Ed Kemmick

Ed Kemmick has been a newspaper reporter, editor and columnist since 1980. Except for four years in his home state of Minnesota, he has spent his entire journalism career in Montana, working in Missoula, Anaconda, Butte and Billings. "The Big Sky, By and By," a collection of some of his newspaper stories and columns, plus a few essays and one short story, was published in 2011.

Recent Posts

More attention for a worthy artist

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Crow

I’ve been meaning to post this since Friday, when the Billings Gazette featured Ben Pease in a story about the Yellowstone Art Museum’s annual auction. I wanted to draw readers’ attention to a story I wrote about Ben in the earliest days of Last Best News. We had a lot fewer readers then, naturally, so I wanted to give current readers a chance to catch up. I also wrote a short blog item about how I stumbled onto Ben’s great work at the Montana Folk Festival in Butte and just knew I had to write a story about him. As a bonus, the story contains some fine John Warner photographs. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Ben Pease, Montana Folk Festival, Yellowstone Art Museum

Prairie Lights: Refining the Montana bucket list

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Hank

Excuse me for being late on this, but I just discovered (on Facebook, the unsleeping recycler of pop culture) that the Great Falls Tribune published a Big Sky bucket list in December. The Tribune presented “100 activities every Montanan should have on a bucket list of things to do in a lifetime.” I found it impossible not to read the article from start to finish, and impossible not to keep a running tally of how many of the activities I had already done. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Prairie Lights, Brockway Dairy Day Rodeo, Crazy Mountain Inn, Great Falls Tribune, Magic City Blues, Missouri Headwaters State Park, Montana Folk Festival, Oxford Saloon

Downtown seeks support for public intoxication law

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The Downtown Billings Alliance is hoping to round up supporters of a bill that would allow cities to pass laws prohibiting public intoxication. Passage of Senate Bill 360, introduced by Sen. Doug Kary, R-Billings, is seen as an important component of larger plans to deal with ever-escalating complaints about the safety and appearance of downtown streets and sidewalks. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, Bruce McIntyre, Downtown Billings Alliance, Ed Bartlett, Montana Legislature, Sen.Doug Kary

Garfield County packs gym for young rancher’s funeral

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Gym

JORDAN—Having already opened their pocketbooks, residents of Garfield County opened their hearts Monday to the family of Owen Murnion, who was killed in a farm accident four days earlier. Hundreds of people crowded into the gym of Garfield County High School in tiny Jordan to pay their respects to Owen, 38, and to show their support for his wife, Briana, and their seven young daughters. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, News, Anne Miller, Briana Murnion, Bruce Wright, Garfield County, Jake Stroh, Jordan

After rancher’s death, help pours in for wife, 7 daughters

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Daughters

Thursday evening, on the day a Jordan-area rancher died, friends started a Web-based fundraiser to help the wife and seven daughters he left behind. By Sunday afternoon, more than 500 people had donated over $54,000 to the family of Owen Murnion, who died Thursday while unloading farm equipment he had bought in North Dakota. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Montana, Anne Miller, Brussett, GoFundMe, Jordan, Miles City Livestock Commission, Owen and Briana Murnion

Clothing bans? Let us add our suggestions

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Bike

Auxilliary editor’s note: Important clarifications have been made to the editor’s note at the bottom of this column. Poor David Moore. For the past four or five sessions of the Montana Legislature, at least one lawmaker—invariably a Republican, I feel compelled to point out—has made himself a national laughingstock. Moore, a state House member from Missoula, was catapulted to infamy after he introduced a bill that contained, even in its short summary version, the phrase “private parts.” That is never a good sign, and some of the language included in the full text of the bill made things even worse. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Prairie Lights, Montana Legislature, Montanabuzz.com, Rep. David Moore, Steve Shirley, Yoga pants

Tribal leader, healer, to receive governor’s award

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Snell

Billings resident William Snell was to be honored in Helena on Friday for his decades of work to improve the health and wellbeing of Native Americans in Montana. Snell, currently the project manager for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leadership Council, along with six other individuals and organizations, is to receive a ServeMontana Award at noon Friday in the old Supreme Court chambers of the state Capitol. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Culture, Montana, Alma Snell, Pretty Shield, Pretty Shield Foundation, Sherry Matteucci, Steve Bullock, Terry Zee Lee

County museum exhibit tells local story of World War I

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Pants

Among the contributions made by residents of Yellowstone County to achieve victory in World War I was the tireless needlework of Peter Peroe. The Red Cross encouraged people to abandon their dainty knitting and instead create regulation clothing and supplies for American soldiers. In response, knitters in Yellowstone County made more than 26,500 items and knit more than 22,000 garments. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, Culture, Armistice Day, Benjamin Nordlund, Kathy Barton, Red Cross, World War I, Yellowstone County Museum

Senior High plans mural party, asks help in finding artists

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Hitler

If you’re interested in the effort to preserve and restore the 100-some murals painted on the walls of Billings Senior High School, mark March 16 on your calendar. That’s the night the “Save Our Murals” volunteer committee is having an open house at Senior High. There will be music, guided tours, treats and the chance to speak with many of the artists responsible for the murals. (more…) Continue Reading →

Filed under: Billings, Culture, 'Save Our Murals', Billings Senior High School, Hannah Lose, Houston Harmon, James Harkins, John Dahl

For your viewing pleasure, new aerial photos of giant house

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Big house

For no particular reason except that Marty Connell has kindly provided us with new aerial photos, we offer up—you guessed it!—new aerials photos of what is going to be the biggest house ever built in Yellowstone County. We have written about the big house before, so we won’t go into all the particulars again. Suffice it to say it will be a 26,000-square-foot castle-like abode with a bowling alley, home theater, indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a drawbridge. It is being built just northeast of the developed part of the Ironwood Subdivision. And no, we still don’t know who is going to live there, though rumors continue to fly and dozens of readers have told us who it is. Continue Reading →

Filed under: Last Best Blog, Ironwood Subdivision, Larry and Amy Price, Marty Connell, Scheels