Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/183/)
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.
I spent Labor Day weekend in Sacramento, Calif., helping my oldest daughter and her family move there from Minnesota.
My daughter went to college in Minnesota after graduating from Billings Senior High in 1998, then ended up staying there to work and to earn post-graduate degress. And now she’s in Sacramento. Continue Reading →
Open Bible Christian Center, 302 19th St. W.
Service: 11 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 8, 2015
Length of service: 1 hour, 10 minutes. Length of sermon: 33 minutes
Give the Open Bible Christian Center credit for being what they call proactive. I hadn’t been seated for more than a minute before the church secretary, Cindy, sat down beside me and welcomed me to her church. Continue Reading →
I was unable to attend an all-day Native American Race Relations and Healing Symposium at the Billings Public Library two weekends ago.
And then I didn’t see Stephen Dow’s story on the symposium in the Billings Outpost until a week after the fact, by which time I thought it was too late to run his story on Last Best News. Continue Reading →
Whether first or sixth generation, Montanans care for each other. We treat our state as a common family home, and transcend our differences to help each other adapt to new challenges. Continue Reading →
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, by Jon Krakauer. Doubleday. 367 pages, hardbound. $28.95.
The most notorious thing about Jon Krakauer’s latest book of investigative reporting is the title. Even Krakauer acknowledges that despite a recent spate of publicized cases, Missoula is no hotbed of rape. Continue Reading →
“Bums,” they called them. “Lazy trash,” they said.
I was standing at a railroad crossing in downtown Billings during a frenzied street dance when a slow-moving train passed by. Three modern-day hobos sat in one of the box cars—two young men and a young woman. The businessmen and women standing next to me that June afternoon apparently couldn’t help but comment to one another, as if reassuring one another that their lives were superior. Continue Reading →
Montana State University officials announced Wednesday that the papers of novelist Ivan Doig will return to the state. The beloved novelist’s archives will be housed at the MSU Library and be made available for public examination as well as being incorporated into the research and scholarly activities at the school. Continue Reading →
Owners of allotted land on the Crow Indian Reservation say they plan to block a main road leading into the Pryor Mountains beginning next week.
Elias Goes Ahead, a member of the group, said allottees planned to meet Wednesday, Sept. 2, to prepare a list of demands. He said that he did not anticipate a response from federal or tribal officials that would prevent blocking Sage Creek Road, which leads into the Custer National Forest and the Pryor Mountains. Continue Reading →
Our neighboring, and often overlooked, state of Idaho is home to a nearly contiguous 3.4 million-acre area that comprises the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. The areas are not fully connected, but only because they are separated by a narrow, 10-foot-wide, 95-mile-long road known as the Magruder Corridor.
The Magruder has been described as one of the most remote, wildest roads in the Lower 48. Continue Reading →
NORTH OF ASHLAND — A 22-foot-tall totem pole that traveled 1,300 miles in 10 days had very nearly completed its journey by Sunday afternoon.
On a dry, dusty hill overlooking a big bend in the Tongue River near Ashland, representatives of the Lummi Nation officially turned the totem pole over to representatives of the Northern Cheyenne people. It will be displayed at a few other nearby locations before being placed on permanent display. Continue Reading →
