Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/112/)
If you’re wondering why Magic City Blues has lasted so long and has been so successful, it’s not because Tim Goodridge is a master planner or strategic thinker. He just knows a few important things, one of which is that people get bored quickly. That’s why Goodridge, who founded the downtown Billings music festival in 2002, has continued adjusting, tweaking and changing the event year after year. (more…) Continue Reading →
Red Menahan was one of the first people I met when I started my reporting career in the Anaconda Bureau of the Montana Standard in 1980. I knew Red’s cousin, John McNay, so we were introduced to Red and his wife, Shirley, and we soon became good friends and frequent visitors at their house. (more…) Continue Reading →
Big Dipper Ice Cream, a popular Missoula ice cream parlor that was featured on “Good Morning America,” is coming to downtown Billings. The store will be jointly owned by Big Dipper founder Charlie Beaton and Bryan and Sarah Hickey. Bryan Hickey said they hope to start renovating their downtown location in October and open “ideally by Valentine’s Day 2015.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Way back in 2005, I appeared in a panel discussion on blogging at the Festival of the Book in Missoula. Others on the panel were John Clayton, of Red Lodge, and Patia Stephens and Courtney Lowery, both of Missoula. Courtney, now Lowery Cowgill, was then working for NewWest, a pioneer in digital journalism. The site, alas, did not survive, but while it lasted Courtney was its animating spirt and consistently its best writer. She is now working on a farm, raising children and somehow serving as managing editor of PBS MediaShift, in which role she conducted an email interview with me about Last Best News. The result was posted this morning. Continue Reading →
Robert K. Elder has 6-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, who’ve never been to Billings. So when Elder brings them to his hometown town this week and next, he’s planning to take them to all those places he visited as a kid — including Cody, Wyo., Yellowstone National Park and MontanaFair. Elder also hopes that he and his wife, Betsy Edgerton, can take in one night of the Magic City Blues festival while they’re here. (more…) Continue Reading →
BROCKWAY — Charlie Moline will tell you that Brockway is famous for four things. In 1934 it shipped more livestock by rail than any other town in the United States. It used to be the smallest town in the world with a drive-in theater. (more…) Continue Reading →
You want to talk about problems with transients on Montana Avenue? Talk to Mike Schaer. When he moved his computer business to the avenue 33 years ago, there were vacant buildings all along Montana, and “the transients were really all over the place.” (more…) Continue Reading →
BRIDGER — Marguerite Jodry was majoring in music at the University of Montana when she found her way into the local food movement. She worked in Sheridan, Wyo., on an AmeriCorps-VISTA food project, then worked as an intern at the Amaltheia Organic Dairy in Belgrade, where she arrived amid the kidding season. “I was a goat midwife,” she said. (more…) Continue Reading →
Deb Thomas of Clark, Wyo., talks about the many disadvantages of living near six oil wells — the air and water pollution, the dust, noise, lights and heavy traffic. Bob and Mary Johnson talk about living in the midst of the Bakken oil boom on their North Dakota farm, and their hopes that the same kind of development doesn’t come to the Red Lodge area, where they retired. (more…) Continue Reading →
