Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/131/)
I was planning to ride off into the sunset today, but if I may appropriate an observation by Benjamin Franklin, it looks as though I might be heading in the direction of the rising sun.
In the week since I announced that Last Best News would cease publication today, I have heard so many expressions of interest in reviving it in some shape or form, with or without my continued involvement, that it appears likely that this independent online newspaper will live on.
For most of her life, British-born Anne Kania had what she called a typical aversion to guns—typical among opera-singing, liberal-minded Englishwomen, anyway.
She thought that guns were a barbaric throwback and that hunting was only for rednecks.
When she first visited Montana to see Bruce Kania, the man she would eventually marry, her views began to change. Continue Reading →
Bill Fleiner, a former Lewis and Clark County undersheriff, is accused of embezzling more than $34,000 from three federal agency programs during his tenure as Broadwater County’s Disaster and Emergency Services coordinator in 2012.
According to documents filed in U.S. District Court, a grand jury has charged Fleiner with three counts of theft from a local government receiving federal funding. If convicted, Fleiner could be sent to prison for up to 10 years and fined up to $250,000. Continue Reading →
“When I started telling people in Amherst that I was Native American, their most common response was ‘Wow, that’s really cool!’”
This was one of the more striking statements made by Caleb Williams, who was the speaker at the most recent Native American Race Relations and Healing Lecture Series. And the striking thing about it was the expression on his face when he said it. It was clearly not the reaction he is accustomed to getting when he talks about his heritage. Continue Reading →
On the Friday before the Fourth of July, as the camper trailers started rolling by on the Boulder River Road where it turns to gravel about 30 miles south of Big Timber, Carl Ronneberg performed a decade-old ritual.
At the Main Boulder Ranger Station, a log structure that’s one of the oldest Forest Service facilities in the country, he’d spent the morning sweeping the floor and tidying up. Then he went out, raised the American flag on a wooden pole and opened the station’s doors for another summer season. Continue Reading →
Americans are among the most mobile people on the planet, so my wife and I spent the Fourth of July weekend in the most patriotic way possible: We helped somebody move.
According to various sources, average Americans move about 12 times in the course of their lives. I’m way above average. By my fingers-and-toes count, I’ve lived in 25 different places, if you count Army barracks and the nine months I lived mostly out of a Volkswagen van. Continue Reading →
Elisa Lorello has been a published author for less than a decade, but her writing career has already been surprisingly varied.
She self-published her first book, “Faking It,” and then self-published a sequel, “Ordinary World,” shortly after, in 2009. In the face of slow sales, she released both books on Kindle. Sales were still slow—until she lowered the price on them from $1.99 to 99 cents, and they caught fire. Continue Reading →
This is the 18th chapter of the 32-part video series “The Montana Ethic Project.” This chapter features the late Gordon Belcourt, a Blackfeet Indian who was executive director for the Montana-Wyoming Tribal Leaders Council, speaking on “A Montana Native Perspective.” You can watch the whole video below. Here is how it begins:
“Good day everyone. My name is Gordon Belcourt. I’m a member of the Blackfeet Tribe in northwest Montana. I come from a tribal traditional community on the reservation called Star School. All my family members have been on the reservation for all of their lives. Growing up in that small community of about 300 people, I really didn’t know an outside world existed until I left.”
Continue Reading →
Early in the morning on July 2, 2011, I walked down the gravel road on our farm to let the goats out to graze for the day. I found the Yellowstone River flowing through our hay fields and summer pasture and, along with the water, an oily rainbow sheen and large clumps of crude oil sticking to trees, cattails and brush. It was in our sloughs, our pond and Blue Creek. Continue Reading →
