Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/137/)
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.
BROWNING—When June Bullshoe Tatsey’s father told other members of the Blackfeet tribe that he wanted his four daughters to become teachers, they laughed. It was the 1930s, during the Great Depression, and American Indians faced discrimination applying for the few available jobs. Public school teachers in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation’s main town of Browning were white. Native people simply did not become teachers. Continue Reading →
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., really hates online sales taxes.
I mean really. His April news release opposing a federal law on internet sales reinforced a similar news release in February.
“Montana doesn’t have a sales tax for a reason,” Tester said in the release. “This law would supersede the rights of our state and the will of our people by forcing Montana’s small businesses to collect a tax we don’t support to benefit states we don’t live in.” Continue Reading →
Responding to requests from the public, the Montana Audubon Center is offering several new programs this summer, including weekly nature tours of Norm’s Island and monthly early-morning bird walks.
Also new are Tuesday-evening and Sunday-afternoon events involving canoeing on the nature center’s ponds or taking self-guided tours with “Nature Knapsacks” full of activity suggestions and equipment for each activity. Continue Reading →
On a winter day in 1943 warmed by winks of sunshine, Leif Hoklin, a ball turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, began the longest combat mission of his life.
His ordeal officially ended in June 1945, and, like hundreds of thousands of World War II veterans, he came home, started a family, launched a career and rarely talked about what he had been through.
But he carried the weight of his experiences until he died in Billings in 1986. This week in France, he will receive the honor for his service that he largely avoided in life. Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to include several corrections.
Like many baby-boomers who were raised in regions with very few African Americans, my education about the civil rights movement came in large part through the life of Muhammad Ali. Continue Reading →
This is the 14th chapter of the 32-part video series “The Montana Ethic Project.” This chapter features Mark Solon, managing partner of Highway 12 Ventures, speaking on “Creating an Intermountain West Startup Economy.”
You can watch the whole video below. Here is how it begins: Continue Reading →
Let the baking begin.
Saturday put me in mind of my first couple of summers in Billings, in 1989 and 1990, before which all my Montana summers had been spent in Missoula and Butte.
Missoula was always cool at night, no matter how hot it was during the day, and Butte was so cool that during two summers we spent there, I think we might have taken our (then) only daughter to the city swimming pool maybe three or four times. Continue Reading →
“The Fifth Parallel, A Love Story Set in Africa,” by Michelle Foltz, 282 pages, 2015, Amazon Books, $14.99.
The author is an orthopedic surgeon who with her husband lives near Columbus, Mont., but spends most of her time volunteering her skills in places like Afghanistan. She is also the author of “A Leg to Stand On” (about orthopedics) and co-editor of the textbook “Global Orthopedics: Caring for Musculoskeletal Conditions and Injuries in Austere Settings. Continue Reading →
A businessman from Garryowen is sponsoring two fundraisers in Billings on Sunday for the Shadow Warriors Project, which provides support for private military security contractors and their families.
Christopher Kortlander, director of the nonprofit Custer Battlefield Museum in Garryowen, a tiny historic town that he also owns, is putting on the fundraisers. A special guest at both events will be Mark “Oz” Geist, founder of the Shadow Warriors Project and a survivor of the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. Continue Reading →
