Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/195/)
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.
Well, I screwed that up.
Such was the eloquent sentence that I imagined last week might begin this column. I had just written a piece on the closing of Lee Enterprises’ Capitol bureau, and in it I had made what I thought was the original observation that none of the Lee papers in Montana had reported the closing. Continue Reading →
A 62-year-old Australian man sustained serious injuries Tuesday morning after an encounter with a bison near Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park.
The man, whose name was not released by park authorities, is the second visitor in less than three weeks to suffer a serious injury after a close encounter with a bison near Old Faithful geyser. Continue Reading →
Marilyn Cole is trying to get to Japan to pay tribute to a forgotten French composer.
Cole is a 2002 graduate of Billings Senior High School who is now a professional musician in New York City. She belongs to a reed trio that has been invited to the International Double Reed (referring to oboes and bassoons) Society Conference in Tokyo this August. Continue Reading →
Faith Chapel, 517 Shiloh Road
Service, 9:30 a.m., Sunday, March 16, 2014
Length of service: 1 hour, 15 minutes. Length of sermon: 41 minutes.
After having made six forays to churches of varying size, I decided it was time to take on one of the big boys. Continue Reading →
We are aware that according to the calendar, the first day of summer is still three weeks away. Continue Reading →
I suppose it’s still possible that Billings Gazette editor Darrell Ehrlick, in his Sunday column, will formally salute Chuck Johnson and Mike Dennison, the two experienced reporters whose last day as employees of Lee Enterprises was Friday.
With more than 70 years of reporting experience between them, Lee’s Capitol bureau team certainly deserved a proper send-off. But because Lee treated them so shabbily, and because it seems to believe that closing the bureau is merely a cosmetic change in the way it covers the news, a proper tribute seems most unlikely. Continue Reading →
Work began Friday on an “alley art” project that will enliven a canyon of asphalt, steel and brick in downtown Billings.
The project is a partnership between property owners, the Downtown Billings Association, Sherwin-Williams and Underground Culture Krew, an art gallery at 2814 Third Ave. N. Continue Reading →
After 40 years in journalism, Christene Meyers decided to start making things up.
The result is her first novel, “Lilian’s Last Dance,” which she introduced to readers here last week as part of Big Read events. Writing the book was, she said in an interview later, the hardest thing she has ever done. Continue Reading →
LEWISTOWN—Boom! Bernard Lea hefts the book onto the table. It makes a world atlas look like a dimestore paperback. He uses both hands to open its tattered cover and leaf through the pages, which are yellowed with age.
He finds the page he’s looking for, and locates a serpentine line squiggled in pencil, dotted with tiny numerical coordinates and other inscrutable text. Continue Reading →
