Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/52/)
A week from Saturday, some of the best chefs in Billings will be serving some of their favorite appetizers—more than 20,000 of them. The occasion will be the Taste of Summer fundraiser at the Billings Depot, an outdoor, all-you-can-eat-and-drink event featuring 15 restaurants, nearly 20 Montana breweries, all kinds of wine and live music. (more…) Continue Reading →
Bob Funk likes to talk about the absurdity of lumping everyone with a mental illness into the same category, even though there are more 200 classified mental illnesses. “Someone with diabetes isn’t described as a ‘physically ill person’ the same way someone with depression is described as being ‘mentally ill,'” he wrote in a recent opinion piece. The key is knowledge, he said, and in the same piece he went on to say: “Just as someone knows and understands the difference between a broken arm and the flu, people should know the difference between OCD and panic disorder. That understanding begins with real, honest, and specific conversations. It’s beyond important—it’s essential to ending stigma.” Continue Reading →
Like most long-established taverns in Billings, the Rainbow Bar has always had a fair number of regulars. It’s doubtful any of them are quite as regular as Linda Jacobson. Besides having run the Rainbow for just over 30 years, she lived in rooms behind the bar as a kid and has spent virtually all of her life in and around the Montana Avenue tavern. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jennifer Lawrence is moving to Billings! It’s true. The “Hunger Games” star said she’s had it with Hollywood and she wants to live in a town where people know their neighbors, where a celebrity can go to the 7-Eleven in her pajamas at 1 a.m. for a pack of smokes without a gang of paparazzi dogging her every step of the way. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last weekend at Second Edition Books, a great used-book store in Uptown Butte, I purchased a copy of “The Vigilantes of Montana” by Prof. Thomas J. Dimsdale. It’s an odd softcover edition, published in 1937 by McKee Printing Co. in Butte, with a cartoon-like illustration on the front cover. I was glad to have found such an unusual edition of a Montana classic. (more…) Continue Reading →
Billings Police Chief Rich St. John and longtime activist Eran Thompson agree on one thing: Billings needs more cops. They both see true community policing, which gives cops a chance to interact in a meaningful way with the people they serve, as the best way to close the divisions separating communities and police departments across the country. And good community policing takes more cops on the street than Billings has. (more…) Continue Reading →
It turns out that stupid-people tricks in Yellowstone National Park—you know, people petting bison, taking selfies with bears, walking on thermal features—are not strictly a modern phenomenon. As Mike Stark makes plain in his new book, “Wrecked in Yellowstone,” things were even worse in the earliest days of the world’s first national park. (more…) Continue Reading →
This story includes an important update. See below. The Missoulian recently reported that a house for sale on Shelter Island on Flathead Lake is the “largest and most expensive private home in Montana.” (more…) Continue Reading →
When I heard Uber was coming to Montana, I couldn’t wait. I was dying to be part of this new phenomenon, to be in the front ranks of a cutting-edge movement—even if it has been around elsewhere for years. Plus, I needed the dough. (more…) Continue Reading →
Walking up to his new house a few blocks from downtown Billings, Randy Hafer apologizes for the tall weeds in the dirt surrounding the home. “The focus has not been on the outside of the house,” he says. That’s understandable. On the inside, the house is so advanced that there is nothing like it in Montana, and not many like it in the whole country. (more…) Continue Reading →
