Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/32/)
Plans for further improvements in the far east end of downtown Billings were detailed Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Billings Industrial Revitalization District. Those plans include street, sidewalk and lighting upgrades in a nine-block area between north 10th and 13th streets and from First to Fourth Avenue North, with a total estimated price tag of just under $6 million. (more…) Continue Reading →
Billings lawyer Bill Cole is now the third announced candidate hoping to replace Mayor Tom Hanel in the city election this fall. He joins architect Randy Hafer and state legislator Jeff Essmann, both of whom announced their candidacies in the past couple of weeks. Hanel is nearing the end of his second term as mayor, and under the City Charter, the mayor and City Council members are limited to two consecutive terms. (more…) Continue Reading →
Dennis Ulvestad says he’s ready to make his fifth run for the Billings City Council. In a press release from Lori Johnson, described as his campaign and public relations manager, Ulvestad said he will be running again in Ward 5. He ran for the same seat unsuccessfully every two years between 2009 and 2015. Filing for city elections opens Thursday, with the mayoralty and five City Council seats up for grabs this year. Ulvestad was born in Glasgow and moved to Billings with his family in 1957, graduating from Billings West High School in 1968. Continue Reading →
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington, D.C., on April 29 for the Peoples Climate March. One of them will be Kandi Mossett, who lives between Rockvale and Joliet. But don’t assume she’ll be daunted by the cig city or the big crowds. (more…) Continue Reading →
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against the founder of a neo-Nazi website who led a campaign of harassment against a Jewish woman in Whitefish. Filed in U.S. District Court in Missoula, the lawsuit says Andrew Anglin coordinated a “repulsive, threatening campaign of anti-Semitic harassment directed at Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent living in Whitefish, Montana.” (more…) Continue Reading →
With three days to go before candidates can file to run in Billings municipal races, it’s already shaping up to be an unusually interesting election year. Architect Randy Hafer became the first person to throw his hat in the ring, announcing earlier this month that he intends to run for mayor. The mayor’s race is wide open because Tom Hanel, having served two consecutive terms, can’t run again this year. (more…) Continue Reading →
Even if you live in Eastern Montana and have never heard of, much less read, the Missoula Independent, you ought to be worried about the fate of that alternative weekly newspaper. The Indy, which has been around for more than 25 years, has had its ups and downs, but generally speaking it was a worthy successor to the underground and alternative newspapers that came before it, and which made Missoula the only city in Montana with a real tradition of that sort of journalism. (more…) Continue Reading →
Teachers from around Montana received a joyous lesson in the power of music Wednesday at Montana State University Billings. First they watched “The Music of Strangers,” a 2015 documentary about the Silk Road Ensemble, an international-music project founded 16 years ago by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Then they had the chance to listen to and speak with two dynamic members of the ensemble—a bagpiper from Spain and a bamboo-flute player from Japan. (more…) Continue Reading →
It’s time for the second annual Last Best News fundraising party. The first Last Best News bash was held on Feb. 26, 2016, on an unusually beautiful day that brought about 400 people to the Garage Pub at the Yellowstone Valley Brewing Company. I wrote in the aftermath of that event that we hoped we wouldn’t need a fundraiser again for a good long while. However, as I said, “we also agreed that the party was so much fun that we ought to make it an annual event.” Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: We went to the opening of “Young Guns,” a new exhibit at Tyler Murphy’s Montana Gallery, 2710 Second Ave. N., Friday night, and we liked what we saw. It wasn’t just that the paintings were good, which they were. We were impressed with the way Murphy interspersed throughout the exhibit short, typewritten descriptions of the painting trip he made with a couple of fellow artists. Besides saying some cool things about Montana, Murphy really captured the joy of creativity, the inspiration of shared work. Continue Reading →
