Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/118/)
A friend of mine who used to go to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival every year told me that on the drive back to Montana, after four or five solid days of music, he couldn’t even listen to the radio. He was filled to the gills, exhausted, all the listening space between his ears depleted. (more…) Continue Reading →
HELENA — Mulish perseverance and defiant self-sufficiency are as much a part of a craftsman’s longevity as flair and skill. Helena bootmaker Mike Ryan, a native of Brusett, has never been one to put his fate in others; his fate stays in his own hands. (more…) Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared in the summer 2011 issue of the Montana Quarterly. We are publishing it today on Last Best News because it is included in a new anthology, “An Elk River Books Reader: Billings and Livingston Area Writers,” which is officially being released tonight at Elk River Books in Livingston. The Mai Wah Building on Mercury Street in Uptown Butte is a Chinese cultural museum these days, but when I lived in Butte in the early 1980s, the main room on the ground floor housed a junk shop. The first time I saw it, the store was closed, so I pressed my face to the window to see what was inside. What I saw, amid the heaps of tools, battered home furnishings, tennis racquets, bottles and decomposing rugs, was a small collection of books. (more…) Continue Reading →
In February, the Yellowstone Valley Citizens Council called a meeting in downtown Billings to support residents of Carbon and Stillwater counties as they braced for an onslaught of oil and gas drilling. (more…) Continue Reading →
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS — Abraham and Betty Morrow have never met Sunil Kumar, of Hyderabad, India, but he is a key figure in their fraud lawsuit against Bank of America. (more…) Continue Reading →
On a bookshelf above my desk, Thomas Hickey looks down at me every day with his perpetual expression of forlorn longing. All I know of Mr. Hickey is that he lived at 14 Patrick Street, Fermoy, and that he was 45 years old when he died on Oct. 28, 1942. (more…) Continue Reading →
The entertainment value of Montana politics is at rock bottom this election year. (more…) Continue Reading →
Most of the television I watch is at the Y, from an elliptical machine, with no sound on the TV, just close captioning. I know that doesn’t qualify me as a television critic, but I saw two things yesterday that cried out for comment. One was that CNN was advertising a new 10-part documentary series on the 1960s. Thank goodness! Finally, the forgotten decade is going to get some exposure. Continue Reading →
People living near Zimmerman Trail probably don’t need to worry about the prospect of earth-shattering explosions to bring down dangerous rock formations. (more…) Continue Reading →
