News you can use
News you can use
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October is Fire Prevention Month. This is a good time to check your fire extinguishers and smoke detectors, and to make sure your family has a plan for leaving your home in case of a fire. Another way to stay safe year-round is to eliminate smoking from your home. Not only will this help prevent accidental fire, it also will protect your family members, visitors, and pets from secondhand smoke. Montana statistics from the National Fire Incident Reporting System show cigarettes contributed to at least 38 residential fires in...
Now and then I have these great ideas. Not that I do anything with them. Not that I even want to do anything with them. My time, well, that was a younger chapter in my life. Come and gone. I’ll just throw this out there to see if you wish to do something with it. For free. Gratis. No charge. You are welcome. My million-dollar idea of the day. Once upon a yesterday I had a friend who proclaimed we each had a million-dollar idea a day but never recognized it or dismissed the d...
The economic case for replacing the Beaver Lodge at camp Kiwanis is being made. There is another case to be made and that is the local cultural and quality of life values. 100-plus years ago, local community leaders foresaw the opportunity for a park and “playground” for the benefit of the local area. We are forever grateful for their foresight. Their action made our Beaver Creek Park a unique feature for our local community and the quality of life we enjoy. Through the years, our predecessors developed opportunities inc...
’Tis the season for political debate, and while each of us differs on various issues and support our respective candidates, there is one thing we can definitely both agree on: We support a Havre city manager, and urge you to do so as well. Ballots are about to arrive in the mail for many absentee voters and for those who choose to vote at the polls Nov. 8 an important question for city of Havre voters will be on the ballot and that is the question on whether to approve a Havre city manager. The Havre city manager position, if...
Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Housing Task Force released its draft recommendations to address housing in Montana. These include forcing every community to allow accessory dwelling units — ADUs — on every residential lot, removing local restrictions on how small lots can be, and stopping local governments from requiring parking spaces for new development. These recommendations to remove local regulations are not surprising because the Task Force began with the assumption that local regulations are the primary cause of th...
This past week we attended the memorial for my husband Peter’s oldest sister, Shelley. Shelley went through a long battle with cancer, and Peter lost his second sister in two years. The pandemic had just started, her husband had just died, and Shelley moved 900 miles across the country to live near her kids. Then, almost immediately, she discovered she was gravely ill. She moved in with her son, Joel, and daughter-in-law, Dani, and never left. Shelley had several operations t...
We all know a bear or two, right? Maybe not personally, but we know about black bears, grizzly bears, polar bears and giant panda bears. Perhaps you also have heard of Eurasian brown bears, Asiatic black bears, Andean bears, sun bears and the unfortunately named sloth bear. Surely you’ve heard of koala bears, which aren’t bears at all, and teddie bears, which aren’t real bears, either, but for different reasons. If, though, you have never heard of water bears, you should sit b...
Beaver Creek Park is about to lose a beautiful icon and the best used venue for weddings, youth groups and reunions. It is the Beaver Lodge. Built in 1974 and opened in 1976, this log structure has been used by over a 100,000 people in the past 50-plus years. Many memories were born in the lodge, but the fate of a lodge is now in the hands of Hill County voters. Within a year or two the lodge will need to come down due rotting logs, walls moving because of age, weight from the roof and snow. Around 2009, rotting logs were...
The first week in October is always a difficult week for me. It marks the anniversary of the death of my baby. He’d been alive that morning. He died that night when he was born. Still a girl myself, I’d been married only a year and a half. My family did the thing they did best. They hid away all the pain and hurt. I thought that is what everyone did. Stuffed the grief into a hole and covered it with concrete blocks. Or heavy weight of a sort. Of course, over the years, the...
Recently, a Guest View by Tammi Fisher posted in the Missoulian on September 18, 2022 expressed the author’s disdain of comments at a North Central Pachyderm meeting reported by the Havre Daily News, comments made by a former Montana legislator and current developer of a scorecard that the Montana GOP adopted to rank and comment on Montana legislators. Such scorecards are not for the purpose of determining best representation for Montana constituents, but to advance the agenda of the GOP machine. We thank Miss Fisher for b...
As a pediatric hospice and palliative medicine physician for many years, I can speak directly to the unfathomable harm that a ballot initiative called LR-131 would cause. Titled the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the initiative is an extreme, unnecessary, and cruel limitation of family decision-making that you’ll see on the ballot this November. Although LR-131 purports to be about protecting infants, it requires health care providers to perform invasive and painful medical procedures to preserve the life of an infant ...
We have two Montana Supreme Court races this year, each, as always, extremely important. One of those races, however, demands even more urgent attention than our judicial races normally require … namely the election involving Justice Ingrid Gustafson and her challenger, Republican Public Service Commission Chairman James Brown. In 2003, Republican Gov. Judy Martz appointed Gustafson to the Yellowstone County District Court after 16 years in private practice. That was a year before her opponent finished law school. In 2017, J...
Hi, I’m Les Odegard, independent candidate for Hill County Commissioner. Seems like this question is the top question I am asked. Sometimes it’s more like “why would you ever want to be commissioner?” I see this position as an opportunity to continue serving a community that welcomed me in 20 years ago. One that I have made my home. Throughout the past 20 years I have served on the 4-H Foundation Board, Crimestoppers, Havre Wrestling Club, Havre Chamber Ag Committee, Havre Public School Board, currently serving my 11th ye...
Every two years, Montanans who are elected from their communities travel from all over Montana to gather at the State Capitol to convene the Montana Legislature. During our time together, we work to deliver legislation that will help Montanans, including funding for our schools and hospitals, protecting our public lands, and keeping our economy strong. As a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, a Montanan and a state senator, I know firsthand the importance of having a fully representative legislative body...
We write this with the hope of reaching as many Montana veterans and their family members as possible regarding the recent passage of the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics — PACT — Act sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester. The PACT Act is a historic new law that expands VA health care and benefits for veterans — and their survivors. It recognizes toxic exposure as a “cost of war” by addressing the full range of issues impacting toxic-exposed veterans. Native American veterans serve their country at a higher rate per capita th...
Science news this week was dominated by NASA’s DART spacecraft colliding with an asteroid on purpose and proving that mankind can deviate the course of an asteroid — while simultaneously dashing the dreams of oil-rig workers everywhere that they alone will be able to save earth, “Armageddon”-style, from a killer asteroid in the future. That’s right, all current and prospective roughnecks in the oil and gas industry can officially stop practicing their space walk — which is an...
I met Gary Buchanan almost 25 years ago when he worked at D.A. Davidson. In the years since, he became a trusted friend and advisor. Gary always tells you what he truly believes, listens and takes into consideration what others have to say, takes the time to educate himself, and can admit when he is wrong. For these reasons and more, I’m honored to endorse my friend, Gary Buchanan, as our next Congress person in the Eastern district. As a former Democrat lawmaker and statewide elected official, some have asked why I would s...
A new poll conducted on behalf of the Coalition for a Prosperous America finds that 86% of Americans favor reinstatement of Country-of-Origin Labeling — COOL — for beef and pork. In 2015 Congress rescinded the requirement that imported beef and pork be labeled. However, it was only for beef and pork. All other foods, including lamb and seafood, continue to be labeled. Immediately following this action by Congress cattle markets crashed by nearly half, resulting in billions of dollars lost to ranchers in rural states such as...
Do you ever spend the night working? Without getting out of bed? Not creative thinking, not mentally composing poetry or writing love (or hate) letters you will never send. I mean real physical labor type working. I just spent the night cooking, perfecting my version of pay de chili marron, translated as bell pepper pie. Without getting out of bed. This is not a usual Mexican dish. You could peek into every kitchen in Etzatlan and you won’t find a slice of this exotic pie. A...
It’s not always easy living with me. But my husband, Peter, has to. I know it is not easy, because I live with myself every day, and I feel the bits of anxiety and nervousness and occasional emotional overload escape out of me and flood the house that Peter has to live in. Sometimes, I feel bad for him. The problem I am currently facing is a little too much good news. I am well-conditioned to bad news. I know it is like a physical pain that will pass, often much sooner than I...
Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs but I love cats, too, and I feel bad that as a species cats have a continual public relations problem. I followed this UPI headline — “Missing cat returns home, rings doorbell in New York” — to a video of exactly what the headline promised. The story goes that a family moved to Mastic Beach, Long Island, and two weeks later their cat Lily didn’t come home one night, the family feared the worst. Four days later, the cat came home to the porch a...
That was some rattle-my-bones earthquake! When the shocks reached me, I was sitting at my computer, working on my Spanish. Immediately my chair became a rocking chair. Instantly I knew it was a quake. I could see the light fixtures swaying over my stove and sink. The twenty-litre bottle of drinking water threatened to jump from the ceramic holding jar. My mind erased everything I had learned about quake safety. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to be outside in the open ar...
I met Betty sitting outside on the sidewalk. Betty spends a lot of time there. She lives in the adjacent building. It is a place for older folks who need a lot of help and don’t have a lot of money. Betty lost both legs, below the knee, at some point. She wears a curly wig pulled down low on her head, and she is usually smoking a cigarette, out on the sidewalk, accompanied by a few other residents from her building. I walk by Betty’s building a lot. “How are you doing today...
I spent much of last week in Helena hearing Interim Education Committee issues and attending a joint meeting with the Interim Budget Committee. Monday was spent engaging with the Board of Education, Office of Higher Education, Office of Public Instruction and hearing report outs. We also followed-up on the bills our committee worked on over this past year between sessions. For the most part, members of the committee are in agreement on the proposed bills, except for proposed bill PD32. This proposed bill was to update...
Judicial independence is a matter of constitutional law and American tradition. By the strict design of our Founders, our separate court system has been independent of party politics, and therefore not guided by party platforms and party leaders as are the other two branches of our government. In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tested that separation. Frustrated by the U.S. Supreme Court’s resistance to his New Deal programs, FDR backed legislation to essentially expand the court from nine to 15 members. With his o...
