Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/prairie-lights/page/19/)
How big is too big? That is a question people love to weigh in on when the subject is houses. Or so I have found. When I first wrote about what was going to be the biggest house in Yellowstone County, which is being built just outside the Ironwood subdivision, readers flooded the Last Best News Facebook page with spirited comments on the subject. (more…) Continue Reading →
People often ask, how does the mind of a newspaper columnist — or that of a digital newspaper columnist — work? The short answer is that it rarely does. Instead, it seeks diversion and distraction and asks to be plied with coffee, or, later in the day, alcohol. Ostensibly, these are stimulants that will help the mind do its work, but in fact they are merely different kinds of diversions and distractions. (more…) Continue Reading →
September is usually the finest month of the year in Montana, and Saturday was a nearly perfect September day — blue, cloudless skies, a slight breeze and temperatures in the low to mid-70s. That’s why I joined several thousand other outdoor lovers and spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon indoors — on opening day of the new Scheels, the retail behemoth, Montana’s latest temple of excess, the store that is not merely a store but a shopping experience. (more…) Continue Reading →
I live in Montana. Most people, hearing that, especially if they weren’t from around here, would probably picture a log cabin surrounded by towering pine trees, alongside a racing stream, with snow-clad peaks over yonder. Not quite. I live on the second floor of a century-old converted warehouse 100 feet from the railroad tracks in the heart of the biggest city in the state. Out my windows I can just see the tops of the forest of pipes and stacks rising from the Phillips 66 refinery. Continue Reading →
Dear Ed: I gave up the Internet for the summer, thinking I needed to get off the digital merry go-round, read some books and experience the real world in real time. I was doing just fine — actually, I hadn’t felt better in all my 20 years — until recently. (more…) Continue Reading →
I suppose I should explain why I decided to take photographs of panhandlers. But first let me explain what the collection of photos is not. It is not, for starters, an attempt to weigh in on the whole question of whether you should give money to panhandlers. (more…) Continue Reading →
News of Jeff Bridges’ U.S. Senate candidacy has been spreading like wildfire over the past couple of days. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. As far as I know, word of his candidacy has been reported only by Last Best News. And there may not be a candidacy. (more…) Continue Reading →
Red Menahan was one of the first people I met when I started my reporting career in the Anaconda Bureau of the Montana Standard in 1980. I knew Red’s cousin, John McNay, so we were introduced to Red and his wife, Shirley, and we soon became good friends and frequent visitors at their house. (more…) Continue Reading →
You want to talk about problems with transients on Montana Avenue? Talk to Mike Schaer. When he moved his computer business to the avenue 33 years ago, there were vacant buildings all along Montana, and “the transients were really all over the place.” (more…) Continue Reading →
When I went into the Last Best biz, I thought one of the great advantages of this new kind of journalism would be the lack of deadlines. Working at a newspaper, you live and die by deadlines. You’ve got a physical product, a bundle of newsprint and ink, that has to be published every day of the year. To get a paper on the subscriber’s doorstep in the morning, the paper has to be printed the night before. (more…) Continue Reading →
