Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/217/)
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.
Ask and you shall receive. When I linked a few days ago to a New York Times graphic representation of the well bores underlying North Dakota, I said it would interesting to show “what all the underground mine shafts beneath Butte would look like if they were aboveground.”
I also said: “In fact, if there is anyone out there who could help us with that, we’d love to hear from you.” Continue Reading →
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to included the name of the driver who ran into the underpass.
The North 21st Street underpass, closed since a motorist knocked an enormous “crash beam” off the structure on Nov. 21, could be reopened by the end of the week. Continue Reading →
The good, responsible citizens of Billings begged and pleaded with their City Council not to approve it, warning that a “yes” vote would lead to lawsuits, and to no end of trouble in bathrooms and changing rooms all over the city.
I refer, of course, to the ordinance allowing the keeping of backyard chickens, approved by the City Council in August 2012. Continue Reading →
One day later than planned, the Pub Station opened for business Wednesday night.
Owners Sean Lynch and Ann Kosempa had been shooting for a Tuesday night opening and had booked two bands, Har Mar Superstar and the Pizza Underground. But they came up just shy of getting the final OK from city building inspectors, and the first show was moved two blocks away to the Railyard Ale House. Continue Reading →
In keeping with the holiday spirit, and before the warming temperatures make all the snow disappear, we offer up a few photographs of a snow-clad Montana Avenue, taken Wednesday night. Continue Reading →
On Oct. 23, acclaimed American Indian author Sherman Alexie came to a packed Rocky Mountain College Fortin Center gymnasium and gave what was reported to be a hilariously entertaining speech that had the crowd laughing until their stomachs hurt.
I had written several in-depth articles about the controversy his young-adult book, “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” had caused in School District 2 last year at this time. Continue Reading →
Four years before his death in 1910, Mark Twain wrote his estimate of Thanksgiving Day. The passage didn’t appear in print until 2010 because Twain stipulated that his autobiography not be published until 100 years after his death. As usual, Twain was a century ahead of his time:
“Thanksgiving Day … originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for—annually, not oftener—if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians. Continue Reading →
Healthy-food entrepreneur Keith Lauver capped a nine-week national tour of grocery stores with a stop at the Good Earth Market in Billings on Tuesday—the store that helped launch his business five years ago.
“This is where the magic was,” he said Tuesday morning while setting up a sample table just inside the main entrance to the downtown co-op. Continue Reading →
