Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/185/)
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.
Opening arguments Monday in a case involving a Billings couple whose house was destroyed when an enormous slab of sandstone calved off the Rims five years ago sounded at times like a college-level science seminar.
And that was just the attorneys. They told the seven-man, five-women jury that it would be hearing from a battery of geologists, hydrologists, engineers and other expert witnesses during a trial that is expected to last seven days. Continue Reading →
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, 401 Lewis Ave.
Service: 10 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 25, 2015
Length of service: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Length of sermon: 7 minutes
For the first 20 minutes of this service, I was mesmerized. My senses were assailed by incense, icons and Oriental rugs, and by the incantatory singing that went on almost continually. Continue Reading →
The first Aber Day Kegger I attended was in 1974, when the annual bash was still held at Bonner Flats, or maybe on Lower Miller Creek, just outside of Missoula.
Anyway, it wasn’t yet on Upper Miller Creek, the venue of legend where it eventually ended up. What distinguished the concert grounds in 1974 was that a vast area in front of the stage was covered in about a foot of wood chips. Continue Reading →
Catholic parishioners all over Eastern Montana are expected to find a letter from Bishop Michael Warfel in their Mass bulletins this Sunday, harshly criticizing a recent editorial in the Billings Gazette.
The letter, dated Aug. 17 and signed by Warfel, bishop of the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings, takes the Gazette to task for what Warfel calls “an incredibly erroneous opinion piece” that ran last Sunday. Continue Reading →
HAYS-LODGE POLE —When Aloha Shortman asked her sixth-graders to find Italy on a world map during a social studies lesson last August, they couldn’t do it. One student’s finger landed on Brazil. Others grew bored and restless.
Shortman quickly shifted gears, searching for a way to make a lesson on the Roman Republic relevant to a group of American Indian students in a remote Montana community. Continue Reading →
Ariana Paliobagis, owner of the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, distilled the feelings of a packed house Tuesday night with one emotion-laden sentence: “I can’t talk about Ivan Doig in the past tense, because that would be like letting him go.” Continue Reading →
“Being Evel,” a new documentary about Butte’s most infamous son, works hard to capture Evel Knievel as he really was—a monumental daredevil and self-promoter who could also be a selfish jerk.
The film presents abundant evidence for his having been a jerk. There’s talk about his pursuit of lowlife crime as a young man, and footage of a surly Knievel cursing at the press corps before his big jump over the Snake River Canyon. Continue Reading →
When motorcyclists from Roundup roared into the parking lot of Independence Hall July 11 to begin a club rally, Bill Holder wasn’t sure what might result.
Holder, director of veterans services at the Volunteers of America-operated residence hall for formerly homeless veterans, often fields offers from the community to help veterans. The Harley-riding club—called the Forty Fives—was a little different from church groups bringing in cookies or secondhand clothes.
Bryan Stafford was standing in the front room of a century-old building on Montana Avenue, surrounded by piles of dirt, heaps of salvaged brick and an assortment of construction equipment.
“Believe it or not,” he said, “a week from now we’ll be pouring a new concrete floor.” Continue Reading →
CODY, WYO. — If things seemed a little crowded last month during your visit to Yellowstone National Park, it wasn’t just you. It was the million other people who picked July to visit Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, Mammoth Hot Springs and the park’s other top attractions. Continue Reading →
