Last Best News (https://montana-mint.com/lastbestnews/page/49/)
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.
My uncle had a lot of books in his library, but the one book I was drawn to every time we visited his house contained a collection of photographs of World War II.
It was a large, heavy book, so I usually placed it on the floor and lay in front of it, propped up on my elbows. I would slowly page through it, looking at pictures as vivid in my mind now as they were on the page then: Continue Reading →
Interest in this year’s City Council and mayoral races continues to run high.
After a record number of people voted in the Sept. 12 primary, narrowing a crowded field of candidates to two in each of the council’s five wards and two in the mayoral race, additional forums have been scheduled in advance of the Nov. 7 general election. Continue Reading →
Montana’s average annual temperatures have increased 2-3 degrees since 1950, and are projected to warm 5.6-9.8 degrees by the end of the century, 32 scientists from the public and private sectors said in the first Montana Climate Assessment, released Wednesday. Continue Reading →
Earlier this week, at a group lesson for students in the Free Spirit Rock School, Sharon Mulvehill was sitting in on bass guitar.
She normally plays a regular guitar, and she wasn’t all that familiar with the bass line for the first song of the night, Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.” Bill Dickman, the school’s guitar teacher and musical director, who happened to be sitting in on drums, stopped the song and briefly, a little impatiently, told Mulvehill what she should be playing. Continue Reading →
After 18 years as a journalist working across Montana and Wyoming, there aren’t too many times where I can say that something happened for the first time. Sometimes it feels like I’ve seen or heard it all before.
But a new first came on Tuesday, when I got word that U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte, R-Mont., was in Missoula. A trusted reader said she had spotted him at lunch at Finn and Porter, a local restaurant, right around noon. Continue Reading →
Early in 2001, shortly after Kurt Corey, then director of Public Works for the city of Billings, had accepted a similar job in Eugene, Ore., I wrote a story about his imminent departure.
He had been officiating high school football and basketball games for 20 years, and he told me he wasn’t sure he’d have the time to continue refereeing once he got to Oregon. Continue Reading →
I have been to a world’s fair, the Grand Canyon and a rodeo. But until the last week, I had never seen a same-sex wedding or attended a book signing at which I was one of the signers. Continue Reading →
Just shy of 100 years ago, unpatriotic “slackers” in Billings were put on notice.
It was reported in the Oct. 26, 1917, edition of the Billings Evening Journal that residents who refused to buy war bonds — and those who seemed to have “undersubscribed,” given their incomes and assets — would soon be punished. Continue Reading →
Thanks to the success of this summer’s second annual Red Lodge Songwriter Festival, organizers of the festival recently donated $8,500 to the Red Lodge Public Schools Music Department.
Festival co-founder and director Mike Booth said in a press release that the directors of the festival also donated $1,500 to Operation Second Chance, which helps heal wounded veterans through outdoor recreation. Continue Reading →
