Happy Friday, everyone! I’m Flathead Beacon reporter Mike Kordenbrock, bringing you today’s edition of the Daily Roundup.

With weather like we’ve had these last couple of days, it’s hard not to think ahead to summer time and the good times and adventure it can bring. Still, we all know that even if the sun is shining, there’s quite a bit of thawing left to do in our region. Fortunately, while we bide our time, there are plenty of ways this weekend to whet one’s appetite, starting with tonight’s 20th annual Paddling Film Festival at the O’Shaughnessy Center in Whitefish. 

Doors open at 5 p.m. for the event, which is co-hosted by Flathead Rivers Alliance and Montana Kayak Academy. This year’s festival will feature refreshments, educational booths, merch, a raffle with “epic prizes,” and two hours of films going from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The film festival is a local stop on an international adventure film tour which aspires to show the world’s best paddling films of the year across whitewater, sea kayaking, canoeing, rafting, and stand-up paddleboard experiences. “Audiences will see expert whitewater showcases, motivating environmental documentaries, epic stand-up paddleboarding quests and grueling kayak fishing battles,” according to the online event listing. 

You can keep the river party going at the O’Shaughnessy Center on Saturday when the International Fly Fishing Film Festival comes to town. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the show starts at 6:45 p.m. This year’s festival has a lineup of six films, which you can preview here.

For music fans, there are still some tickets left for Sunday’s KT Tunstall show at the Flathead Valley Community College’s Wachholz College Center. The 7:30 p.m. Kalispell show is the last U.S. stop for Tunstall – a Scottish rock and folk musician who is behind the hit song “Black Horse and The Cherry Tree” – before her tour sets off for legs in Australia and Europe. Opening for Tunstall is Willow Stephens, an LA-based singer songwriter who is originally from Kalispell. Stephens said in a recent social media post that this will be her first time back in Kalispell since 2021. 

Per her official website, Stephens, is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose “undercover classical and jazz chops are wrapped in a shiny, pop sensibility with lyrics that cut straight to the heart.” Her live performance resume includes sharing the stage with Allen Stone, Macklemore and Andy Mineo, and a 2022 stint as the principal pianist for Netflix’s “Bridgerton Experience.” Her second album, “Future Classic,” was released in 2024. 

To see what else is going on in the Flathead this weekend, check out flatheadevents.net.   

Looking ahead to the start of next week, the Wachholz College Center, pictured below, will be hosting the bestselling author, public speaker and physician Dr. Abraham Verghese on Monday as part of its ongoing WCC Speaker Series. The first 500 tickets sold for this event, which is supported by Logan Health, came with a free copy of Verghese’s 2023 novel “The Covenant of Water.” While it’s probably too late to snag that free book, there are still some tickets left for this talk (a little over 100 by my rough count conducted Friday afternoon). 

With a background in infectious disease and pulmonary medicine, and a 15-year stint as the vice chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine at Stanford University, Verghese is touted in promotional materials for his upcoming talk as “a top thinker in healthcare,” with “a uniquely humanistic view of the future of healthcare.” In addition to his work as a novelist, physician and speaker, Verghese is also the co-host of the Medicine and Machine Podcast, and the founder and leader of Stanford Medicine’s “Presence” multidisciplinary program, which aims to “strengthen the human dimension in medicine and medical education,” through technological advancement on behalf of the human experience in medicine, studying patient-physician relationship and reducting medical errors. 

Now let’s take a look at some of today’s top stories from northwest Montana and beyond …