Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/83/)
It seems everybody in the country has been talking about last week’s Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage and Obamacare, but you can’t fault Peter Miller for focusing on a more obscure ruling that came down Monday. (more…) Continue Reading →
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Meetinghouse, 912 Wicks Lane
Meeting: 9 a.m., Sunday, May 4, 2014
Length of meeting: 1 hour, 12 minutes. Length of testimony: 32 minutes
I entered the Mormons’ meetinghouse with a heavy load of stereotypes and old prejudices on my shoulders. (more…) Continue Reading →
Years ago, in an essay I wrote to explain how I had become an amateur collector of old books, I talked about discovering the pleasures of a good hardback. “The very weight of a book,” I wrote, “the sturdy feel of its pages, the soft thump of a book falling closed: all these conspired to persuade me that mere paperbacks were no longer enough.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Travis Kavulla, vice chairman of the Montana Public Service Commission, gives readers of the Wall Street Journal a good, straightforward explanation of the comprehensive water compact with the Salish and Kootenai tribes in northwestern Montana. I can’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs of the voluminous, complex compact, but Kavulla makes a good case that it makes the best of a very difficult situation. Here’s a key part of his piece:
Even as whites resisted quantifying water use, the Salish and Kootenai tribal government hired a small army of hydrologists to measure theirs and anthropologists to document the historic range of their people. Since the 1980s, they have been compiling a meticulous record, preparing for the day when they would have to prove their claims in court. With the compact, that water war doesn’t need to be fought, saysHertha Lund, an attorney representing large irrigators on the reservation. Continue Reading →
A few months back, I wrote an article—an appreciation, really—about the Montana News Association. The editors of Noise & Color, an entertainment and culture magazine in Billings, commissioned the piece because they knew I was obsessed with the Montana News Association. Hell, the whole universe knows because the MNA itself reported the fact.* (more…) Continue Reading →
In light of all the attention being paid to the Confederate flag these days, I thought I should bring to your attention a fine op-ed piece that Craig Lancester wrote for Last Best News last August. In “The Confederate flag and the NDO,” Lancaster wrote about how, as a teenager, he and his classmates at Richland High School in North Richland Hills, Texas, rebuffed a request from the local chapter of the NAACP to remove that flag from the school’s letterhead, uniforms, etc. It is a good, timely piece, worth reading again. I should also update Craig’s bio at the end of the piece. It reads: Craig Lancaster, of Billings, is the author of the novels “600 Hours of Edward,” “Edward Adrift,” “The Summer Son” and the forthcoming “The Fallow Season of Hugo Hunter.”
Well, that forthcoming book has been out for a while, and his new forthcoming book is called “This Is What I Want.” Continue Reading →
Everywhere you go in Billings, the effects of last November’s harsh temperatures are starkly apparent. Two of the most common trees and shrubs—junipers and arborvitae—were hit hard by the early freeze, leaving thousands of the plants with brown, dead-looking foliage. (more…) Continue Reading →
A Billings police officer who was found to have committed justifiable homicide in two fatal shootings in two years is now the subject of an internal investigation by the Billings Police Department. Police Chief Rich St. John said Officer Grant Morrison is being investigated after an anonymous complainant said Morrison has routinely been violating city codes in Laurel, where he lives with his family. (more…) Continue Reading →
Pilgrim Congregational Church, 409 S. 36th St. Service: 10 a.m., Sunday, April 13, 2014
Length of service: 61 minutes. Length of sermon: 26 minutes
It’s hard not to like a church when you’ve been there for the ham raffle. (more…) Continue Reading →
If I had to choose my favorite story out of the 600-some pieces that have been posted on Last Best News in the 17 months of its existence, I think I’d go with our story on the Brockway Dairy Day Rodeo. (more…) Continue Reading →
