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A venerable log building, a blustery November day in a small country community, the Pledge of Allegiance, the tolling of a bell. A scene repeated hundreds of times across the nation, yet as each name was read the personal, local feel of loss hung in the air. We think of great wars with legions of soldiers, but they are composed of young men and women from Seeley and Condon with moms and dads. Last Monday, Nov. 11 was Condon's ceremony at the Community Center, followed by a lunch prepared by the...
It's a good thing - more like a blessing - that the river is still fishable at this point in November. Especially this November. Maybe God knew we'd need a break, a time to refresh and restore our souls after this election, and so in His divine mercy he extended the days that are warm enough to fish for a couple of weeks after the polls closed. At least that's what I want to think. The river, which in past years has been iced over by now, is still in decent shape. The weather, some days, is surp...
I want to thank all voters and especially those that went above and beyond for our campaign for House District 92. It was an honor running to be your representative, and we truly enjoyed meeting many of you over the last year campaigning. Though gerrymandering made HD 92 less representative of our rural areas, our precinct results shined through. I thank the large majority of our communities from Condon to Potomac for favoring commonsense, and casting your vote for our campaign. I want to congratulate my opponent Rep. Connie Keogh. I hope she...
We're mental health therapists who work directly with students in Montana elementary and middle schools. We love working with kids to support their well-being and academic success. In Montana, making sure kids have access to the resources and services they need to succeed isn't just the right thing to do, it's also critical for the future of our state. One resource that many students need is help coping with stress, trauma, depression or anxiety. Sadly, many students struggle to access mental...
On Nov. 8, 2024, former Montana State House Representative and longtime publisher and editor Reilly Neill (D) officially filed with the Federal Election Commission to unseat Senator Steve Daines. “We need a Senator who cares about our access to healthcare, our agricultural economy, our Tribal neighbors, about our teachers and schools. We need someone who cares about the ongoing housing crisis in Montana as much as upholding the Constitution of the United States,” Neill said in a recent public announcement. “When I’m in the U.S. Senate, there w...
When my physical therapist told me her husband had already arrowed an elk this archery season I was overjoyed for him but not necessarily surprised. His dad was an inveterate hunter, willing to track and stalk a trophy animal for miles and days if necessary to make the kill of a lifetime. I've known Drew since he was a kid and his old man's blood runs through his veins. And knowing that, I didn't ask his wife - while she was working the knots out of my shoulders - if he had saved the hide. The l...
In August my wife Pam and I concluded our seven-month boat journey around the eastern United States and Canadian provinces, a version of “America’s Great Loop.” Our future plans include cruising the “Inside Passage” between Vancouver Island and British Columbia, with the eventual destination being southeast Alaska. We chose our boat, Treasure State, because of its relatively shallow draft — for all the sandy canals of the east coast — for its low bridge height — hundreds of bridges along the way — and its ability to get up and scoot — 32 kn...
When the day temps drop I don't feel like moving around too fast. My favorite winter sport, if you can call it that, is sitting indoors where it's warm and cozy and tying flies. So it's easy for me to sympathize with how a trout feels when it gets cold. They get sluggish and don't move around much as the water temps drop. A trout hanging under the shade of a midsummer foam line will break ranks to chase a minnow several feet in order to eat it. One such day I watched Chris Rockhold throw a sculp...
MISSOULA, Mont. — In Seeley Lake, the Rural Resource Specialist role with Missoula Aging Services (MAS) has been an essential source of support, connection and advocacy for older adults in the community. Now, MAS is seeking a dedicated individual to fill this important position, helping ensure that older residents can continue to live independently and with dignity in the places they’ve called home for years. For older adults in rural Montana, accessing essential services and resources can be challenging. The Rural Resource Specialist has mad...
There are certain things that simply aren’t done. Despite the constant flux in society — changing mores, legalized weed, our lives an open electronic book — there are some behaviors and actions that remain unacceptable. For instance, during prayer time at church, you don’t ask the congregation to pray for healing for your monstrous hangover from pounding tequila the night before. You don’t put a large car top carrier on your ride, then try to enter a parking garage. The particular desecration, the abomination, the violation of sacred space, of...
Bookmobile services are beginning monthly in Seeley Lake. We will start on Wednesday, Oct. 30 with visiting Loving Hearts (11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.) and the Senior Center (12:50 p.m. - 2 p.m.). Missoula Public Library’s new Bookmobile service helps connect rural and underserved communities to the library. With the Bookmobile, MPL aims to bring mobile services to new patrons while expanding relationships across Missoula County and throughout the region. If your business or organization would benefit from being on the route, please let us know a...
You can probably look out your window right now and tell more about the weather than I can as I write this. Same with river reports. I trust them almost half the time. We don't know exactly what the next couple of weeks will bring for weather. We could be looking at wind, rain and downed trees - always a hazard. If you're going out, be careful. The coming week calls for broken weather - clouds, rain showers, sunshine peeking through and temps in the mildly cool high 40s on down into the low...
Folks who live in our Seeley-Swan Valley fall into several categories: old timers, newcomers, “medium timers” and people who returned after many years. One person who returned after many years was Mabel Stilwell. Born Mabel Lundberg in the Swan Valley in 1917, she may well have been the first baby of white settlers born in these parts. Let’s take a closer look at the Swan Valley during these years, and where Mabel’s life took her. During the years around Mabel’s birth, the Swan Valley had homesteaders moving in, drawn by the beauty and amaze...
Author's note: Some of you have asked, at various times, whether I'd reprint some favorite columns from previous years. For those of you who asked, and for those who missed it the first time around, here's an updated version of a favorite. Enjoy! Sunday afternoon found me with an almost desperate need to go fishing. I felt winter closing in, and in some ways it seemed as if summer didn't really happen as I approached Jan about going fishing. "I'll be ready to go by 2:30," Jan announces. That...
The first company to mass-produce the TV dinner was the Swanson company that sold 10 million trays in 1954, its first year of production. Following the lean casseroles of the 1930s of the great depression and the wartime meatloaves of the 1940s, American families welcomed progress and prosperity with frozen meals, canned foods and cereals. With the advent of the television, the family substituted the round-the-table family dinner with TV trays. We may blame our expanding waistlines, poor metabolic health and addiction to the screen on the...
Sunday was one of those crisp, clear, Indian Summer days I had been longing for since the smoke cleared. Like a lot of people I feel robbed of summer. Now its counterpart, and always my favorite time of year, is here. Our neighbors recently invited us to pick MacIntosh apples from their trees. Jan picked the apples and will make a pie. The leaves on our trees turned color and just as soon started blowing off. For just a little while longer, everything is glorious and alive before the onset of...
On a sunny Thursday in August, Lisa Hathaway and Rachel Jaquith knelt on the concrete floor of Missoula's Johnson Street Emergency Shelter to help a patient with a painful wound on his abdomen. "Let's see what we can do to help you out today," said Jaquith calmly. Jaquith, a registered nurse, and Hathaway, a physician assistant, are members of Partnership Health Center's Community Care Team, or CCT. Sometimes called a "street medicine team," the CCT supports Missoula's unsheltered neighbors...
For a good deal of my medical career there worked in my office an avid quilter. She participated in quilting groups, received quilting magazines and periodically went on quilting junkets, riding around a multi-state region on a bus with other quilters, allegedly stopping at quilting stores and networking with other quilters. I always wondered about quilters. If, for instance, you wanted to run a secret, special-ops, counterintelligence sort of thing, who would ever suspect quilters? We think of...
Open Enrollment is your annual opportunity to optimize your Medicare coverage. Whether you’re considering a Medicare Advantage plan or adjusting your Prescription Drug Plan, MAS is here to help you make the most of Medicare. Open Enrollment consultations are tailored to your situation, helping you review your options and secure the most suitable and cost-effective plan for the coming year. Missoula Aging Services doesn’t offer a singular approach to Medicare and Medicaid assistance — we deliver a spectrum of options to cater to your uniqu...
Famously, or not, the professor in my statistical mechanics course said infinity seems to be about 100. What he meant was it’s usually safe to treat any set with more than 100 members statistically. What he didn’t add was that it becomes necessary for any set with more than 1,000 members. The US has 330,000,000 people in it. The world is at 8 billion, give or take. Even Missoula County has more than 100,000. We became “statistical” many years ago. Understanding statistics has been critical to solving societal problems for several millenn...
Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Seeley Swan Pathfinder’s candidate debate. I appreciate events like these because they allow the community to hear directly from candidates, which helps promote democracy along with an understanding of the issues Montanans’ elected representatives will deal with once elected to office. Debating in open forums like these promotes the healthy dialogue and sensible solutions we are all hungry for right now. A hot topic at that debate was an issue that has been top of mind for a lot of fol...
You see them all summer long - those little sand-and-gravel cases on the downstream side of rocks in the shallows of the stream. They might have a little black head and legs sticking out and crawl slowly across the bottom. Spook them, cast a shadow over them, and they pull their heads in, lie still and seem to disappear. They crawl out of their cases and build new ones several times through the summer. Each case is glued together from the sand in the river bottom using a special UV-reflective...
My first meeting with Dave Inks was inconsequential. It was somewhere in the mid-seventies and my young family was attending a sportsman's show in California's Bay Area. A number of fly fishing greats would be there and I was eager to meet some of them. My young son Jay and I visited Randall Kauffman's booth, where Randall graciously signed a copy of his new book for Jay. A few minutes later we were in the Creative Sports booth, the first mega-fly shop, manufacturing and wholesale conglomerate i...
Have you ever had one of those relationships where, when it is good, it is great — a synchronized dance, a symphony, fireworks and flowers. But when it is bad, it is very bad — angry noises, smoke, disillusionment. For years, I’ve been locked in such a love/hate quagmire. Not with my wife, Pam, we’re pretty boring in that regard, but with a Vermeer BC625. Some might say that such strong feelings for a wood chipper are abnormal. (Before throwing stones, have you ever used the term “my baby” referring to a car, truck, boat, or snowmobile?) But wh...
“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone,” sings Joni Mitchell in Big Yellow Taxi. Busily living our lives, we often forget to stop and look back to see if we are indeed missing something, something as important as our health. Thanks to RFK Jr. the conversation on population health has entered the public sphere. This gives us all an opportunity to reflect on our own health and our futures. The numbers are not in our favor. In July of 2022, Tufts University research team published startling statistics in...
