Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/category/prairie-lights/page/5/)
If Congressman-elect Greg Gianforte appears in Justice Court in Bozeman this week to enter a plea on a charge of misdemeanor assault, he won’t be able to say anything deliberately untrue without putting himself at risk of being charged with perjury. So, is there nothing we can do about the deliberate untruth his campaign released in the immediate aftermath of Gianforte’s attack on a newspaper reporter? (more…) Continue Reading →
Allow me to be the last person in Montana to publicly state his views on the recent special election. I’m so tardy because I was in Sacramento, Calif., on business, business of such importance that I couldn’t bring myself to jump on Facebook first thing Friday morning to lament the election of the Bible-thumping pugilist from New Jersey. (more…) Continue Reading →
Unsurprisingly, three Montana daily newspapers, all owned by Lee Enterprises, have come out in support of Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate in the special election to fill Montana’s vacant (and only) seat in the U.S. House. You can read what the editorial boards of the Billings Gazette, the Missoulian and the Helena Independent-Record had to say, or you could just glance at one of them, because they all said essentially the same thing: that in these perilous times we need somebody who can get right to work, which they claim Gianforte is ready to do. (more…) Continue Reading →
Inspired by Orhan Pamuk, who wrote a four-page, one-paragraph tribute to his native city of Istanbul, I thought it might be interesting to write something similar about Billings, though not quite so long. (more…) Continue Reading →
The funniest, truest thing I’ve read about what’s going on in the United States these days was written by David Brooks in a recent New York Times column: “Those who ignore history are condemned to retweet it.”
He was referring, of course, to President Donald Trump, whose knowledge of history, even of American history, would be an embarrassment in a junior high classroom, and who can say everything he knows on most subjects in no more than 140 characters. (more…) Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: I am not on vacation, traditionally the only reason for republishing an old piece. I am not embarrassed to admit that my excuse is that I’ve been having too much fun and find myself disinclined to ask my brain to do any work. So I’m running this Mother’s Day piece from May 9, 1982, when we were living in Anaconda. Mother’s Day 2017 is just around the corner, and the little girl who is the star of the story is due to have her second child just a few days before then. (more…) Continue Reading →
That ain’t no banjo, pilgrim. I was rooting for Rob Quist, I really was. And not just rooting. I was also praying. I’d get up in the morning, drop to my knees and I’d say, “Please, God, don’t let Rob Quist, in this truncated special-election season, give in to the temptation to shoot a gun in a television commercial.” (more…) Continue Reading →
Even if you live in Eastern Montana and have never heard of, much less read, the Missoula Independent, you ought to be worried about the fate of that alternative weekly newspaper. The Indy, which has been around for more than 25 years, has had its ups and downs, but generally speaking it was a worthy successor to the underground and alternative newspapers that came before it, and which made Missoula the only city in Montana with a real tradition of that sort of journalism. (more…) Continue Reading →
The 2017 Montana Legislature is not scheduled to adjourn for three more weeks, but I think we can already identify the most craven act of the session. That would be the House’s rejection of a bill to allow all-mail balloting in the special congressional election scheduled for May 25. (more…) Continue Reading →
The more things change…
My first full-time reporting job was in Anaconda, back in 1980. One of our neighbors, at the first house we lived in, was an ancient Italian woman who filled me in on a lot of local history. One story of hers I never forgot was about what happened in the old days when a worker died up on the hill, at the smelter owned by the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. Within a day or two, she said, a company lawyer would show up at the widow’s door with money and a piece of paper. (more…) Continue Reading →
