News you can use
News you can use
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It was a dark and stormy night. Oh, wait! Different story. It was the day before New Year’s Eve. Leo and I were sitting in the sun chatting after he had mouse-proofed my washing machine with a length of screen and duct tape. Mice are on the move every year during corn harvest when they temporarily are forced out of their home and well-stocked grocery. My washing machine sits tucked away in the back corner of my patio, outdoors. This is not the first time mice thought the m...
I drove my parents to their cabin this week. My mom is having some terrible pain in her jaw and wasn’t sure she was up to the drive, and my dad doesn’t see well enough to drive anymore. I felt lucky to spend time in the car with them, driving north. There was almost no snow. It was strange to drive so far north in the winter and see the floor of the forest bare. The first thing I did when we got to the cabin was look for Stubby, my mother’s pet red squirrel. Of course, Stubb...
My bed jacket. It is a sign. A portent of things to come. Christmas Eve, I went to Oconahua for a traditional Mexican feast of tamales and hot chocolate with my friends. When I returned home, a gift bag stuffed tightly with something rather heavy, sat on my patio table. I reached in and pulled out … a jacket. This jacket is made of that plush, fluffy stuff, like a baby blanket. Thank goodness it is not a pale pastel. I’d have to gift it onward. No, amazingly, the jacket is...
It’s the time of year when I look back and see where I’ve been and wonder where I’m going. On the shortest days of the year, I like to do a little recalibration. I take a look at what I had hoped to do and ways in which I want to change my thinking. Some years I have had major changes in the works — going back to school or starting a new career. Other years, my biggest ambition has been to finish off the last of the Christmas cookies before the year’s end in case they have...
Advancement in technology is rapidly changing the world we live in, the careers we pursue, and undoubtedly affecting nearly every aspect of our lives. Traditional “big iron” companies like John Deere and GM have become “technology companies.” Electric vehicles, medical devices, military innovation, energy production and storage, are a small sampling of how technology is inextricably woven into our lives. This is the new frontier, with businesses and our nation investing massive sums in advancing technology to reclaim global...
Or, one might say, this week, apples are my world. Every year I put a lot of thought into my gift giving for Christmas. Grandchildren are easy. Gift certificates. They are of the age where money is the better choice. Gold, right? For the babies, my grandchildren, my daughter handles that chore for me. She knows best what they want, need and enjoy. The hard part is for us few who are here this holiday season in Gringolandia. We are old. We already have everything we want. If I...
Historic drought conditions and weather extremes have hit the outdoor industry hard in Montana and other states throughout the West. Shorter winters, brought on by a changing climate, are driving these hard-hitting delays in the season. “There’s definitely been a shift in the weather in the last ten years that we’ve noticed and it’s getting harder and harder for us to count on having that snow early on,” said Melissa Alder, co-owner of a local cross-country ski and bicycle store. Alder organizes the West Yellowsto...
The children were in the pew in front of me. We had not arrived early enough at my sister’s church for the Christmas Eve service to secure a seat in the back, so we were in the fourth row. The first row is never used by anyone; the second row is only for people who arrive impossibly late. The third row is, for all intents and purposes, the front row, and that’s where these two wild-looking children were. The children were provisioned with colored pencils and drawing paper but...
For years, Montana has had one of the highest rates of military participation and veterans per capita in the nation. The 2023 Legislature took many steps to both help our men and women in uniform protect our state and country going forward, as well as recognize and honor their service. First, we passed a new law that prohibits foreign adversaries from owning critical infrastructure and agricultural land in Montana. This is crucial to national defense, making it illegal for hostile competitors like China to buy land near our n...
No longer can I remain in denial. I am an addict. I am addicted to sunlight. When I lived in Poulsbo, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula where it rained 10 months of the year, I remember how hard it was by February to keep up my spirits. That is normal behavior, pretty much. Now, these years later, after a mere couple (2) cloudy days with rain, and I begin to wonder if a Prozac Big Gulp would really work. Having grown up in a country of constant drought, I love the rain....
In our vast and often brutal Montana landscape, USPS workers frequently brave blizzards and slick October and November roads to deliver election ballots. Too frequently, their most challenging battle is against a lack of resources. Postal delays are more than an inconvenience; they threaten the accuracy and security of Montana’s elections. In the early 2010s, rumors of closing the Missoula and Kalispell sorting centers stirred concern among Montanans, rightfully so. Today, as the USPS grapples with hiring troubles and r...
I tend to be a Christmas maximalist; at least if you ask my husband, Peter, that’s what he would say. Peter would dispense with the tree, the presents and most of the outings. He’d hang a few ornaments on a houseplant, have a nice meal and go to bed early. But Peter cares for me a lot, and he knows how much I love Christmas. I want a live tree. If I can’t chop it down myself, I’ll haul it home from the hardware store. I want lights on the balcony and a little present for eve...
A question I am often asked is “Why? Why are you running?” The answer is simple: These United States of America, all she represents, and all of the opportunities she offers have been good to me, and I need to give back. I need to serve. I need to feel that I deserve all that she has offered without asking anything in return. I need to know that someone like me, from meager beginnings, an unplanned pregnancy to an unwed teenage mother, someone without money or connections, can still work hard and build the American Dream. I kn...
Interesting how we carve time to suit particular purposes. I won’t look it up, but thinking about it, I’d not be surprised that our universal way of dividing our days started with the Industrial Revolution, as a way of getting the workers to be where and when the bosses wanted them to be. That is as political as I am willing to be this morning. My day began yesterday, actually. It rained yesterday, so that jiggered up walk times with Lola, but we managed to wriggle them int...
As we close out National Native American Heritage Month, I would like to introduce myself and my new role as the Montana Department of Labor and Industry’s (DLI) first tribal liaison. My name is Donnie Wetzel Jr. I come from the Blackfeet Nation on my father’s side and Missoula/Bitterroot as a seventh-generation Montanan on my mother’s side, and it is an honor to serve Montana in this role. Over the last month, I’ve received an abundance of information about this work and the limitless possibilities it can bring to our you...
The Montana Supreme Court’s recent order upholding the Montana Department of Revenue’s calculation of the 95 school equalization mills provided a protective shield for residential property taxpayers and students educated in Montana’s public schools. The court’s decision respected and preserved bipartisan decisions made by the 2023 Legislature estimating revenues and appropriating funds to fund Montana’s public schools. Some county officials erroneously asserted that levying 77.89 instead of 95 school equalization mills wou...
I tend to be a Christmas maximalist; at least if you ask my husband, Peter, that’s what he would say. Peter would dispense with the tree, the presents and most of the outings. He’d hang a few ornaments on a houseplant, have a nice meal and go to bed early. But Peter cares for me a lot, and he knows how much I love Christmas. I want a live tree. If I can’t chop it down myself, I’ll haul it home from the hardware store. I want lights on the balcony and a little present for eve...
Skyrocketing property taxes. Astronomical energy rate increases. Thousands of homes that are unaffordable to most Montanans. And yet more big tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, while the rest of us are left to foot the bill. When we look back on the last year, all these changes and more were brought you by one party and its supermajority: Montana Republicans. And so, as 2023 ends, let’s take a look back over the last 12 months to see where Republicans really took us as a state. Hold on to your hats, because we’re about to get...
Public safety has been a significant and growing concern in our communities for the past several years. The 2023 Legislature heard these concerns loud and clear and acted to make our state a safer place to work, play, and raise a family. We took on human traffickers with HB 112 from Rep. Jodee Etchart. It increased penalties for human trafficking and gave law enforcement more tools to prosecute these heinous crimes. HB 112 has already been credited for a major prostitution bust in Bozeman. SB 265, sponsored by Sen. Mark...
I don’t. Truly, I don’t know. Life is so much more interesting when I don’t know. When I “know,” I limit myself to where it is difficult for new and different information to filter into my brain. Hey, because I already know! A closed door. Right? Take something simple, like tortillas. What is there not to know about tortillas? I feel pretty puffed up that I can make decent corn tortillas. I seldom make flour tortillas because they always come out looking like amoebas....
We had dinner with friends last night. There is nothing unusual about that, except these were all people I did not know; people my husband, Peter, had met while taking his daily hike in Mexico. This was not the first gathering of Peter’s friends we’ve had. My self-professed introvert of a husband has become something of a social butterfly outside of the U.S. He goes to the same botanical nature reserve to hike every day and he meets new people and forms new friendships. Pet...
One of the many things I have come to respect about the Mexican culture, the Mexican people, is their ability to celebrate. Times may seem grim and the larder near empty, but they somehow will scrape together beans, tortillas, tomatoes and peppers, gather family and neighbors into their homes to share a feast, and maybe even shoot off a few fireworks, always with music in the background, even if from a radio. Remember radio? We, my friends, in our country, seem to have...
Montanans just enjoyed the largest sporting event of the year, with more than 27,000 of us coming together in person to witness this year’s version of the Brawl of the Wild. The football game and intrastate rivalry between the Montana Grizzlies and Montana State Bobcats is 122 years old and began only eight years after Montana obtained statehood in 1889. By any measure, this contest is so much more than just another game and has become an important part of the fabric of Montana. Our two flagship universities have been e...
I have always liked Thanksgiving. I know its origins are dubious. I cringe a little when I think about the construction paper American Indian costumes and the happy story I learned as a child about that first Thanksgiving. I cringe a little more when I read about people missing their holiday meal so they can work at retail jobs where customers trample one another at the store’s entrance to get in and buy things. I don’t understand this, I have to confess. I have never bee...
By now, we all have seen our actual property tax increases. We know how high our property taxes have gone up — not like the mystery when we got our confusing reappraisal notice. Many of us are angry. As we prepare to write an actual check for our home property taxes, we are livid. The state reappraisal of all Montana homes for 2023 resulted in an average 49% increase statewide in home appraisals. Because of that appraisal many if not most of us will see a property tax increase on our home — and for some this increase is enorm...
