Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/montana/page/47/)
Jolene Burdge does not look at Dennis Hastert and see a man who used to hold one of the most powerful positions in the United States. “This whole thing of him being the speaker of the House and the third in line to the presidency—I know it’s there, but it’s just not as prominent in my mind as being a teacher from a small town,” she said. “He’s just a teacher that all of us kids had that hurt my brother.” (more…) Continue Reading →
FORSYTH—Not too long ago, Arvin Post said, most disabled people knew this drill: “The route to go was the garbage truck route, because wherever a garbage truck could go, a wheelchair could go.”
Even now, he said, rolling down the alley is often easier than trying to navigate a wheelchair through curb cuts in sidewalks, and paved alleys are often flatter and smoother than sidewalks. (more…) Continue Reading →
It seems everybody in the country has been talking about last week’s Supreme Court decisions on gay marriage and Obamacare, but you can’t fault Peter Miller for focusing on a more obscure ruling that came down Monday. (more…) Continue Reading →
Wind chills the bright May morning as we walk the grassy plateau of Gordon Butte, a 2-mile-wide plug of volcanic rock towering above the plains about three miles west of Martinsdale, in Meagher County. The snow-streaked Crazy Mountains pull our gaze south, but we’re heading north, to the butte’s sharp, timbered edge. My tour guide, Eli Bailey, a project manager with Bozeman-based Absaroka Energy, stops to point out where an 18-foot-diameter water conduit will be drilled deep into the butte and diagonally out its base. This part of the plateau, he says, will become an 80-acre reservoir. (more…) Continue Reading →
In a novella I wrote, “Where Custer Last Slept”—the title referring to the town of Busby on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation where Custer camped before his last infamous day on the Little Bighorn—I detailed the gruesome murders of a couple of teens whose killer is not brought to justice, prompting a group of friends to take matters into their own hands. That story is part of “Off the Path,” a Montana-based anthology of American Indian writers. (more…) Continue Reading →
LEWISTOWN—Boom! Bernard Lea hefts the book onto the table. It makes a world atlas look like a dimestore paperback. He uses both hands to open its tattered cover and leaf through the pages, which are yellowed with age. He finds the page he’s looking for, and locates a serpentine line squiggled in pencil, dotted with tiny numerical coordinates and other inscrutable text. Continue Reading →
ROBERTS—John Dubsky decided to switch careers when it was time to move his grandparents from their ranch in Northern California to an assisted-living home. That was in 2011. Dubsky, then a general contractor living between Joliet and Roberts, went to California to join other family members in helping their grandparents make the move. Dubsky remembered raising horses and breaking colts on his grandparents’ ranch, near Sonora, and he understood his grandfather’s reluctance to leave the place. (more…) Continue Reading →
Billings native Kim Barker learned to fish and backpack in Montana, but she learned to sing karaoke, interview warlords, shoot Kalashnikovs and jump-start a car using a metal ladder in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Barker describes her antics, trials and triumphs working as a foreign correspondent in her 2011 memoir, “The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Rancher Roger Sprague’s annual Miles City wagon train started on a warm and calm Wednesday evening on the Coffee Ranch just north of Miles City. Wagon train enthusiasts and their outriders gathered that evening to set up camp and prepare for a 14-mile wagon train on Thursday and a 12-mile trail into Miles City on Friday to officially open the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale. (more…) Continue Reading →
“Brands are the classic language of the American West,” said one of Montana’s most celebrated writers, Ivan Doig. That cowboy shorthand continues today . . . at least for a while. Continue Reading →
