Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/187/)
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.
Last winter, Tammy Zemliska and Doreen Hartman met when both were selling repurposed jewelry and home furnishings at Kim & Eddy’s on Montana Avenue.
In talking with other artists who were also into repurposing and upcycling, as it’s called, they saw that there was a big need for work and studio space in Billings. They began looking into the possibility of opening a business where they could lease studio space to artists and also sell their creations. Continue Reading →
Stephen Aaberg had already done a fair amount of research at the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park near Great Falls when he was hired to do a systematic survey of the area in 2008 for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
It was known from earlier research that it was an important place, one of the largest “bison mass procurement sites” in North America. But after just a couple of days of surveying, Aaberg, assisted by a crew of five or six workers and a few volunteers, realized the site was even more significant than anyone had previously suspected. Continue Reading →
Montanans—at least those of us who use Twitter—are a fairly tame lot, according to a British linguist.
Jack Grieves, a lecturer in forensic linguistics at Aston University in Birmingham, England, has published a series of maps showing the comparative usage rates of “bad words” in the continental United States, as they appear in Tweets. Continue Reading →
You never know who may be sitting next to you on an airplane. While my daughter and I were traveling on a long flight from Salt Lake City to Boston a few months ago, we exchanged pleasantries with a woman in the aisle seat. She was headed east, she said, to interview a victim of the Boston Marathon bombing for a book she’s writing. Continue Reading →
Billings Association of Humanists, meeting at First Congregational Church, 310 N. 27th St.
Meeting: 1 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014
Length of meeting: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Length of sermon: none.
Scouting through the Gazette’s “Faith & Values” section, trying to decide what church to visit next, I came across a notice for the Billings Association of Humanists’ Socrates Café, apparently a regular discussion group. Continue Reading →
I hope you all read Brett French’s story in the Billings Gazette last Sunday about the connections between Norman Maclean and a Billings couple, Tom Tollefson and Jane Moses, and Tom’s brother Pete Dexter.
I’d go into more detail, but you can read the story yourself. The thing is, the piece was so interesting (it helps that I know Brett, Tom and Jane and have read all of Dexter’s books) that it made me want to write about my own connections with the author of “A River Runs Through It.” Continue Reading →
Paula McClave had been seeing therapists on and off for almost 25 years when someone suggested she try C. Jane Estelle, whom everyone knew as Jane.
It took her a year to call and make an appointment, she said, “but it was the best thing I ever did.”
“I had seen a lot of therapists, and I had given up,” she said. “But I walked into her office and I said, ‘Oh, my God, I have met my soulmate.’” Continue Reading →
As members of the burgeoning Montana High Tech Business Alliance prepared to meet last week in Bozeman, they announced that the alliance includes 200 high-tech firms just a year after it was founded. Continue Reading →
ROUNDUP—The Roundup Volunteer Fire Department has come under criticism for allowing firefighters to drink alcohol in the city-owned fire station.
The issue was made public by Roundup resident Mark Higgins, who said he was out riding his motorcycle a couple of weeks ago and saw the vehicle of a friend, who is with the local Disaster and Emergency Services, outside the fire station, across the street from City Hall at 33 Third Ave. W. Continue Reading →
