Columns

Senators Daines and Tester are co-sponsoring draft legislation in the US Senate entitled the “Montana Water Rights Protection Act” ostensibly to approve the Flathead Irrigation Water Compact Agreement approved by the Montana Legislature. However, the bill goes far beyond this agreement.  As “concessions” to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, they receive $1.9 billion (that’s $425,000 per tribal member), 36,000 acres of public land and the National Bison Range.  The NBR was established by Congress at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908 to preserve bison from extinction and was purchased from CSKT as grazing land at the g...

Let me begin with Al’s favorite claim – that the MWRPA would take water rights away from 350,000 Western Montanans.  This is completely false.  The MWRPA protects the water rights of all Montanans. It requires the CSKT to permanently relinquish 97 percent of all water rights claim...

Monday morning comes along every seven days or so and the workweek looms ahead: five long days. Standing at the end, however, is Saturday. Sweet, unencumbered, unscheduled Saturday. A day to sleep in. A day of freedom. On Monday morning, I think about the evening and the chores I will accomplish. I will g...

Happy New Year! It is hard to believe 2020 has arrived. The library staff reminisced about where we were on Y2K. Do you remember where you were?  We are premiering a new program on Wednesday, Jan. 15, at 5 p.m. called, “Movin’ to the Music.” This program draws inspiration from a var...

January 11th was Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Recently, we have seen too many missing youths in Montana who may be human trafficking victims. Learning what we can do to stop this crime may help these, and other, victims of human trafficking. I am a registered nurse, domestic violence advocate, and pro...

Movie sequels, ever wonder why there are so many? With the next Star Wars film out in theaters and many other sequels having come out this year, I began to wonder why there were so many. From the Marvel Cinematic Universe to “Frozen,” the second version, it seems like any semi-successful film get...

I’ve learned through the years that parenting is an ever-changing process.  Most of us start out thinking we can do it all and soon find out that there is no way (no how, not ever) to do it all. So we make choices. We choose our issues and priorities and forge ahead. A wise friend and mother...

Grief is not a law-abiding citizen. It is a renegade, an ever-changing beast. Grief is a labyrinth. Expecting it to follow a straightforward path is like expecting water to run uphill. It just isn’t going to happen. You experience it once, twice even four or five times and you are no more prepared to e...

My husband and I met in driver’s training class when we were 15. We’ve been best friends ever since. How corny is that? Friendship doesn’t always lead to romance, however, and for us that leap didn’t come until years after we’d declared our best-friendship. During the time...

Light is a tiny fragment of the electromagnetic spectrum we can observe with our eyes. We are surrounded by it every waking moment, and yet, most of us don’t give it a second thought. Overlooked as it may be, light is one of the most impactful aspects of our environment with wide-ranging effects on our...