Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/197/)
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.
Bryan Stafford, director of the Big Sky Fencing Association—think swords, not cattle—had one small goal in mind when he approached the Montana Rescue Mission last year.
His fencing club needed a new space to practice and compete, and he knew that MRM owned a huge, almost entirely vacant complex of connected buildings on Minnesota Avenue. His plans grew more expansive after he toured the buildings with Mission Director Perry Roberts. Continue Reading →
In a routine Sunday column about things the Montana Legislature did right in the recent session, Billings Gazette Editor Darrell Ehrlick wrote this sentence: “Free speech is not the right to say anything to anyone without having to sign your name to it.”
Actually, the right to say anything to anyone without having to sign your name to it is pretty much the definition of free speech. That’s why questions about campaign spending have become so tortured in Montana and in the nation as a whole. Continue Reading →
“Brands are the classic language of the American West,” said one of Montana’s most celebrated writers, Ivan Doig.
That cowboy shorthand continues today . . . at least for a while. Continue Reading →
First Baptist Church, 218 N. 35th St.
Service, 9 a.m., Sunday, Feb. 16, 2014
Length of service: 1 hour, 5 minutes. Length of sermon: 31 minutes.
A few minutes into his sermon, Pastor Ross Lieuallen apologized for an equipment malfunction that was preventing him from displaying the next point of his homily on the two big-screen TVs in the front of the sanctuary. Continue Reading →
Graduates, first let me apologize for not actually appearing at your graduation ceremony.
But surely you will understand, even if your parents do not, that flesh-and-blood commencement speakers are relics of the past. Indeed, some of those speakers were themselves relics, tired old politicians and so-called self-made men who dispensed fool’s-gold wisdom about “the real world.” Continue Reading →
CODY, WYO. — Any visit to Yellowstone National Park comes with at least some sense of adventure. And packing the car for even a short family trip through the park can be a logistical challenge. But the next time you’re flummoxed by packing for a Yellowstone weekend in the RV with the kids, consider Eleanor Corthell.
Corthell spent two months in Yellowstone in the summer of 1903. With her seven children. Traveling by horse-drawn wagon. Camping out the entire time. Continue Reading →
At this time of year in downtown Billings, Matt Lennick’s phone should be ringing a lot more than it has been.
Lennick, a downtown resource officer who works for the Police Department but whose pay is covered by a special tax on downtown property owners, said he’s still waiting to see statistical comparisons between this year and last, but this year sure feels different. Continue Reading →
In 1997, when she was 12, Erin Popovich decided to give swimming a try.
She had been living in Butte since she was 5 and had played every available sport in elementary school, in addition to club soccer and competitive horse showing. But she was born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, and by age 12 her condition was making soccer difficult. Continue Reading →
