Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/51/)
Ted Kim thinks his web-based comedy series has two big things going for it. One is a strong concept, which he describes as “a love story about two sisters who can never get in synch,” and in fact are constantly at war. The other is that it is being filmed in Billings and Roundup, tapping into a national and even an international fascination with Montana. (more…) Continue Reading →
The title of Aaron Parrett’s new book, “Montana Americana Music: Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country,” published this summer by The History Press, was more than enough to draw me in. What made it irresistible was to see that the foreword was written by Smith Henderson, the Montana native whose first novel, “Fourth of July Creek,” published in 2014, was so uncommonly good. (more…) Continue Reading →
Dear Billings Gazette,
You’ve probably figured this out by now, but just in case: On the guest column you ran this morning, written by former Montana secretary of state and governor candidate Bob Brown, you attached a mug of some other chap. I know it’s difficult, there being so many Bob Browns in the world. I’ve talked about this with several other Bob Browns I know. But the Bob Brown who wrote the guest editorial is the most famous Bob Brown in Montana, I venture to say, and he deserves to have the right mugshot attached to his column. He also deserves recognition because he represents the kind of Republican who is quickly disappearing from the world. Continue Reading →
I wasn’t sure the world needed yet another rapturous homage to Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It,” but I read this New York Times story anyway. It was written by Jon Gluck, a managing editor at Vogue magazine, who says he was a boy in Upstate New York when he fell under the sway of Robert Redford’s film version of the novella, and then went on to read the book itself. He was even more enraptured. “It wasn’t just the fishing,” he writes. “If there is a smarter, more affecting meditation on the themes of fathers and sons, brothers, the pleasures of the natural world, love, loss and the haunting power of water, I have yet to come across it.” Continue Reading →
Grace, the badly injured, half-starved horse that was rescued from the wilderness outside Cooke City, has a new owner. Park County commissioners voted Tuesday morning to allow Debbi Purvis to buy the horse from the county. Purvis said it was a victory for the community of Cooke City, where she lives and is a part owner of the Beartooth Cafe. (more…) Continue Reading →
Montana doesn’t have any concert venues with the wide renown of places like the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado or the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state. But how many states have three venues as cool as the White Sulphur Springs cow pasture that is the home of the Red Ants Pants Music Festival; uptown Butte, with its Montana Folk Festival; and Montana Avenue, site of the Magic City Blues festival? (more…) Continue Reading →
Just call her amazing Grace. The 5-year-old sorrel survived at least two months in the depths of the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, hobbled by a bad leg wound and unable to leave an area thick with deadfall. Kay and Bill Whittle, the Cooke City couple who rescued Grace, surmised that she had been injured crossing the upper reaches of the Stillwater River, then cut loose by the man who owned her, 49-year-old Christopher Shaul. (more…) Continue Reading →
RED LODGE — “It’s about the batteries, stupid.” Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he thought of using that phrase—which occurred to him the first time he drove an all-electric Tesla car—as the title for the book he published last year. (more…) Continue Reading →
Love it or hate it, graffiti art is slowly spreading in Billings, covering more and more walls either by commission or permission. Probably the best known spot is the “art alley” between the 3200 blocks of First and Second avenues north. It was created as part of a collaboration between the Downtown Billings Association, Sherwin-Williams and the Underground Culture Krew. (more…) Continue Reading →
Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1996, I drove for more than 20 miles along the Yellowstone River in the passenger seat of Norm Schoenthal’s battered pickup truck. Schoenthal was then the greenway coordinator for the Yellowstone River Parks Association. I was working for the Billings Gazette, having recently gone back to reporting after working as an editor for seven years. (more…) Continue Reading →
