Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/montana/page/52/)
By Joseph Bullington, mtvigilante.org
“Keep Gate Closed,” reads the sign beside the padlocked gate blocking hunters from a swath of public land. The sign is riddled with bullet holes. Past the gate and a mile down Jake Creek Road is a state of Montana Wildlife Management Area known as Spotted Dog. The area opened to the public just four years ago but has already become a battleground in an age-old dispute over land use. (more…) Continue Reading →
Anybody who has floated the super-scenic Smith River in central Montana in recent years knows it has a bear problem. Careless campers who failed to handle their food and garbage properly have food-conditioned a number of black bears. Likewise, anybody familiar with bear behavior knows that once a bear receives a food reward from humans, it keeps coming back for more until it becomes a safety concern and has to be, as wildlife managers put it, “removed from the population.” Hence, the truism—a fed bear is a dead bear. (more…) Continue Reading →
HELENA — You may or may not have heard of the Pentagon’s 1033 program, which provides surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, but you have probably noticed your local law enforcement agencies looking more and more like our military forces with each passing day. (more…) Continue Reading →
Many of the candidates hoping to occupy the state House seat vacated by Rep. Jonathan McNiven will be featured in the issue of the Yellowstone County News that will hit the shelves Thursday. It was his recent purchase of that weekly newspaper that prompted McNiven to resign from the Legislature just two weeks after he was re-elected to the House by a wide margin. (more…) Continue Reading →
On 10 occasions over the past two years, paintings by Native American artists have been flying over buffalo jumps in the United States and Canada. Next week, the “Flying Buffalo Project” kites and some of the artists who created them will be honored at a reception in the Little Big Horn College Library in Crow Agency. The reception will run from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 11. (more…) Continue Reading →
Ask and you shall receive. When I linked a few days ago to a New York Times graphic representation of the well bores underlying North Dakota, I said it would interesting to show “what all the underground mine shafts beneath Butte would look like if they were aboveground.” I also said: “In fact, if there is anyone out there who could help us with that, we’d love to hear from you.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Four years before his death in 1910, Mark Twain wrote his estimate of Thanksgiving Day. The passage didn’t appear in print until 2010 because Twain stipulated that his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death. As usual, Twain was a century ahead of his time:
“Thanksgiving Day … originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for—annually, not oftener—if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians. (more…) Continue Reading →
Less than a year after the publication of his “Montana Territory and the Civil War,” Great Falls historian Ken Robison is back with a another, related book, “Confederates in Montana Territory.”
He said the book was his idea, not his publisher’s, and there were two reasons he wanted to write it. The first was to examine with some rigor the often-repeated notion that Montana was largely settled by Confederates from Missouri who came here after a series of defeats by Union forces. (more…) Continue Reading →
Montana: Skiing the Last Best Place, photographs by Craig W. Hergert, stories by Brian Hurlbut, Great Wide Open Publishing, 2013. 225 pages, $60. If this were just a collection of photos of Montana ski resorts, it would still be a good book. There are enough gorgeous mountains here, enough spectacular runs and great fields of powder, to excite any skier—or even a person who used to ski some but is now too old and creaky. (more…) Continue Reading →
WIBAUX — In the Gem Theatre attached to the Beaver Creek Brewery, Mighty Big Jim and the Tall Boys took the stage a little after 8 Saturday night. Their opening song was “Wibaux, MT,” a defiant anthem written by bandleader Jim Devine. The chorus opens with “We’re Wibaux, Montana/Who the hell are you/We like our sky big/We like to throw down a few.” (more…) Continue Reading →
