Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/author/edkemmick/page/89/)
BEAR GULCH—On the ranch her grandparents homesteaded almost a century ago, Macie Lundin Ahlgren is ascending a trail beneath steep cliffs of layered limestone. Stopping on the trail and gesturing to a rock wall behind her, she mentions an archaeologist who visited the site years ago. (more…) Continue Reading →
Chapter 2: Mount Olive Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), 2336 St. Johns Ave. Service, 10:45 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014
Length of service: 1 hour, 10 minutes. Length of sermon: 17 minutes
I decided to attend a Lutheran service on my second outing for the simple reason that it seemed likely to be the least unusual to someone brought up Catholic. Continue Reading →
Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana. —Merle Haggard
When I lived in Missoula in the 1970s, it sometimes seemed that a week couldn’t go by without my being invited to a slide show. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last May, my old Billings Gazette colleague Dennis Gaub wrote a profile of Norm Clarke for Last Best News, just before Clarke came back to Montana to deliver the commencement address to graduates of Montana State University Billings. This is how Dennis’ article started:
“Norm Clarke agrees: he’s come a long way from his small-town start. “His lengthy journalism career began when he was in high school in his Eastern Montana hometown of Terry. The personable Clarke talked the editor of the local weekly newspaper, the Terry Tribune, into letting him report on a Class C basketball tournament in a nearby town.” Yes, he has come a long way, and on Friday Clarke was given the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club. Continue Reading →
Eric Stern, Montana’s deputy secretary of state, has written a good piece in Salon about why the Koch brothers’ well-publicized attempt to torpedo Medicaid expansion in Montana failed so spectacularly. The piece is a few days old now (and was published one day before Gov. Steve Bullock signed into law a piece of legislation also hated by the Kochs’ minions) and it is obviously very partisan, but I think Stern is mostly right. His main point is that the anti-Medicaid campaign was so clearly run by out-of-state stooges that it offended regular Montanans. Who likes being hectored, lectured and talked down to by a bunch of punks in suits—punks who can’t even be bothered to know, within a million or two, what the population of Montana is? Stern also makes this good point:
“Tea Party threats aren’t what they used to be. Continue Reading →
Next month, less than a year after he was censured by the Montana Supreme Court for comments he made while sentencing a man who raped a 14-year-old girl, retired District Judge G. Todd Baugh will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Yellowstone Area Bar Association. Marian Bradley, president of the Montana chapter of the National Organization for Women, said there is “something absolutely wrong” with members of the local bar giving Baugh the award. (more…) Continue Reading →
POPLAR — Starting next week, after she retires on May 1, Vina Smith intends to slow down. Those who know her well will believe it when they see it. For 18 years, as the environmental educator for the Fort Peck Tribes, she has been a tireless teacher, role model and activist. She has helped plant thousands of trees, organized annual cleanup days, started recycling programs and made presentations at conferences across the country. (more…) Continue Reading →
MILES CITY—Wally Badgett is one of many people looking forward to construction of a $3.2 million Agricultural Advancement Center on the west end of Miles City. He coaches the rodeo team at Miles Community College, the only team in the region without an indoor arena. But the rodeo season is in the fall and spring, so most of the time the team does just fine outdoors, and in a pinch it can rent a private indoor arena outside of town. (more…) Continue Reading →
Chapter 1: St. Patrick Co-Cathedral, 215 N. 31st St. Service, 10:30 a.m., Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013
Length of service: 60 minutes. Length of sermon: 5½ minutes
This service was a mixture of the familiar and the strange. Continue Reading →
I see where a young feller who works for the newspaper in Helena has written a piece headlined “10 things out-of-towners quickly learn after moving to Montana.”
It seems this young feller, Landon Hemsley, moved here in January from San Diego, which makes him more of an out-of-stater than an out-of-towner, but we’ll blame an editor, not Landon, for the headline. (more…) Continue Reading →
