Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/227/)
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.
Friends and family members who gathered to dedicate two park benches in honor of Joan Hurdle may all have known her, but they did not all know her in the same way, former Mayor Chuck Tooley said Saturday. Continue Reading →
September is usually the finest month of the year in Montana, and Saturday was a nearly perfect September day — blue, cloudless skies, a slight breeze and temperatures in the low to mid-70s.
That’s why I joined several thousand other outdoor lovers and spent a good chunk of Saturday afternoon indoors — on opening day of the new Scheels, the retail behemoth, Montana’s latest temple of excess, the store that is not merely a store but a shopping experience. Continue Reading →
Mark Kennedy says the new bison sculpture near the entrance to Billings Logan International Airport is a fitting monument to Bruce Putnam.
“Bruce was larger than life, and that piece is larger than life,” Kennedy said. Continue Reading →
Part of the charm of the Pathway Thru the Bible, one of the oddest roadside attractions in Montana, is that it is so rarely visited.
That doesn’t prevent me from wanting to spread the word, to encourage other people to go there. Continue Reading →
It was an evening in late May 1995. Around midnight, I got back to my room at the Northern Hotel in Billings and picked up the phone. I was desperate to talk to my wife, Mary, who was back home in Scotland, where it was 7 in the morning. The conversation went roughly as follows: Continue Reading →
When Randy and Janna Hafer finish their house on the North Side of Billings sometime next year, it won’t look all that different from other houses in the neighborhood.
There will be one noticeable difference, though — the 23-foot-high wind turbine on the corner of their lot at North 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue North. Continue Reading →
I live in Montana. Most people, hearing that, especially if they weren’t from around here, would probably picture a log cabin surrounded by towering pine trees, alongside a racing stream, with snow-clad peaks over yonder.
Not quite. I live on the second floor of a century-old converted warehouse 100 feet from the railroad tracks in the heart of the biggest city in the state. Out my windows I can just see the tops of the forest of pipes and stacks rising from the Phillips 66 refinery. Continue Reading →
Eight times a year, on average, the Billings Police Department deploys its Special Weapons and Tactics team, 12 officers wearing heavy armor and toting semiautomatic and automatic weapons.
In almost all cases, they are executing high-risk search warrants at the homes of suspected drug dealers, and they roll up in the BEAR, the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Department’s 35,000-pound Ballistic Engineered Armored Response vehicle. Continue Reading →
Friday, July 25, 1 a.m.
Follow the music.
That’s what I tell myself as I look around the campground. I’ve lost my party. It was easy to find them in the daytime. They had plastic palm trees in front of their tents. Now all I can see are the stars and the wild Montana sky. The Milky Way glows, constellations are endless and the stars are glorious, almost holy. Continue Reading →
