Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/culture/page/37/)
Around the Next Bend: A Fly Angler’s Journey, by Jerry Kustich. HeadWater Books, 2013. 199 pages, $24.95.
If this book were only about fishing, I can’t imagine I would have finished it. (more…) Continue Reading →
Before Michael Hitchcock ended up in Billings last fall, he had a wide, varied career in the business world. The Wisconsin native said he managed several fast-food restaurants in the Midwest, ran a machine shop, went into mechanical design, worked in China as a project manager for an import company, ran his own import-export business and even wrote a book about using business strategies to achieve personal happiness. (more…) Continue Reading →
Neil LaRubbio is a journalist and filmmaker currently working the oil fields of Colorado. He has written for High Country News and Vice.com. This is his inside look at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. I arrived at the little house after a 12-hour drive, sustained by canned-salmon sandwiches and loose tobacco. Brushed by years of soot, the little house sits 20 feet away from the Missoula rail yard. Continue Reading →
Neil Gaiman was a shrewd choice to bring in for a reading during the extended celebration of the new Billings Public Library. Appearing Friday night at the Babcock Theatre, courtesy of the Friends of the Library and the library foundation, he spoke lovingly of his own immersion in libraries as a boy and of their continuing importance in our culture. (more…) Continue Reading →
When Café DeCamp closed a year ago Monday, many people were left wondering about the small restaurant, once nestled in Billings’ industrial North Side. (more…) Continue Reading →
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath, by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman, 2009. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 464 pages, $30.
The central character in this history is Ben Steele, the Bataan survivor and artist who, now in his mid-90s, lives in Billings. Given that I greatly admire Steele and have written about him on several occasions, why did it take me four years to start reading this book? (more…) Continue Reading →
For a couple of years, Adrian Jawort had been thinking about what he could do to promote contemporary Native American fiction writers. He is a Northern Cheyenne who grew up in Lockwood and Billings, a successful freelance journalist who has been interested in writing fiction since he was a young boy. He knew there was hardly any market for native writers. (more…) Continue Reading →
Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet, by Todd Wilkinson, 2013. Lyons Press, 371 pages, $26.95
There are a lot of big names in this book besides Turner’s. Todd Wilkinson has revealing conversations with Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Al Gore, Kofi Annan and Jane Fonda, among others. (more…) Continue Reading →
Growing up in Roundup, Hannah Appell was involved in theater even before she began school. Though she never did get down to Billings to take part in any productions, she was frequently in the audience at the Alberta Bair Theater, where she saw many plays and “tons of operas” over the years. (more…) Continue Reading →
Nearly 40 years clear of it, I still remember my first visit to a public library. It’s not with the crystal recall I might have boasted 20 years ago, when there was more tread on the tires, but the wonder — at the stacks of books, thousands of them, all there for the claiming — remains fresh, as if it happened yesterday. And in a way, it did. (more…) Continue Reading →
