Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/33/)
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.
Copper Sky, by Milana Marsenich, Open Books, 2017. 336 pages, $16.95.
Milana Marsenich gets a lot of things right in “Copper Sky,” her debut novel about Butte in the days of the Copper Kings. Continue Reading →
A Billings couple has plans to turn a large warehouse on the east side of Montana Avenue into a country mercantile, antique mall and breakfast-and-lunch cafe, with five loft apartments on the second floor.
And because the warehouse, at 2019 Montana Ave., includes a big vacant lot to the west, the Liberty and Vine Country Store, as it will be called, will have its own 32-space parking lot, a rarity on Montana Avenue. Continue Reading →
Scrolling without intent through the internet recently, I was reintroduced to “junk science.” Continue Reading →
In the early 1990s, when I was new to Billings, I spent a lot of time at Riverfront Park.
I mostly went down there to bomb around on my six-speed bicycle, which wasn’t quite a mountain bike but was tough enough for those soft trails. At the east end of the park, downstream, the last segment of the old Washington Street Bridge was still standing, and you could dive off the iron trestle into what was then a slow channel of the Yellowstone River. Continue Reading →
When legendary Chicago newspaperman Mike Royko encountered a reader who didn’t like his latest column, he would reach into his pocket for a quarter.
“Here’s your money back,” Royko would say. Continue Reading →
Aging is not a pretty thing.
At 92, my mother isn’t what she used to be. Once the executive secretary for a major life insurance company’s investment division, she now has great difficulty writing checks, balancing her check book or following a recipe. Continue Reading →
This has nothing to do with Christmas (which I hope was wonderful) or the new year, (which I hope is great), but often at this time of year folks could stand a good laugh, which I hope this delivers.
Whenever I am faced with a daunting task and wonder how I will get it done, I think back 35 or so years ago when I had to face what was then, and may still be, the most daunting task in my life. Continue Reading →
This is supposed to be the time of year we count our blessings and remind ourselves of all the good things that have happened in the past year and over the course of our lives.
But that apparently isn’t the way my brain works. I usually think, instead, of all the things that have gone wrong on Christmases past, all the illnesses and snowstorms and white-knuckle travel associated with this particular holiday. Continue Reading →
One winter day in 1970, Montana State University biophysical chemist Patrik Callis set out for a cross-country ski with a fellow professor when he inadvertently discovered cascades of ice floes lining the canyon beyond Hyalite Reservoir. Continue Reading →
