News you can use
News you can use
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There is no doubt north-central Montana is the best place to live. This past week was a true testament of what a giving and caring community we all live in and how we can band together in a disaster. When Amtrak derailed just west of Joplin there was an outpouring of help from every county within a hundred miles. Emergency responders came from Blaine, Hill, Chouteau, Cascade, Toole, Glacier, Pondera, and my home county of Liberty. These emergency responders have been trained for this, were ready, and did a great job of managi...
The truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, but the truth could strangely inspire fiction. A big article we ran in the paper this week illuminated the trouble our local school system is having finding bus drivers to help transport students to events. I know, it seems mildly interesting at best, but apparently, it is a big deal because this bus driver shortage is occurring all over the country. However, for as far as my Google searches can see Brooke Charter School in B...
I have become adept at simply watching the sky, at comprehending or at thinking I comprehend, the grim and gritty shades of gray, unrelenting gray, and nothing sexy about it, and I confess I never read the above hinted at book but had it been around when I was a teen, I’m sure I would have thought myself quite sophisticated to hide the pages under my bed quilt and greedily turn pages in secret by flashlight. Today I’d rather read the sky, of which on second thought, I hav...
My husband, Peter, and I are at my parents’ cabin in the woods. The weather was perfect for a bike ride so we took a long one. We had not all been riding together in almost two years and I am not an experienced rider. So, in order to prevent my butt from getting sore, I have a big, soft seat on my bicycle. My mother, an avid cyclist, does not approve. “You wouldn’t need that big tractor seat if you had padded shorts!” she always tells me. “I’m thinking this whole idea of pad...
As expected, the Hill County Park Board has basically voted to continue with its current way of managing beaver in Beaver Creek Park. Trapping is the only means of control they have ever used and will continue to use. No mention of measures or monitoring or keeping records. There was a small mention of using other devices in certain instances but would have to be voted on by the board and to see if they have the money for it. The adopted original draft by the committee effectively indicates “the superintendent has the a...
For many of us, one of our fondest memories is going to our high school or college homecoming. If you look up the definition of the term, homecoming means “an instance of returning home” and “a high school, or university game, dance or other social event to which alumni are invited.” We want to extend that invitation to all Montana State University-Northern alumni to join us Sept. 22-25 to celebrate our wonderful 92 years of Northern. When I started at the MSU-Northern Foundation in the fall of 2019, it was only six weeks p...
I realized two things this week about the often adverse relationship between animals and man — one thing because of the lack of headlines and the other because of the wealth of headlines. First, both Yellowstone and Glacier national parks had record numbers of people visiting this summer, but we hardly had any headlines about people getting injured or killed by wildlife. A couple tourists got injured in Yellowstone, but I just don’t recall and cannot find anything about inj...
I begin my days with a loose routine of morning readings, nothing cast in concrete, but generally start with the poet Rumi. This epitomizes the week. “But for us this day is Friends sitting together with silence shining in our faces.” If friendship were a basket, this week the basket is large and we filled it to the brim. Leo announced his birthday. He’s an old soul in a 35-year-young body. I quickly put a peach/mango crisp in the oven. Leo noted that Ana and Michelle had i...
To me, “the farm” has always meant the farm where my mother grew up, one of 11 children. Every book I ever read that was set on a farm, and many other books as well, all took place in my imagination at my mother’s family farm and the surrounding woods. The farm seemed enormous when I was young. There was a barn full of cows and a coop full of chickens and a granary full of all sorts of things we weren’t supposed to climb into but did anyway. There were lots of feral cats an...
I pen this letter upon return from a 1,700-mile journey to communities across the state and numerous hours of phone and online communications these past two weeks with administrators in Montana’s public schools. The purpose of that travel and communications was to get a sense from our school leaders about the opening of the 2021-22 school year in our schools and communities all across the state. What I learned is that each community’s education team has joyously opened school with students returning with the energy and enthus...
Dear Montana, In my work as a primary care Physician Assistant I regularly advocate to all patients that they get the COVID-19 vaccine. One question I am regularly asked: “The C19 vaccine was rushed, how do I know it’s safe?” I think medicine in general struggles to explain complex subjects in a media environment where only sound-bites are heard and only a few characters on are read. Nuance and long explanation are difficult. So I want to be clear with my patients in my community: The COVID-19 vaccines are incredibly safe...
If you aren’t cynical before you get into the news business, you will be soon after. And just when I think I’m too cynical to ever be surprised by the news again, along comes a news article that just lights up my brain like a bottle rocket. I know you were expecting to see the headline and a little news summary here after that opening paragraph. Normally you would, like the ol’ one-two punch, but I have to pull that second punch and tell you that the headline and the whole...
Some days, I feel like I’m living in Dali’s famous painting with timepieces slumped and limp and empty. Except with differences. My “painting” would have the clock hands clutching at the wall in futile attempt to stay put. “What do you mean, we are well into September? August began yesterday, don’t you know?” What do I have to show for a month gone by? I mean, I haven’t accomplished anything. We are supposed to, aren’t we? We are told that, aren’t we? In my self-imposed lif...
We are reaching that point in remodeling where we seriously question whether we will ever be done. After we finally found a plumber, we thought our worries were over and progress began briskly. Our plumber had a delightful and exceptionally competent young fellow from Kenya, named Meshach, doing the tiling. We were all set for him to begin on Thursday morning, but he did not arrive. This seemed rather out of character, but we weren’t too concerned. Then he failed to show on F...
From railroaders to farm workers, rural and city, hills to the flats, and irrigated lands vs dryland farming, I continue to be in awe of the diversity we see throughout Montana Senate District 14. Ever so evident in the ag community experience this year. Harvest has been finished for over a month in the east and south parts of the district. The northwest area of the district is currently in full harvest mode. It seems the east and south were a couple of weeks ahead and the northwest is about that much behind on average. Of...
The fall of the Afghan government and the return of the Taliban has left policymakers and the public grasping for answers and apportioning blame. The deaths of 13 U.S. servicemen and -women and 170 Afghans at the Kabul Airport punctuate this tragic state of affairs. Many ask how the Afghan government, after an injection of $89 billion over 20 years, could collapse so quickly. Critical to this debate is Montana’s support for our veterans — as well as the Afghan people. We tend to assign failure to anyone who easily con...
Buying hay for my horses this year felt like a cross between the opening moments of the New York Stock exchange in a bull market and gift shopping on Black Friday — and just a skosh, or maybe even a smidge, like negotiating a nefarious black market deal. Every hay-for-sale ad or online post, as if the starting bell was ringing in the opening of the stock exchange, sent a mad crush of humans into the fray. (For anyone born later than the movie “Trading Places,” the trading floor was like a mosh pit for money rather than music....
I suppose it’s my own fault. I should have known when the toilet tank innards up and died and bled water all over the floor. But no, I had nary a clue. Then a few days later I remained blissfully unaware when my washing machine puddled all over the bodega floor. Turned out a crack eroded in the tub which had to be replaced. I should have caught on that something was afoot more than the simple mechanical obvious. The appropriate specialist doctors came out and applied the a...
Montanans personal income grew 20 percent year-over-year, housing prices are up more than 30 percent and the number of job postings in the state were 62 percent higher in July than in February 2021. It really is a recession experience like no other. What does it mean for Montana’s economy, the businesses that support it and Montanans? Bureau of Business and Economic Research Director Patrick Barkey boiled down and explained the data for the Montana Chamber Foundation’s mid-year economic update this summer. Workforce shortages...
I met my former mother-in-law, “Mama Lou,” and my former father-in-law, “Poppo,” when I was not yet 20 years old. I hitched a ride to meet them, terrified because I’d spoken to my future mother-in-law on the phone and she sounded exactly like Lauren Bacall. I arrived at their home in Wisconsin and my future father-in-law threw open the door and said, “You must be Carrie! Can I get you a drink?” In the more than 20 years that followed, I never felt anything less than welcome...
Our old friend the law of unintended consequences says that actions of people always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended, but basically, it’s just a fancy way of saying “oops.” Like the law of gravity is an explanation used in the science of physics, the law of unintended consequences comes from the social sciences, such as economics and politics (which are frequent bedfellows, though that does not matter for our purposes here today — I’m just sayin’). Historian...
Consider this to be as though you accidentally tuned into the cooking channel. The difference is that I’ll tell you about the mistakes I made along the way. When Uncle Lee retired from being a fireman in Indianapolis, he and Aunt Joanne bought an Airstream trailer in which they spent every winter, lolling in the Florida Keys. This was back when cars were built as sturdily as ocean liners and were almost as big. I picture my aunt and uncle rolling down the highway, in the t...
With enough passion, hard work, and in my case, a little luck, opportunities come about which just can’t be turned down—I’m writing this because today is my last day with Havre Daily News. While I have enjoyed getting the chance to diversify my work beyond sports with Havre Daily, I also freelance because sports are what I love. Now, I will get to mesh my childhood passions. I’m moving on to cover the incredibly unconventional worlds of professional wrestling and combat...
My husband, Peter, and I have matching folding chairs. Every Thursday evening this summer, we have attended the outdoor concert held in a local park. The music is usually good, but the food trucks are undeniably the center of the experience. Our favorite is the “Tot Boss” that sells tasty, hot tater tots out the window of the truck. Peter and I bring our own chairs. We get comfortable in our folding chairs, eat our tater tots, listen to the music, and watch the people and dog...
It was a pleasure visiting Beaver Creek Park earlier this year and having the opportunity to meet many personally involved with decisions regarding beaver. The public meeting with three experts regarding beaver was helpful, insightful, and consistent with our knowledge and observations. We appreciate, Commissioner Chair Mark Peterson, arranging to have them speak. As decisions again approach for beaver in Beaver Creek Park, we do hope the points and advice presented will be heeded. Since the stream was simplified, beaver are...
