It’s fitting that earlier this month the Great Falls Sox minor league baseball team opted to change its name to the Voyagers, an ode to UFO sightings – specifically from the grounds where the team plays and reoccurring cow mutilations happen nearby. Fitting because every so often the unexplained invades the news cycle in America […]

The sudden tragic death of David Gogolak came as a shock to family and friends from around the globe. Dave was a special individual with energy and a positive outlook that you don’t find in people very often. A young man, father of two, loving husband, friend to thousands, and employer of hundreds, the loss […]

The holiday season, to the dismay of some, hasn’t officially ended. The abundant pink and red hearts and cupid decorations are a reminder that Valentine’s Day approaches. In the Flathead, like elsewhere, the time is ripe to assess a dating scene that seems – wherever you are – in dire straits. This time of year, […]

The end of 2007 saw a flurry of new conservation easements in Montana and Flathead County. Good news? Perhaps not. First, the main reason for this flurry isn’t idealism. It’s money. Stuffed way down in the Pensions Protection Act of 2006, apparently by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is Section 1206 covering “provisions relating to exempt […]

The Democratic majority in Congress means more wilderness bills will be debated in the nation’s capitol this year. It will inspire debate across the West, too. And it will bring many long-heard mischaracterizations about the wilderness designation. It’s already happening here in western Montana, where some recent editorialists set their sights on the proposed Northern […]

On a dark street in suburban Whitefish, something sinister was underway. A private eye, sipping cheap coffee from a dirty Styrofoam cup, peered through binoculars at a neighborhood window, smirking at the apparent scandal he had uncovered. His eyes slitted, he pulled a cigar from his rumpled trench coat and lit up, the smoke climbing […]

The people of the greater Whitefish area are united in our love for the land and water. From Happy Valley to Big Mountain, around the lake, and all along the Whitefish range we share a common bond. We love our hills, lakes, and streams. We are truly grateful to the heart of downtown, to aquatic […]

In 1952 Sen. Estes Kefauver defeated President Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary with the momentous result that Truman announced he would not seek re-election. In that same primary, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower defeated Ohio Sen. Robert “Mr. Republican” Taft, grandee of congressional insiders. If the plans of party leaders hadn’t been upset by a […]

Montana Supreme Court rulings are, on their face, often perplexing. That’s part of the problem. To simplify one of its most recent decisions is arduous, but the following is the brunt of an inane reversal that involves alcohol, intimacy and a couple of Constitutions: A deputy spotted a man legally driving a Chevy pickup in […]

One of my New Year’s resolutions is a howling good one: to get me a wolf. I’m not the only one resolving such a thing for 2008. The Helena Independent-Record ran a Web-poll that showed 253 of 471 respondents support a wolf-hunting season. Even 63 percent of random Idaho “not-hunters” surveyed feel hunting is an […]

Bucky Wolford’s Glacier Mall, aka Glacier Town Center (no extra “e’s,” thank goodness) is going to have yet another public hearing, on Jan. 7. It should be a doozy, with everyone’s nerves freshly frayed by the just-ended North Kalispell Christmas Season Shopping Traffic Jam. At the recent non-voting hearing before Kalispell City Council, Citizens for […]