Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/200/)
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.
BEAR GULCH—On the ranch her grandparents homesteaded almost a century ago, Macie Lundin Ahlgren is ascending a trail beneath steep cliffs of layered limestone.
Stopping on the trail and gesturing to a rock wall behind her, she mentions an archaeologist who visited the site years ago. Continue Reading →
Chapter 2: Mount Olive Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), 2336 St. Johns Ave.
Service, 10:45 a.m., Sunday, Jan. 19, 2014
Length of service: 1 hour, 10 minutes. Length of sermon: 17 minutes
I decided to attend a Lutheran service on my second outing for the simple reason that it seemed likely to be the least unusual to someone brought up Catholic. Mostly, I was right. Continue Reading →
Turn me loose, set me free, somewhere in the middle of Montana.
—Merle Haggard
When I lived in Missoula in the 1970s, it sometimes seemed that a week couldn’t go by without my being invited to a slide show. Continue Reading →
Next month, less than a year after he was censured by the Montana Supreme Court for comments he made while sentencing a man who raped a 14-year-old girl, retired District Judge G. Todd Baugh will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Yellowstone Area Bar Association.
Marian Bradley, president of the Montana chapter of the National Organization for Women, said there is “something absolutely wrong” with members of the local bar giving Baugh the award. Continue Reading →
POPLAR — Starting next week, after she retires on May 1, Vina Smith intends to slow down. Those who know her well will believe it when they see it.
For 18 years, as the environmental educator for the Fort Peck Tribes, she has been a tireless teacher, role model and activist. She has helped plant thousands of trees, organized annual cleanup days, started recycling programs and made presentations at conferences across the country. Continue Reading →
MILES CITY—Wally Badgett is one of many people looking forward to construction of a $3.2 million Agricultural Advancement Center on the west end of Miles City.
He coaches the rodeo team at Miles Community College, the only team in the region without an indoor arena. But the rodeo season is in the fall and spring, so most of the time the team does just fine outdoors, and in a pinch it can rent a private indoor arena outside of town. Continue Reading →
Chapter 1: St. Patrick Co-Cathedral, 215 N. 31st St.
Service, 10:30 a.m., Sunday, Dec. 29, 2013
Length of service: 60 minutes. Length of sermon: 5½ minutes
This service was a mixture of the familiar and the strange. Familiar because I was raised a Catholic and was quite comfortable in the surroundings—the stained-glass windows, the Stations of the Cross, the many suggestions of Gothic architecture, the strict reliance on an organ and piano as the only accompaniment to the hymns. Continue Reading →
I see where a young feller who works for the newspaper in Helena has written a piece headlined “10 things out-of-towners quickly learn after moving to Montana.”
It seems this young feller, Landon Hemsley, moved here in January from San Diego, which makes him more of an out-of-stater than an out-of-towner, but we’ll blame an editor, not Landon, for the headline. Continue Reading →
