News you can use
News you can use
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Montanans just enjoyed the largest sporting event of the year, with more than 27,000 of us coming together in person to witness this year’s version of the Brawl of the Wild. The football game and intrastate rivalry between the Montana Grizzlies and Montana State Bobcats is 122 years old and began only eight years after Montana obtained statehood in 1889. By any measure, this contest is so much more than just another game and has become an important part of the fabric of Montana. Our two flagship universities have been e...
Editor, Don’t be anxious about the climate crisis. Anxiety is a normal response when we see a danger our leaders ignore. But push back instead. Take control. Get active. Because action, no matter how small, is the best cure for anxiety. It doesn’t have to be a big or dramatic action, just an effective one, and the Citizens’ Climate Lobby has some great suggestions. One of the best actions is the quickest and simplest: Pick up your phone and tell Congress you want action. Try it. It’ll take less than two minutes, but after y...
I have always liked Thanksgiving. I know its origins are dubious. I cringe a little when I think about the construction paper American Indian costumes and the happy story I learned as a child about that first Thanksgiving. I cringe a little more when I read about people missing their holiday meal so they can work at retail jobs where customers trample one another at the store’s entrance to get in and buy things. I don’t understand this, I have to confess. I have never bee...
By now, we all have seen our actual property tax increases. We know how high our property taxes have gone up — not like the mystery when we got our confusing reappraisal notice. Many of us are angry. As we prepare to write an actual check for our home property taxes, we are livid. The state reappraisal of all Montana homes for 2023 resulted in an average 49% increase statewide in home appraisals. Because of that appraisal many if not most of us will see a property tax increase on our home — and for some this increase is enorm...
My friend Jim from Glasgow sent me a short video clip of the Little Rockies, Three Buttes, Snake Butte and the Bear Paws. Immediately, I yearned, homesick. I shared the video with friends. “This is my beautiful country.” Their response, not unexpected, “Ah, yes. Uh huh. Beautiful,” as they looked for an exit. Which brought on this following chain of thought. To some this will sound as though I am describing two foreign countries, and I am. Both countries have disappe...
Taxes were the topic of our Local Government Interim Committee. Recent home reappraisals have shown significant increases. In some areas of the state, home sale prices have more than doubled. With folks moving in from out-of-state to places like Bozeman, the Flathead, and other areas, and bidding wars leading to properties at twice the asking price, the committee clearly has a number of challenges to address. First off, locals cannot compete with the prices that Montana homes are reaching. The next issue is that our tax...
It’s important to have a good coffee cup. My husband, Peter, makes the coffee, and has since we were married. We will be celebrating nine years of marriage this spring, so you might not be surprised to hear that I no longer remember how to make coffee. This is called “learned helplessness” in psychology circles, and is certainly true in my case. Peter makes the coffee, and I drink it. This seems to me like a fair division of labor. And having the proper cup is essen...
There aren’t many of us here on the rancho. Not all of our houses have their people. But the last several days, we who are here, me, Nancie, Julie, Lani and Ariel, Tom and Janet, frequently found ourselves running up against, no, not a wall, but a hole. This hole has a specific size and shape, exactly the size and shape of Leo. Leo helps all of us with gardening, planting, pruning, mowing, cutting, watering. But Leo is more than a gardener. He has helped all of us, at one t...
In Montana, our strength lies in our sense of community. As a child, I learned this at my kitchen table, where my father instilled the significance of our democracy and the values that every Montanan holds dear. These lessons drove me to a life of public service and allowed me to form lasting relationships with people throughout our state. Honesty, respect, and altruism are the foundation of Montana, and they bind us together. While individualism is vital to Montana, it does not define us. Instead, our democratic values stem...
I just spent a wonderful long weekend with my sister and her son, Beau, “up north” at my parents’ cabin. Stubby the red squirrel is doing well. Since the tragic loss of the end of his tail (and his subsequent unofficial adoption by my mother), he has flourished. The end of his tail, while still cut off at a sharp angle, has sprouted an impressive line of dark fur, and he looks dapper, sitting on the railing, shaking his tail and showing off his new plumage. Mom still dutif...
No Montana community is untouched by the mental health crisis. Suicide. Addiction. Loneliness. The struggle to find mental health services or appropriate supports for individuals with developmental disabilities. Patients receiving care in places that aren’t best for them. The list of challenges facing our communities is long and years in the making, and the time for setting that list aside is over. This spring, Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Montana Legislature invested $300 million to reform and improve Montana’s beh...
Last week, a registered historic hotel in Glendive burned. The night the fire was started was also the night of the first winter blizzard. Firemen from a hundred-mile radius came to fight the fire which razed the hotel and a neighboring building. My daughter’s office is in the upper floor of a building adjacent to the hotel. Firemen battled the blaze all night and the following day to keep her building from burning. For three days the hotel fire smoldered and flared. For three...
Recently, opinion pieces and information sent to legislators regarding the counties’ decision to levy 77.9 mills instead of the state-directed 95 mills has been circulating in both statewide newspapers, and internal legislative correspondence. It appears that the message being distributed is counties are giving large tax breaks to corporations and out-of -state homeowners while doing little for the average Montanan. While the numbers can be interpreted to support that message, and they — the numbers — are in fact accur...
My Auntie Jo gave me a beautiful pair of gloves yesterday. They are elegant, with embroidery on the top, and I immediately did what I usually do — I put them away for safekeeping. “I’ll wear these to something special!” I told myself. I have a date to go with my niece to see “Peter Pan” in December. I decided I would wear those gloves when I go out with my beautiful 20-year-old niece before she heads out to Spain to study for a semester in Madrid. That will certainly b...
The recent announcement that Montana has been selected as a federally-designated technology hub is great news for our state. Our new tech hub status will lead to millions in research and development investments, particularly in photonics technology that has wide-ranging uses in self-driving vehicles and agricultural equipment, as well as national defense and natural disaster response. For those who don’t know, Montana already has 40 photonics tech companies employing over 1,000 people with high wages. Early projections are t...
I have a boyhood memory of the blockbuster award-winning movie “Exodus,” staring a young Paul Newman as the leader of Jewish refugees and Palestinian Jews in their epoch struggle to establish the nation of Israel. In commenting on the movie, my grandmother told me that her grandfather would sometimes disappear into the cellar of his house to read what I understand now was probably an English translation of the Hebrew holy book, the Torah. With the aid of research by my sister, we have discovered that the mother of the gra...
As a Republican candidate for Montana superintendent of public instruction, I have a simple, but clear vision for our schools: I want to bring education back to basics. It shouldn’t be controversial. But bringing education back to the core basics is crucial for the overall development of our students. Focusing on foundational subjects like reading, writing, mathematics, history, and critical thinking will provide a strong academic base that all our students can build upon. My goal is to ensure that each child receives a c...
Two of my friends are touring Italy. Their husbands did not want to go. The women said, “That’s okay. We will go ourselves. You keep the home fires burning.” When we get back, we will have so much To tell you. One friend, the one from Washington, Sends photos, photos of famous palaces, pictures Of hotel rooms, of food, of streets, of stores. Now and then we see a picture of each of them, Usually sitting at a plate of food, looking glad. Or looking exhausted. Or, one with...
I have always loved Halloween, and I love it now more than ever. I love to get in costume and have fun with other people in costume. People seem freer when they are dressed in different clothes. They seem to have a little more fun. I like the challenge of making or putting together elaborate costumes but, as the years passed, I’ve done less and less of it. Costume parties seem to be less common, and I don’t spend time in bars, so the opportunity to celebrate the holiday has...
The other day I found myself feeling a little low, a little down in the dumps. The problem is, I was enjoying the feeling, to some extent. The next problem is that I found it so dag gone hard to maintain the slump. We don’t come with an instruction manual so I figure it is high time somebody writes one. ***This does not apply to real depression. Depression is a serious matter. For real depression, see your doctor. Please. One of my friends said, “It’s your bio-rhythm. Wait...
My sister sends a text, telling me she is making lasagna, and asks if I will bring a cake. “Sounds great!” I readily agree. “When?” There is no response. I know we are celebrating my mother’s birthday early, but I have no idea when, so I don’t know when this cake will be needed. I could call my sister, but that sounds difficult. Will she be busy? She is a teacher, and she is busy a lot. She gets up early and seems to be in constant motion from the time she gets off work until...
The opening of Psalm 137 is haunting: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” In a few lines, the poem evokes the sorrow of a people defeated, and taken in slavery from their homeland by an enemy who slaughtered their loved ones, and now mocks the survivors. “For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ Still the wish of...
Dear Editor, I recently spotted an opening for a sports person for the newspaper. I didn’t read the description closely but am confident I could quickly polish and perfect my qualifications for the position. When I was 9 or 10 years old, before we moved to Montana, my dad took me to a Cardinal’s game at the stadium in Louisville, Kentucky, a skip, a jump and a slide across the Ohio River from where we lived. The game was at night and the field was well-lighted. I did won...
It’s no secret that I love dogs. I love dogs, and I don’t have one right now because, traveling as much as my husband, Peter, and I do, having a dog makes no sense. We know this. We have discussed this. There are times I would like to have a dog so much it makes my heart hurt. And then I realize how easy it is to get on a plane without worrying about the welfare of a dog, and I know we have — at least for now — made the right decision. And so my solution is to talk to other p...
There’s a lot of back-and-forth across the state right now about who is responsible for the property tax crisis that’s hitting homeowners in the wallet and making housing more expensive for all of us. Regardless of whether you own your home or rent it, skyrocketing property values in Montana are making it hard for all of us to find a place to live and afford to stay there. We’ve known that for a while now, and Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Republican supermajority in the state Legislature knew it too. They failed to act, plain...
