Last Best News | Billings and Eastern Montana News & Culture

Last words, maybe, and a few thanks from Last Best News

By: Ed Kemmick | June 30, 2018

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.

News

Last Best News welcomes new ad rep

By: Ed Kemmick | August 31, 2015

We are pleased to announce that Last Best News has a new ad salesperson, Camilla McCullough. Just about a year ago, I introduced readers to Dan Berry, who retired as an ad rep for the Billings Gazette not long before I quit working for the paper in 2013. Dan wasn’t looking for work but came out of retirement to lend Last Best News a hand, for which we are forever grateful. Now he’s ready really to retire, and he helped persuade Camilla, who also worked for the Gazette, to join Last Best News. I knew Camilla as the exceedingly friendly ad rep with the beautiful accent, but I didn’t know her all that well, so I asked her to tell our readers something about herself. Continue Reading →

At Your Service

At Your Service: Staying seated with the uncertain

By: Ed Kemmick | August 31, 2015

Faith Evangelical Church, 3145 Sweetwater Drive
Service: 11 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015
Length of service: 1 hour, 5 minutes. Length of sermon: 31 minutes

There were two surprises at Faith Evangelical this morning. For one, the band was playing bluegrass instruments. Pastor Brent Nymeyer said it was a special treat. Continue Reading →

Prairie Lights

Prairie Lights: Taking pride in tax money well spent

By: Ed Kemmick | August 30, 2015

I never attended McKinley Elementary School, but I learned plenty there.

I learned that a good school becomes not just the center of children’s lives, but of their parents’ lives, too. For the 13 years that our three girls attended McKinley, our lives revolved around that old school in so many ways. Continue Reading →

Culture

Painter chosen to celebrate Missouri River Breaks area

By: Ed Kemmick | August 28, 2015

When you think of an “artist-in-residence,” you probably picture an artist spending a certain amount of time at a museum, school or some other institution.

For Livingston watercolorist Paul Tunkis, an upcoming artist-in-residence program will mean spending a little more than two weeks in a canoe on the Missouri River. Continue Reading →

Montana

Dennison, cut loose by Lee, to report for television network

By: Ed Kemmick | August 27, 2015

Mike Dennison, one of the experienced state bureau reporters let go by the Lee Newspapers of Montana three months ago, has been hired by the Montana Television Network.

Starting Monday, Dennison will be the chief political reporter for the network, which has television stations in seven Montana cities, including KTVQ in Billings. The hiring was announced on MTN websites Thursday afternoon and is scheduled to be reported on the stations’ evening news shows. Continue Reading →

From the Outpost

David Crisp: Sympathy for Cecil? That’s how we’re wired

By: David Crisp | August 27, 2015

When I deliver the Outpost on Thursdays, I have for years listened to conservative talk radio. It probably has made me more liberal than I ought to be. My contrarian streak runs deep. Continue Reading →

Diversions

Medicine Rocks hold eerie beauty, countless inscriptions

By: Ed Kemmick | August 26, 2015

MEDICINE ROCKS STATE PARK — There is a double allure at this remote 330-acre park in the southeast corner of Montana.

One—the obvious one that would seem to comport with the traditional notion of a state park—has to do with the rocks themselves. They are beautiful and majestic, in some cases haunting, wind-sculpted spires of sandstone or great hulking blocks full of arches, tunnels, caves and deep pockmarks. Continue Reading →

Montana

Protecting property a do-it-yourself project in Montana

By: Bonnie Martinell | August 25, 2015

This guest opinion was written by Bonnie Martinell, who farms near Belfry.

This month the Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation decided not to make rules regarding setbacks of oil wells from occupied buildings. Also this month, a group of my neighbors and I appealed to the Montana Supreme Court to overrule the Carbon County Commission and allow us to protect our properties against unregulated oil and gas drilling in the only way possible in Montana, through citizen-initiated zoning.

The two are directly related. Continue Reading →

Diversions

Dinosaur researcher hunts for ancient amber near Ekalaka

By: Ed Kemmick | August 25, 2015

EKALAKA — In muddy badlands off Powderville Road southwest of Ekalaka, Nathan Carroll is on the hunt for amber.

Don’t picture large chunks of bright, translucent amber. Most of what he finds is very small, not much bigger than a ladybug, and they are almost the color of a blood orange, nearly opaque. He and some volunteers have been filling little plastic jars with pieces of amber all summer, and he’s not even sure what he’s got yet. Continue Reading →