiday traditions, and a college town in New Hampshire has started a new Halloween tradition to rival any All Hallow’s Eve custom as college students and unwitting townsfolk rioted the Samhain out of the Keene Pumpkin Festival last weekend. Keene, New Hampshire, is home of the Keene Pumpkin Festival, Keene State University, and the Keene police department and their military-style armored vehicle, as well as a guy named Steven who apparently doesn’t understand the U.S. Con... Full story
My friend Kathy from British Columbia flew in this week. For the next three weeks I will be with Kathy on holiday, staying up the street six blocks from where I have my apartment, at the El Cid Resort. Evelyn from Harlem in New York City will join us in a few days. The three of us have a propensity for getting in trouble. We don’t intend trouble. Trouble, like a heat seeking missile, finds us. As another friend says with a shrug, “It happens.” Although Evelyn, Kathy and I come from diverse backgrounds, we share a love of la... Full story
Remember the old connect-the-dots pictures from grade school? Sometimes life-things — like connect-the-dots — don't look like much until you make the connections that form something more meaningful. 1 • For me, the worst part about writing articles for the newspaper is calling people. I’m not good with any of that initial approach stuff. And the worst of the worst is getting an answering machine. I generally hang up on answering machines and take a little time to ponder...
Laural A group of Havre residents will be putting on a barbecue noon to 4 p.m. Sunday to highlight the bond between Havre and Montana State University-Northern. The campus and the community have a long tradition of cooperation. The two mean a lot to each other. This would be a great opportunity to have a good time, eat some great food, win some prizes and tour the tremendous facilities on campus Dart The Montana University System has filed an appeal to a district court judge’s ruling that author Jon Krakauer is entitled to s... Full story
There will be an event Sunday that we hope will be well-attended. The community is invited to a special barbecue at Montana State University-Northern. There will be games for kids, as well as balloons. There will be campus tours for all involved. People can be driven around campus on the special bus that Northern uses for the annual Festival Days parade. Tours will be offered of the major buildings on campus. Visitors will be able to see where biodiesel is manufactured and all kinds of special activities are offered for... Full story
One of the hardest things to do is to say exactly what you mean in a way that people understand exactly what you mean. No one knows that better today than the good-intentioned people at New Jersey’s Moorestown Township Library. They tried to say exactly what they meant, only they said it in Latin, which was their first mistake. Latin is, of course, a dead language, and the dead don’t say much of anything useful. Maybe they can with a ouija board or through a spangled gypsy woman reading a crystal ball. But I wouldn't cou... Full story
How does one really come to know oneself, in a deep and meaningful way … asks the shallowest person in the newspaper industry: me. The answer is that to truly come to know oneself, one must go shopping … says the intellectual-surface-dweller who hates shopping more than dental work, cleaning house and canned spinach — all combined. This newfound wisdom comes from recent forays into the world of pickup truck shopping. Yes, know thy shopping needs, know thyself. The shopping sta... Full story
Halfway back from my morning walk, I reached into my pockets, all four pockets. One at a time, naturally. I’d forgotten my keys. The last thing I do when I leave my apartment is turn the lock in the doorknob. In a flash of memory I could see my keys — in the bottom of my bag — in the house. I felt a combination of desperation plus an urge to throw up. Over-reaction? Certainly. My mind was pre-occupied. A friend is hospitalized and the family is gathering. But still ... still, I felt like a fool, a silly sort of fool (rath... Full story
Sometimes I feel crazy about my animals, really. Tuesday I spent 45 minutes riding my horse with my dog along for the adventure, then spent one-and-a-half hours cleaning mud and weed seeds off my dog. Why? Because, that was the responsible thing to do, and I think my dog looks cuter than a bug's ear with the fuzzy/wiry hair on his legs left longish. Chaps - that's what they call the fuzzy-leg look, and he rocks them like an A-list star - collect everything dirt and weed related, and they need to be cleaned frequently. His cha... Full story
In a note to a friend I mentioned that I have lived my life in chunks. The years on the ranch. Years raising my children. Years re-covering furniture. Years in theater. Years in city government. Those sorts of chunks. Some chunks overlap. Some chunks I have tried to bury far from memory. Others I treasure. All are part of what makes me, well, me. I wonder what will define this particular chunk of my life. Lord knows, it is different from all the others. Looking back, I can find clues to what led me to decisions I made. For... Full story
High on the list of life’s elixirs, those magical potions that bring a spark of, well, magic to food, to gatherings, to life itself, is horseradish. Yes, glorious, creamy, rip your sinuses right out of your head horseradish. What’s a roast beef without it? Just a slab of slightly pinkish, brown meat of beast taking up space on my plate and underwhelming my palate. When you have roast beast cooking away in the oven on a crisp fall-like day and nary a jar of horseradish to be... Full story
Egads! Another hurricane. Last week Hurricane Norberto blew past, waved “hello” and left unwelcome gifts of havoc. This week, Hurricane Odile, not to be left behind, followed the same path. Fortunately, we in Mazatlan experienced only the side effects. When speaking of weather, it is a horrible thing to say we are lucky. When hail strikes the plains, one wheat farmer is wiped out and the neighbor’s fields go unscathed. Weather isn’t “fair.” Our particular neighbor is Cabo San... Full story
I was very pleased with your recent front-page article describing the changes that have taken place at Hays-Lodge Pole School under the supervision of a new school board and a highly qualified new school superintendent, Margaret Campbell. As your article noted, the large grant the school received and innovations made at the school were greeted by a visit from Denise Juneau, the excellently qualified Montana superintendent of public instruction. Particularly, I appreciated the remarks made by Campbell and her description of... Full story
One of the greatest tragedies to an enlightened mankind, which, as a group, develops a strong sense of attachment, is dealing with loss. This can be loss of loved ones or co-workers, loss of a home or familiar landmark, or loss of an heirloom or - worst of all - any of our precious, glorious, bountiful stuff which we accumulate in our lives. It has been a week of loss. Tragedy is stalking my house, and it's rearranging, killing and stealing my things one by one. It started wit... Full story
Dear Richard, Across the street the sewer main sprung a vicious leak. Nasty, smelly water is burbling up, sending a gray putrid pool down the street my way. The break is right on the corner of Calle del Pulpo and Tiberon. Actually, I don't know where the break is but that is where the icky water is gushing out. Please send the guys down to fix it. With all the flooding going on, a side effect of Hurricane Norberto, I don't know when the city crew here can get to it. I would call in the break, but I don't know who to call or... Full story
The Gods of Irony have their own random agenda, and they rarely interact, intervene or interfere on purpose with a human - unless of course, that human has horses, then they're fair game. Horses are magical creatures whose true gift is to be four-legged irony magnets. Want a personal visit from the Ironies? Just say about a horse task: "This will only take a minute." Mayhem is the only possible result. There will be running, snorting, tails flying. There will be a gate... Full story
Drag me kicking and screaming to the latest electronic devices and I obviously want nothing to do with them. My cellphone — the dumbest one I can find — is smarter than I am, and has functions I’ll never use. Writing on paper, any paper, even a brown bag, with a soft lead pencil gives me satisfaction in the depths of my soul. I like the texture, the drag-scritch of the lead across the surface, the drag tracks the pencil leaves in its wake. Having said that, I confess, the only... Full story
There has been a lot of jocularity in recent days because of the national craze of challenging people to have ice cold water poured over their heads as a way of raising funds for the fight against ALS, the dreaded neurological disease. If the craze moves forward this week as it did last week, it seems like nearly everyone in the country will have had the honor of being doused with frigid water. We hope so. It all raises more money and awareness for the cause. But we hope the hilarity of the ice bucket treatment doesn’t detrac... Full story
War doesn’t do as much for humanity as it used to. We’re all so angry and ill-tempered it’s tiresome. Where's the unity? After World War I and its exciting sequel World War II, the war franchise seems to have increasingly fizzled as a means to unify people. Allies aren’t close buddies. All the enemies declare their own victory. People are dead, money is spent and no one gets a sense of satisfaction. Enemies, allies, countrymen, neighbors, everyone is so crabby-... Full story
Actually, there is no “we.” I am the one wondering if I lost my last wing nut. I’m down in the dumps, crawling along the bottom of the pit, rolling in slime and garbage. Well, it sort of feels like that. After a month of visiting friends and relatives, being part of their everyday “normal” life, I cannot help but make comparisons. Of course, I compare my insides (see above) with your outsides. You, of course, come out looking beautiful in my assessment, happy, joyous an... Full story
I attended the Dawson County Fair with my daughter Dee Dee and her family. It was touch and go whether there would even be a Saturday night rodeo. Black clouds had rolled in, covering the sky, temperatures dropped, thunder roared and lightning struck as rain pounded the ground for hours. Too dramatic? Four different storm cells hit in succession and all the above is true. When we got to the fairgrounds the rides had been shut down. Rain aided the Mud-a-palooza, mud volleyball... Full story
