The unprecedented slaughter of over 1600 of Yellowstone's bison this winter (resulting in a 50% decrease in the overall size of the herd) will go down as the largest wild bison kill since the 19th century. Despite vehement protests and bold acts of civil disobedience instigated by the Buffalo Field Campaign, the slaughter will continue according to the tax-payer supported Bison Interagency Plan - the goal of the plan being to prevent economic losses from the unlikely spread of brucellosis (a cattle disease) from Yellowstone bison into Montana and Wyoming's livestock. TERRA aired a gripping three-part 'fly-on-the-wall' film series chronicling the story: ONE, TWO, THREE.
posted on May 9, 2008 - View this thread

I would't kill them if I didn't have grandchildren and dogs.
A walk along a river with dogs, and a poem, with Jim Harrison.
posted on Mar 28, 2008 - View this thread

Members of the Montana legislature (out of session) appear to be attempting to force the Supreme Court's hand in a fairly landmark gun-control case, Heller v. DC. Through an extra-session resolution, they are invoking contract law, by stating that the contract between the Montana people, through our Constitution, and the Federal Government will be ... ? ... if the Heller case is decided 'incorrectly'. What is at issue is one of the SCOTUS' seminal opportunities to rule concerning collective rights versus individual rights for firearm possession.
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

In July 1915, a fresh-faced young man got off a train and presented himself at a working cattle-and-sheep ranch on the North Fork of the Smith River, a few miles outside of White Sulphur Springs, Montana. He was slender—about 5'8," 150 pounds—and arrestingly handsome, with champagne-colored hair and blue-green eyes. He carried himself so lightly on the balls of his feet that his wife later wrote, "There seemed to be some heavenly support beneath his shoulder blades that lifted his feet from the ground in ecstatic suspension, as if he secretly enjoyed the ability to fly but was walking as a compromise to convention." The ranch hands must have been astonished at the sight. F. Scott Fitzgerald had arrived in Montana.

Fitzgerald wrote but one story set in Montana, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, but what a doozy of a story.
posted on Jan 24, 2008 - View this thread

Fiddler on the prairie. The story of a 1970s high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. The school was in Billings, Montana.
posted on Oct 11, 2007 - View this thread

Rudy Autio, the Matisse of the ceramics world, has passed away at age 70. Born in 1926 to a Finnish family in ethnically diverse and bustling Butte, Montana, Rudy went on to study ceramics with Frances Senska at MSU. There he met future ceramics titan, Peter Voulkos, and became founding residents of the Archie Bray Foundation. Because of their revolutionary work, the 2 of them helped bring recognition to a field that had previously only been considered craft. Autio's giant torso-shaped vessels are often decorated with post-impressionistic horses and dancing women, but he also ventured into printmaking, tapestry design and murals. According to Ken Little, "If the ceramics world had a Mount Rushmore, it would be Peter Voulkos, Rudy, Paul Soldner and Don Reitz."
posted on Jun 22, 2007 - View this thread

Hopkins, wearing a black ski mask and latex gloves, allegedly walked up to the casino's cashier and pointed a shotgun at her, robbing her of $336, according to court records...At about that moment, a man named Tyrone, whose last name no one seems to know, charged Hopkins and grabbed the shotgun, pointing it into the air. With the robber pinned, Ren, 30, grabbed a full roll of duct tape and went to work. "I wrapped his hands, legs, whatever," Ren recalled Friday, as he smoked a cigarette, sipped a Budweiser and held the duct tape in his hand. "He ain't moving. He ain't going nowhere." At that point, the men, feeling bad for the woman who had been robbed, decided to make Hopkins apologize to her. When he was placed in front of the cashier, Hopkins apologized and "cried like a baby," Kleppen said. Hopkins and Caward were scheduled to appear in Gallatin County Justice Court Friday morning, although they were "too high" and instead will make their initial appearances on Monday, Judge G.L. Smith said.
posted on Mar 3, 2007 - View this thread

A Damned Good Dam Site. The Fort Peck Dam in Montana, authorized by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and completed in 1940, is the largest hydraulically filled dam in the United States. The website is a wonderful compendium of history, technology, tragedy, personal stories, photographs, a webcam and much more. The dam also has the distinction of being featured on the very first Life Magazine cover, photographed by Margaret Bourke-White.
posted on Mar 1, 2007 - View this thread

Redbone manager says Butte fair-goers saw ‘blatant’ imposters. Of course this sort of thing has been going for a long time (Imposter Zombies), but has gotten so bad that several states have passed laws requiring at least one original member to be present. "... a fan went to see The Drifters and realized none of the singers was authentic. Later, the fan went to another show and found the same charlatans on stage, this time posing as The Coasters..."
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

Frontier Myths Meet Reality Ten years ago, two events occurred that thrust Montana into the national spotlight. On April 3, 1996, Theodore Kaczynski, aka "The Unabomber," was arrested in his tiny cabin near Lincoln. This murderer was responsible for mailing package bombs that killed 3 people and injured many more over the span of nearly 20 years. His hermit-like life in the forest went a long way towards many people associating "Montana" with "crazed loners." At the same time, the weeks-long standoff at the Montana Freemen compound ("Justus Township") was entering its second week; it would last until mid-June. The Freemen rejected United States federal authority, tried to create "unique" banking and legal systems, and according to some reports believed in racial superiority. This occurred a few miles away from the tiny community of Jordan, itself one of the more remote towns in Montana. Again, Montana was seen as a haven for rebellious, anti-government, anti-social types, although some didn't think that image was necessarily a bad thing. In the midst of this bizarre confluence of negative events and media coverage, it took another Montana (part-time) resident, David Letterman, to make some humor out of the bizarre situations: Top 10 Things In The Unabomber Cabin, and Top 10 Demands of the Freemen.
posted on Apr 3, 2006 - View this thread

How not to get children to go to sleep. In fact, when asked by police how many times he bit the children, he couldn't say for sure, adding that he "bit the s--t out of them,"
posted on Dec 30, 2005 - View this thread

Every now and again, a story or scandal falls off the newswire that reminds you good guys and bad guys don't happen in real life. The fantastic original expose and ongoing coverage of the Dick Dasen case in Montana is one of them. The testimony of dozens or hundreds of women Dick Dasen, a wealthy Christian pillar-of-the-community businessman type, has paid for sex (or sometimes nothing at all) over several years are bringing the Flathead Valley meth scene to light, and thanks to what I personally think is some excellent local reporting by the New West, you can read along as it happens.
posted on May 9, 2005 - View this thread

A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS. Changing the channel has gotten so much easier since the invention of the remote control. Who doesn't love free speech?
posted on Sep 11, 2003 - View this thread

Bear prowls Montana neighborhood. Climbs tree. Animal Control. Tranquilizers. Trampoline. Hilarity ensues . . .
posted on Sep 10, 2003 - View this thread

If this summer's unending parade of spiritless sequels has you down on that whole film-can-be-art thing, I strongly recommend you rejuvenate your sense of wonder by taking a journey with the Polish Brothers to the Heartland of their America, Northfork, Montana. It's the third installment of a cinematic trilogy that has taken them to Twin Falls Idaho and Jackpot, Nevada. You will either love Northfork (Ebert: "There has never been a movie quite like "Northfork"") or you'll hate it (McDonagh: "meticulously crafted but frustratingly meaningless"); there seems to be very little in between. Some background won't hurt, if you're the literal type; hearing from the filmmakers in their own words provides some additional perspective. But in the end, all that matters is what you see... Please. Just go - it's not very likely you've ever seen much else like it... (Flash-enabled pages at those official film sites, sorry...)
posted on Jul 21, 2003 - View this thread

When the Fifth Avenue Grocery in Roundup, Montana closed it's doors, it really closed them. Everything was left inside, as it was, until last year. Now the doors are open and everything's going up for auction tomorrow.
posted on Apr 29, 2003 - View this thread

Meet Senator Burns (R-Montana) "...The senator said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"...Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was"a hell of a challenge."...The anecdote was published and Senator Burns apologized...in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, Senator Burns invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction....When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."
posted on Dec 19, 2002 - View this thread

Political crybaby? Helena, Mont. - Republican Mike Taylor dropped out of the Senate race against Democratic Sen. Max Baucus yesterday, complaining that a Democratic Party ad was calculated to make him look like a gay hairdresser. I've seen a still from the TV ad. It used a video clip from the early 1980's that really does make him look awful. The thing is, most people looked awful during the early 80's, and the clip was from a TV bit Taylor used to host. Is this a cop out or does he have a legit gripe? Is it a low-blow to use an unflattering photo from someone's past? (Lock up those prom pics!)
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

Blue man runs for Senate Stan Jones, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in Montana suffers from argyria, a condition in which the skin becomes stained a permanent shade of blue. How do you come down with it? You drink lots of colloidal silver. Jones started mixing his own shortly before Y2K to help boost his immune system in the antibiotic-short apocolypse he was sure was coming. No word if he is now engaged in weird behavior involving metal tubes.
posted on Oct 3, 2002 - View this thread

Christie Blatchford 's 9/11 road trip: From Montana to New York on a first anniversary odyssey "to audit America."
posted on Sep 4, 2002 - View this thread

There's big trouble in Flathead county (n.y. times link, reg. required) There's so much to ponder in this completely insubstantial story including the first time I know of that the Newspaper of Record has described someone as having "... a long history of being annoying".
posted on Mar 2, 2002 - View this thread

Has Rep. Barbara Lee just destroyed her political career? Lee (D-CA-9) was the only person in Congress to vote against House Joint Resolution 64/Senate Joint Resolution 23, the bill that authorizes use of military force. Her reason: She believes military action "will not prevent further acts of terrorism." On Dec. 8, 1941, Rep. Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) was the only member of Congress to vote against the declaration of war on Japan, and voter outrage ended her career. Interestingly, Rankin - the first woman ever elected to Congress - had ruined her political career once before, after voting against the declaration of war on Germany in 1917! So ... Whither Barbara Lee?
posted on Sep 14, 2001 - View this thread

Young Men and Fire is a masterpiece of nonfiction. The autor is Norman McLean, who wrote A River Runs Through It, made famous by the Robert Redford movie. It is the story of the Mann Gulch Fire . Fifteen Smokejumpers parachuted into a remote Montana gulch to fight a fire sparked by lightning - within 90 minutes, 10 were dead, overtaken by a searing wall of flame 200 feet high. Take a virtual tour of Mann Gulch. Read and order the official report. Lean about the Smokejumpers. Imagine yourself in a Montana fire.
posted on Jun 3, 2001 - View this thread

Zap those wolves into submission - Conspiracy buffs beware. This one's true.

So the U.S. Agriculture Department, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Department are conducting experiments involving livestock, electricity and wolves in Montana - on a ranch owned by Ted Turner.

Apparently those nasty wolves have a habit of biting livestock, so to stop it they are strapping electric collars on the wolves to train them with an electric jolt when they get "within biting distance" of a particular calf. The "trained" and somewhat damaged wolves are set to be released into the wilds in October.

Beautiful counter-quote for this is from a USA Today article about Ted Turner's preserve. Turner is quoted as saying "You can see what we're doing, right? We're just getting out of nature's way. That's all we want to do - get out of the way and let nature go back the way it was." (halfway down page)
posted on Sep 27, 2000 - View this thread