Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/87/)
Bryan Stafford, director of the Big Sky Fencing Association—think swords, not cattle—had one small goal in mind when he approached the Montana Rescue Mission last year. His fencing club needed a new space to practice and compete, and he knew that MRM owned a huge, almost entirely vacant complex of connected buildings on Minnesota Avenue. His plans grew more expansive after he toured the buildings with Mission Director Perry Roberts. (more…) Continue Reading →
First Baptist Church, 218 N. 35th St. Service, 9 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014
Length of service: 1 hour, 5 minutes. Length of sermon: 31 minutes. A few minutes into his sermon, Pastor Ross Lieuallen apologized for an equipment malfunction that was preventing him from displaying the next point of his homily on the two big-screen TVs in the front of the sanctuary. Continue Reading →
Graduates, first let me apologize for not actually appearing at your graduation ceremony. But surely you will understand, even if your parents do not, that flesh-and-blood commencement speakers are relics of the past. Indeed, some of those speakers were themselves relics, tired old politicians and so-called self-made men who dispensed fool’s-gold wisdom about “the real world.” (more…) Continue Reading →
At this time of year in downtown Billings, Matt Lennick’s phone should be ringing a lot more than it has been. Lennick, a downtown resource officer who works for the Police Department but whose pay is covered by a special tax on downtown property owners, said he’s still waiting to see statistical comparisons between this year and last, but this year sure feels different. (more…) Continue Reading →
The Wall Street Journal is offering a tantalizing slideshow of a hot property for sale in Western Montana. The nearly 1,200-acre property, with a mile of Blackfoot River frontage, is being sold by Nina and Pat Brock, the former CEO of Brock Candy, referred to by the Journal as the “Gummy Bear Heir.” It’s a pretty spectacular place, but the asking price is $10.5 million. Which is too bad, because if it were only $8 million or so, I’d probably buy it. Continue Reading →
In 1997, when she was 12, Erin Popovich decided to give swimming a try. She had been living in Butte since she was 5 and had played every available sport in elementary school, in addition to club soccer and competitive horse showing. But she was born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, and by age 12 her condition was making soccer difficult. (more…) Continue Reading →
ROCKVALE—It’s been slow going on Highway 212 near Rockvale this week. As part of the reconstruction of Highway 212 between Rockvale and south of Laurel, which began early last year and won’t be completed until 2017 at the earliest, the asphalt surface of 212 from Rockvale to a point about a mile northeast of there is being milled off this week. (more…) Continue Reading →
Close watchers of the legislative process probably knew this already, but I have only just been made aware that Montana now has an official state soil. Scobey soil, the Bozeman Chronicle informs us, is “a deep clay loam that holds water well” and “was selected because of its importance to the state’s wheat production in the Golden Triangle region of north-central Montana.” The dirt on this bill is that it was conceived by fourth-grade students at Longfellow Elementary School in Bozeman. Kristin Sigler, one of the Longfellow teachers who helped prepare the legislation and lobby for its passage, said the fight wasn’t easy. “We had an uphill battle when lawmakers thought this might be a trivial effort,” she said. Continue Reading →
Darcie Howard, director of the Montana Audubon Center, was not impressed when she first heard about something called a “nature play space.”
The center’s mission is to get children out into nature, into the wild, so creating a manmade “natural area” didn’t seem like a very good idea. (more…) Continue Reading →
First Church of Christ, Scientist, 7 Burlington Ave. Service, 10:30 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 2, 2014
Length of service: 56 minutes. Length of sermon: 27 minutes. At the First Church of Christ, Scientist, it was hard not to be won over by the beautiful setting. Continue Reading →
