Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/montana/page/60/)
HARLOWTON — Tina Barnhart has learned a few important lessons about helping people sign up for subsidized private health insurance. The trick is to be specific about insurance plans, and how much they cost, thanks to the federal subsidies. Just don’t mention Obamacare, or even refer to it by its less familiar but official title, the Affordable Care Act. (more…) Continue Reading →
I had to go to Harlowton to work on a story Thursday morning, on what turned out to be a glorious day for a drive. As everyone in this part of the world knows, it has been a very long winter, so long that I probably shouldn’t refer to it as if it were over. So to finally get a chance to drive on dry roads under blue skies and on one of my favorite Montana roads was an opportunity I was inclined to savor. (more…) Continue Reading →
ROUNDUP — Doug Bell, a readjustment counselor with the Billings Vet Center, said it’s typical of military veterans to insist that they don’t need help. “There’s that mentality of, there’s always someone worse than them, so they don’t want to take away from them,” he said. (more…) Continue Reading →
BIG TIMBER — Jim Baldwin is standing in a rickety shed so old and fragile that it looks like it might not survive another day of the fierce winds blowing outside. He’s looking down at a large cardboard box brimful of dirt- and manure-encrusted books, letters and other documents. It doesn’t look very promising, but he’s learned not to trust appearances. (more…) Continue Reading →
General back-country elk rifle season opened Sept. 15 last fall in Montana, the same day Senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack Shanstrom worked as a judge for the last time. If you don’t know where he’d rather have been — then you don’t know Jack. On that day, we called Jack Shanstrom “Judge” because we had to. On Sept. Continue Reading →
When the CEO of a Denver energy company announced last fall that he’d like to “bring something like the Bakken, maybe something a little more orderly” to the Beartooths, many residents scrambled to head off what they feared would forever change their scenic landscape. (more…) Continue Reading →
On our way to Fort Benton last spring, my wife Lisa was driving on the last leg of our trip, and we found ourselves on a road we’d never been on before — Highway 80 between Stanford and Fort Benton. (more…) Continue Reading →
Except for a stint in the service, Hank Armstrong has lived most of his 86 years in the house his grandparents built in 1910, seven miles east of Geraldine, Montana. He is a local historian, seemingly familiar with every square inch of land for miles around his native hearth and the stories of everyone who has lived there over the decades. 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 →
