Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/culture/page/9/)
GREAT FALLS — It almost sounds like some kind of Olympic event: Bike 1,200 miles across the rugged terrain of Montana in six weeks, stopping every few days to put on a play. And carry everything you need to live and perform—food, clothing, sleeping gear, costumes, sets, props and musical instruments—on those bicycles. It’s a combination that Billings native Kean Haunt finds intriguing and satisfying. (more…) Continue Reading →
The centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Yellowstone County Museum is a Ghost Dance shirt made for a son of Sitting Bull, but Kathy Barton’s favorite piece in the exhibit is a pair of Arapaho moccasins. Barton, the museum’s curator, said the soles of the moccasins are clearly marked with a series of horizontal scratches, vivid testimony to the side-to-side shuffling motion that marked Ghost Dance ceremonies. (more…) Continue Reading →
Mike Booth and Cory Johnson started the Red Lodge Songwriters Festival last year, hoping it would become an annual event that got bigger every year. It looks like they’re on the right track. The second annual festival starts next Thursday, June 22, and this year will feature two members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, with 12 shows at six Red Lodge venues scheduled during the three-day event. (more…) Continue Reading →
Big Sky Pride is bringing its annual LGBT celebration back to Billings for the first time in nearly a decade, and organizers say it will be the biggest one ever. The week-long celebration will kick off with a Community Night at Hooligan’s Sports Bar this Monday and end with a “Recovery Brunch” on Sunday, June 18, at the Last Chance Pub & Cider Mill. (more…) Continue Reading →
A little more than a year after starting a bakery in her home kitchen, making Russian, French and Eastern European pastries for customers who placed orders by phone or via the internet, Veronika Baukema is almost ready to open a brick-and-mortar pastry shop on Montana Avenue. The self-taught baker said she learned a lot from books and YouTube videos, but she thinks her passion for baking is the most important thing she has going for her. “And I practice,” she said. “I practice. I practice.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Growing up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Marcus Dewey learned to do beadwork from his mother and grandmother. His grandmother’s most important lesson was a simple one. “I always asked my grandma, ‘Is there an easier way?’ And she said, ‘No, there’s only one way.’ And that’s what she taught me.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Gus Koernig had the unusual distinction of anchoring evening news broadcasts for both KULR-8 and KTVQ-2 in Billings before moving to Arizona in 2005. There he writes news stories for iHeartMedia, has ghostwritten five nonfiction books and now is the co-author of his first work of fiction. (more…) Continue Reading →
When Jennifer French was in first grade, she drew a horse. And after looking at the similar drawings of the other kids, she realized her horse looked a lot more like a horse. From that moment forward, Jennifer knew exactly what she wanted to do. When people asked her as a child, she told them straight up, “I want to be an artist and a part-time waitress.”
So even then, French had a notion that being an artist might represent a conflict between the creative and the practical. French’s father worked for Conoco, and because of his job, they moved every three years or so. Continue Reading →
You know when you start a project and you think it will be simple and straight-forward but then you dig into it a little and it turns out it is going to be way more complicated than you thought and if you had known that in the beginning you probably wouldn’t have taken it on in the first place? That’s what happened to me last year when I proposed a “Top 10 Montana photographers to follow on Instagram” story to Last Best News. (more…) Continue Reading →
Jonah is a bilingual desk clerk working an emotionally wearisome hotel job in Montana. Buster is a puzzling mountain man who breaks into people’s vacation homes for food and shelter and occasionally defecates in their kitchen pots. How the two men are connected and the relationship between them is the crux of “Buster’s Mal Heart,” a well-crafted mystery-thriller in which the title character is haunted by visions of a past life while being pursued by the authorities. The movie was shot in and around Kalispell in October and November 2015. (more…) Continue Reading →
