Having been fortunate to have traveled around the world, I’ve learned that wildlife is being challenged by burgeoning civilization and the accompanying loss of habitat. Animals are now closer to human habitations. Since the native forests are being fragmented, people are seeing wildlife in their backyards. What to do? Well, it seems like the answers […]

Bundle up for a free wagon ride. Pop a hot roasted chestnut in your mouth and stroll down Central Avenue with the music of Christmas in the air. For one evening in December, the streets of downtown Whitefish close to cars. Shops stay open late, and vendors line sidewalks for the annual holiday street party—the […]

It wasn’t until Jeff Fleming began making more money with his hobby than his job that he realized he was in the wrong business. A logger turned Marine, Fleming was returning to Montana and logging from a California military base when he saw a man carving with a chainsaw on the side of a road. […]

“Elk hunting is tough without snow,” Mark Priewert said. Priewert, of Bigfork, was hunting near his camp by the Canadian border. “It’s the first time in 30 years we haven’t had snow in camp,” Priewert recalled. While Priewert got his bull elk, low harvest numbers across the region and the state prompted Montana Fish Wildlife […]

The room smells of blended coconut and vanilla. A quiet resonant clack is the only clue that Holly Dillenburg massages with two stones. They glide like silk over the skin – feeling neither like fingers nor rocks – but hot pressure that seeps into the body. Called “Stone Silence,” the massage is a signature luxury […]

The city planning board voted to recommend approval of the proposed Glacier Town Center Tuesday night, but after several tied votes, did not reach a consensus on access issues to U.S. 93. Planning board members voted 4-2 to approve Phase 1 of Tennessee developer James “Bucky” Wolford’s 485-acre commercial and residential development, which would go […]

The run on Montana’s Short Term Investment Pool in the final week of November – when local governments and school districts across the state withdrew $247 million in the span of a few days – appears to be tapering off. But that isn’t to say it has stopped completely: Missoula County withdrew $15 million last […]

Be Prepared is the Boy Scout Motto, but it should also be on your short list of rules for business because change comes in many forms. Competition brings change. When I came into the photography software business, there were eight reasonably happy vendors. A lot of photography software vendors went out of business during that […]

My coworkers chastised me for acknowledging that every gingerbread house I’ve ever made, I subsequently – at least in part – ate. To which I asked logically: “Why would you make an edible house if you had no intention of eating it?” The consensus was that it tastes bad. But I would argue that stale […]

HELENA (AP) – Attorney General Mike McGrath says a District Court should dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Republican legislator who claims the Schweitzer administration illegally authorized a $140-per-homeowner tax credit. McGrath and Assistant Attorney General Anthony Johnstone argued in a brief filed Tuesday that the lawsuit by Sen. John Cobb, R-Augusta, “is not susceptible […]

MISSOULA (AP) – Bobby Hauck will apparently return as Montana’s football coach, after Eastern Washington coach Paul Wulff got the Washington State job and Colorado State hired Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Steve Fairchild. “Bobby and his staff are out recruiting right now, just as they always are this time of year,” said Montana athletics director […]

GREAT FALLS (AP) – Former Montana State football coach Mike Kramer said he plans to apply for the head coaching job at Eastern Washington, now that coach Paul Wulff has been hired at Washington State. “I’m going to give it a shot at Eastern and see where it goes from there,” Kramer told the Great […]

The Kalispell Police and Flathead County Sheriff’s reports for Tuesday included the following: 9:25 a.m. A stolen vehicle was found with its window shattered behind the Deer Lick in Martin City. 9:41 a.m. Tires and rims were taken by a thief on US Highway 35. 11:10 a.m. A 20-year-old female reported that she saw a […]

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – A confessed Whitefish bank swindler who answered a summons for parole violation walked out of the courtroom and drove away, apparently after spotting legal documents showing he was about to be arrested. John Earl Petersen, 54, jaywalked across the street from the U.S Courthouse here to his black 2007 Cadillac and […]

My wife accuses me of being a curmudgeon when I tell stories about what it was like to ski in another era and on another planet. That was when rope tow tickets cost $2 a day and chairlifts cost $4, but most of the skiing in 1945 was $2 a day because there were only […]