The
Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana started as an open pit copper mine in 1955, and was closed in 1982. At that time,
groundwater pumping ceased and the pit started to flood, leading to what is now one of the largest
Superfund sites. The water body was considered uninhabitable, with
high concentrations of copper, cadmium, arsenic, aluminum, manganese and zinc and of pH of 2.5 (
as acidic as a lemon), but
in 1995, a small clump of green slime was noticed floating on the water's surface. Since then,
the algae blooms have been studied as a possible method of remediation for the toxic waters. That same year,
a migratory flock of snow geese landed in the pit lake. Stormy weather kept the flock on the lake, and when the weather cleared, 342 birds were dead.
A Migratory Bird Protection Plan was then put in place, to prevent such occurrences from happening again. In the spring of 1996, a surprising discovery was made:
yeast, which shouldn't grown in those pH levels, was surviving, and absorbing eighty-seven percent of the metals in the water. Furthermore,
Andrea and
Donald Stierle, professors who have been studying the pit lake since 1995, have found 70 compounds that might be medically useful.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 6, 2011 -
36 comments
Where have you gone, Delino DeShields? Seven years ago,
Delino DeShields was released by the Chicago Cubs, ending a 13-year, 5-team journey through Major League Baseball during which he earned almost $29 million. He's now the hitting coach for the Billings Mustangs in the rookie-level Pioneer League, making as much money for the season as he used to make per game. The Washington Post goes to Montana to find out why.
[more inside]
posted by escabeche
on Jul 13, 2009 -
17 comments
Yogi Bear may have been smarter than the average, but Ranger Smith had it right. Don't feed the bears. As a Montana game warden put it: human feeding "can lead to problems later and ultimately mean the animal
has to be put down." A similar event had a Utah ranger upset, saying: "when you have a bear that becomes unafraid of humans,
that's not a good thing."
posted by SeeAych4
on Sep 16, 2008 -
45 comments
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 by Kattullus
on Jan 24, 2008 -
15 comments
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 by ikahime
on Jun 22, 2007 -
8 comments
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 by 445supermag
on Mar 3, 2007 -
50 comments
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 by davidmsc
on Apr 3, 2006 -
19 comments
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 by saysthis
on May 9, 2005 -
38 comments
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 by JollyWanker
on Jul 21, 2003 -
14 comments
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 by troutfishing
on Dec 19, 2002 -
42 comments
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 by kayjay
on Oct 11, 2002 -
43 comments
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 by agaffin
on Oct 3, 2002 -
27 comments
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 by kokogiak
on Sep 27, 2000 -
1 comment
