Old Montana stomping grounds featured in BBC report

Brud Smith is a proud Montana Democrat ranching near the Boulder River in Jefferson County but he also leases property from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. He was recently interviewed by the BBC's Ellie House for a segment on the federal lands sell-off debate. Also interviewed was former BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning who sees the urban sprawl changing Montana as a destructive trend. 

The above image is posted at Xitter. 

Learn more at Grist.

Butte rail bypass makes sense

Amtrak service through Billings, Bozeman, Helena, Missoula always seemed like the best idea but commuter rail from Butte to Missoula in the I-90 median, to Helena through Basin over an existing I-15 right of way and even from Bozeman to Butte over Homestake Pass is not impossible.

All dressed up but now what?

Not that anyone’s going to do anything about it, but it might be good to remember that, as an adjudicated oath-breaking insurrectionist, Mr.Trump is constitutionally disqualified under Sec. 3 of 14th Am from taking the oath as president on 1/20/25 unless 2/3 of both houses lift the disqualification

— Laurence H. Tribe (@tribelaw.bsky.social) November 25, 2024 at 4:46 AM

Just weeks before Donald Trump led his attempted autogolpe Stewart Rhodes was inciting the Oath Keepers to civil war. Rhodes formed the white supremacist militia in 2009 after Barack Obama was elected POTUS but is now serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy for his role in Trump's insurrection. 

After bankrupting Ammon Bundy and sending him into hiding Idaho's St. Luke's bolstered security protocols amid threats from the state's Republican Attorney General and others in his party. Idaho is the third most lucrative state to practice medicine just behind Montana and South Dakota as doctors flee persecution from militants like Dorothy Moon, the Bircher who's Chair of the Republican Party there. Raúl Labrador is an Earth hater and Mormon who was born in Puerto Rico, elected to Congress in 2010 with support of the John Birch Society, was Chair of the IDGOP before becoming attorney general and says he believes a fertilized egg is an unborn child.

American Redoubt guy, James Rawles is still blogging away about preparedness for the End Times and awaiting orders as his orange god's transition gaggle is barred from talking to the Biden administration.

Montana's chorus of anti-education legislators included Basin's own Alan Hale, until he died. Today, the state's legislature is no longer recognizable as a democratic body but rages on as a Trumpian horde and Jefferson County is every bit as rabid as any in Montana.

Lee Newspapers and the Montana State News Bureau are running a series on Tactical Civics, a militia group wondering what's next after their Proud Boys brethren were told to "stand back and stand by."

"If we have 50 members, where are they?" a woman named Cathy asked the group. The disappointment that night has been expressed in interviews over the past six months with current and former Tactical Civics members who spoke to the Montana State News Bureau for this series. Travis McAdam, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said historically such groups have lost momentum during Republican presidential terms. After Jan. 6 and the resulting prosecutions, those networks were decimated, sending mobilization efforts back to the local and regional levels with plans to rebrand themselves as forces for good, McAdam said. ['The Heat’s Off': Will Trump's next presidency stall Tactical Civics growth in Montana?]

In Wyoming members of the so-called Freedom Caucus are preparing to crash the legislative session in Cheyenne so maybe that's the next storm front of the End Times. 

Trump World's man for secretary of Defense has close ties to a Moscow, Idaho-based white christofascist cult that aims to turn America into a theocracy.

Learn more at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Oops. Montana Highway Patrol sprays Boulder kids with tear gas

We all know cops' lives suck because they reliably abuse the rule of law, their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives; but police unions are showered with cash while teachers' unions get the shaft.

Montana Highway Patrol training exercises in Boulder on Wednesday resulted in tear gas and pepper spray wafting over Boulder Elementary third and fourth grade students on the school playground, causing some of them to complain of irritated eyes. The MHP moved its headquarters to Boulder from Helena in 2021 to the campus that once housed the Montana Developmental Center. [MHP tear gas training brings quick end to Boulder Elementary recess]

After fourteen years in the Boulder-based position the Odd Goddess of Basin wasn't rehired as Jefferson County Health Officer because she wouldn't approve the pandemic plan for the Jefferson County Rodeo in 2020.

Chinese culture persists in Montana even as hatred spreads

Way before this interested party left the Black Hills again for Montana in 2006 I had a recurring dream of old buildings being offered for free just for those of us who love historic preservation.

So, the Odd Goddess of Basin took her new romantic interest on a tour of Butte and I wept as my dream exploded into reality. But despite all of the gorgeous, empty buildings there was work waiting in Helena so my attention shifted. Butte has the architectural inventory and most of the infrastructure for over a hundred thousand souls but is home to only about 35,000 today. The Odd Goddess and a fledgling blogger saw John Prine at the magnificent Mother Lode Theater in Uptown Butte and we ate at the Pekin Noodle Parlor often.

Now, with Montana in the news and China in the crosshairs of white nationalists it must be time to remind more readers that liberal democrat President Thomas Jefferson used an executive order to seize land from Indigenous people, then from west to east enslaved Chinese immigrants built the railroads in the 1800s. 

It's a Chinese restaurant on the top floor of this old building in uptown, filled with these closed-curtain private dining booths. But what's really significant about it is that it is the oldest, continually operating family owned Chinese restaurant in the country, kept running by members of the Tam family for over a century. Butte's Chinese community was the largest Chinese community in the Rocky Mountain West, at about a thousand. If you think about it this way, the Tams have kept the Pekin going through two pandemics, two world wars, the Great Depression and the shutdown of Butte's underground mines; feeding countless miners, families, politicians and celebrities, and all the while maintaining a living, functioning connection to the history and origins of Chinese American culture and experience in the West. [John Hooks]

What really captivated America was this thing called chop suey. And chop suey was primarily invented because it was just, basically, tidbits, leftovers of any vegetables they had late night. They would mix together and then spread over any type of noodles or rice. My father came here when he was 14. His great grandfather, Tam Kwong Yee, was business partners with a man named Hum Yow who basically wanted to create noodle parlors. The best part about it is my dad probably have provided over 1,000, probably 5,000 jobs, you know, throughout the whole history of the Pekin. [Jerry Tam]

Lawrence County, South Dakota is known to have been inhabited by humans for at least 12,000 years before white Republicans besmirched it then turned it into the Nazi enclave and cultural wasteland it is today. Deadwood gambling was legalized with a promise to preserve all the history in the Gulch and archaeologists still unearth Chinese opium pipes there. 

In 2010 two Basinites loved Tony Ballog and Roma Nota, the Hungarian Gypsy quartet during a huge turnout for the National Folk Festival in Uptown Butte.

Montana Artists Refuge reopens after Basin shooting incident

Basin, Montana is a basin, indeed — pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Boulder Batholith, the richest hydrothermal ore-body on Planet Earth, now it's a smoldering hotbed of art. 

The Montana Artists Refuge, built by a community of intellect and talent so expansive that its sheer gravity compelled it to well there, Nancy and MJ are two of its Founding Mothers. Elegance is available for trekkers seeking respite just thirteen miles from the Continental Divide Trail; the Stone House is MJ and Nancy's way of bringing Jefferson County's mill history to visitors while Basin Creek laughs its way to the Boulder River just yards farther downstream. The Refuge closed in 2011 but reopened last year in defiance of a shooting, an arrest and a conviction for a hate crime. 

Montana's chorus of anti-education legislators included Basin's own Alan Hale, until he died. Today, the state's legislature is no longer recognizable as a democratic body but rages on as a Trumpian horde.

Behind a paywall at the Boulder Monitor is a feature on the Refuge.
 

Bryher ran for the Montana House of Representatives for District 75 in 2020 but lost to an Earth hater 68 - 32 percent. She operated the High Note Café when this scribe lived in Basin.

A federal jury convicted a Montana man of hate and firearms crimes for firing an AK-style assault rifle at the residence of a woman, who identified as lesbian, and was home at the time. After a four-day trial that began on Feb. 14, the jury found John Russell Howald, 46, of Basin, Montana, guilty of hate crime acts and discharge of firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence as charged in a superseding indictment. According to court documents and statements in court, on March 22, 2020, Howald went on a self-described mission to rid the town of Basin of its lesbian and gay community. Armed with three rifles and two pistols, and knowing that the victim identified as a lesbian, Howald approached her residence on foot and fired an AK-style assault rifle at her property. Several rounds went through the victim’s fence and rounds hit her yard and porch. One round traveled through a wall of the home, bounced off the kitchen ceiling and lodged in a wall in the room. The victim was at home at the time but was not struck. [Montana Man Convicted of Federal Hate Crimes and Firearms Charges for Shooting Intended to Rid Community of the Lesbian and Gay Members]

ip photo: a contingent from Basin listens to testimony during the 2011 legislative session.

Learn more at the Helena Independent Record.

Enviros wrong to resist fuel treatments on public ground in SE Montana

Ponderosa pine only reached central Montana about a thousand years ago and coal seam fires regularly burn parts of the Ashland District on the Custer Gallatin National Forest but native aspen, bur oak and hazelnut are still crowded out by pine overgrowth. 

University of Montana entomologist, Diana Six has been studying the relationship of water, forests, fungi and bark beetles for decades. Her work outlines how native insects are clearing clogged watersheds being decoupled by the Anthropocene. The mountain pine beetle is hard at work clearing centuries of overgrowth throughout the Rocky Mountain Complex, so is the western spruce budworm. But leaving dead or dying conifers on the forest produces methane, an even more dangerous greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide is. 

In 2012 the fast-moving Ash Creek Fire burned bridges on US212 near Ashland and Lame Deer, Montana while another blaze nearby on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, the Coal Seam Fire spread to some 700 acres. In 2017 wildland fires on private ranch land in southeastern Montana dwarfed those on public ground in the western part of the state. The Sartin Draw Fire near Broadus and the Battle Complex near Birney burned at least 100,000 and 185,000 acres respectively, decades of invasive grasses and poor stewardship to blame. The nearly 50,000 acre Huff Fire burned through the white supremacist town of Jordan, known as the home of the Montana Freemen. The Bobcat fire near Roundup in Musselshell County was over 41 square miles in size. 

Last year a smoldering coal seam started the Richard Spring Fire on the Ashland District that burned primarily in non-native cheatgrass beneath a ponderosa pine overstory. Fine, flashy grasses and sagebrush were the main fuel sources.

The Forest Service hopes the South Otter Landscape Restoration and Resilience Project will “help restore and maintain the structure, function, composition and ecological connectivity of the forest landscape in order to increase resiliency to future natural disturbance events like wildfire, insects, and disease." Commercial logging would take place on 41 square miles of the 292,000 acre Ashland District. Thinning of doghair pine and prescribed burns would happen on some 200,000 acres. 460 miles of new roads will be decommissioned after the project.

The Ash Creek Restoration and Resiliency Project would "restore and improve resiliency in forested and non-forested ecosystems within the Ash Creek Fire and other fires that have occurred within the last 25 to 30 years from Highway 212 to the northern most boundary of the Ashland Ranger District." 

Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison, wapiti, bighorn sheep, pronghorns and deer cleared the grasses driving eastern Montana's fire years. If grasses remained in the fall tribes burned the rest. 

Some are opposed to the treatments because categorical exclusions provided a bypass of the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA. But, a fuel accumulation urgency intervened, local sawmills will get a boost of socialism, firewood for local tribal communities will be plentiful and the decommissioning of some Forest Service roads beats the hell out of bulldozers carving up hillsides willy-nilly to suppress wildfires on public lands. 

Learn more at Montana Free Press.

Image was captured with a BlackBerry on US212 near Alzada.

Spearditch Canyon goats pit locals against SDGFP

Speaking of killing unwanted mountain goats: Spearditch Canyon in the Black Hills has become home to a herd of inbreds. 

In 2013, 75 percent of Badlands National Park's bighorn sheep died in a pneumonia outbreak tied to contact with a domestic herd. But as South Dakota's wildlife management bureaupublicans release bighorn sheep onto federal lands, ostensibly to knock down a cheatgrass infestation created by the failure of Black Hills forest policy, the GOP-owned Game, Fish and Plunder wants to kill more mountain goats.

Spearditch photographer, Les Heiserman has been capturing images of a male and a harem born in the canyon after unions with the goat's mother and his siblings since 2016.

According to the “South Dakota Mountain Goat Management Plan, 2018-2027,” Custer State Park officials obtained six mountain goats from Alberta, Canada in 1924, and placed them in a zoo at the park. The first night in the zoo, two goats escaped. By 1929, the rest of the goats had escaped. This was the beginning of goats in the Hills. [Residents concerned about Spearfish mountain goats]

In 2010, the Odd Goddess of Basin and an interested party hiked over breathtaking Siyeh Pass in Glacier National Park where we nearly walked right up to a fearless flock of mountain goats lounging on a rock bench.

They go from “passive to aggressive really fast,” said Joel Berger, the Barbara Cox Anthony University Chair of Wildlife Conservation at Colorado State University. One of Berger’s recent studies found that in high alpine environments in the Rocky Mountains where mountain goats and bighorn sheep compete for resources, goats displace sheep — as much as 95% of the time when salt licks were the issue. And, while sample sizes differed across ecosystems, Berger said the results were largely consistent: “The patterns of goat domination, in all cases, whether introduced or exotic, were the same. Goats win.” [In the Rockies, goats beat bighorn sheep]

The outcry at Heiserman's Faceberg page is deafening.

Land swap in the Crazies exposes the folly of private ownership

At some landmark along the 914 mile-long carbon footprint that I used to smear on one or another path connecting Basin, Montana with my home town of Elkton, South Dakota it always dawned on me that some two hundred years ago, in what took a REALLY intrepid pathfinder at least three weeks on a horse (or more likely, two months on foot) to traverse, I would do in about fifteen hours. 

I-90, now just another American entitlement, stalks the Yellowstone River between Livingston in the west then abruptly abandons her just east of Billings and plunges southward into the Apsáalooke or Crow Nation. 

Despite being sacred to the Apsáalooke the federal government has twice proposed the Awaxaawapìa Pìa or Crazy Woman Mountains sometimes called the Crazies as a location for a national park but half the land and every alternate section was owned by the Northern Pacific Railroad or was otherwise privately held. 

Today, most of the public land is shared by the Custer Gallatin and Lewis and Clark National Forests but even tribal access has been blocked by the descendants of European settlers. The Montana Wilderness Association or MWA wants that to change.

On a brisk fall day in 2016, Bozeman resident Rob Gregoire received a trespassing ticket while hunting on a trail that’s appeared on maps of the Crazy Mountains for at least 80 years. Gregoire is now a member of the Crazy Mountain Access Project (formerly the Crazy Mountain Working Group), which includes about a dozen Montanans representing various interests — landowners, conservationists, hunters — who are developing a land swap proposal to resolve disputes over public access along the mountain range’s eastern flank. Crazy Peak is an important part of the spiritual landscape for Crow Indians, and access to it would allow them to fast and pray there in the tradition of Chief Plenty Coups. Switchback Ranch owner and Yellowstone Club member David Leuschen has agreed to give Crow tribal members access to Crazy Peak if the swap goes through. Finally, MWA would like the Crow Tribe or the Forest Service to have first right of refusal on any private lands that come up for sale within the forest boundary. [Checkerboard chess in the Crazy Mountains]

Crow Peak or Paha Karitukateyapi just outside Spearditch is translated as "the hill where the Crows were killed" stemming from a battle between the Lakota and Crow Nations. The Crow allied with Custer and the United States Army believing they would reclaim the Black Hills.

ip photo.
 

The Yellowstone Club wants to turn sewage into snow so that its rich and famous members can ski its slopes in a winter season that’s shrinking because of climate change. #mtnewshttps://t.co/0KD2PGshXV pic.twitter.com/UI7GdX4HQM

— Montana Public Radio (@mtpublicradio) May 16, 2021

South Dakota second worst pay for nurses

Few policymakers dispute the reasons educated people are fleeing my home state of South Dakota. 

The state's governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny. 

Yet, South Dakota is most lucrative state to practice medicine so why isn’t there a regulatory body like the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to regulate medical care costs? Because the state is a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.

Any registered nurse with at least half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota just gets stupider and more Republican. The only worse state for nurses to work is Alabama. In fact, 21 of the bottom feeder states are all red and the best paid nurses work in blue states!

The mother of my daughters, the Odd Goddess of Basin and Our Lady of the Arroyo are all registered nurses, so are neighbors and friends Tim, Micki, Lisa, Matthew, Leslie, Maria, Joan, Lori and Sarah. Each one loathes Trumpism as does every other medical professional they know who will never, ever vote for a Republican again. 

Learn more about red state failure linked here.

Fiesta Days draw weekenders to T or C

In 1950, radio quiz show host, Ralph Edwards, awarded a name change to Hot Springs, New Mexico and the town officially adopted the show's handle, Truth or Consequences.

Like many other post-heyday small towns the main commercial district has shifted to the highways outside downtown leaving many storefronts empty or converted to single family dwellings. Cannabis-friendly T or C has become a tourism-driven economy where many northerners winter. The vast bulk of the properties outside the core are mobile homes and real estate signs are numerous. Much of the burg sits within the Rio Grande floodway in the relative safety of the Elephant Butte Dam.

Here is a favorite entry in the Fiesta Days parade.

T or C's gay and lesbian community is very active in the festivities in a collective where non-traditional couples have settled. We met a geologist from Missoula, Montana who prospects in Sierra County and has claims in Boulder County near my former home in Basin.

The cottage at La Paloma was our home away from home.

The Geronimo Springs Museum is home to a priceless collection of projectile points and stone tools as well as artifacts from the Spanish conquest, European settlement and the Ralph Edwards era.

Ted Turner owns the Sierra Grande Resort where a staffer took our picture after lunch. He’s got a ranch on the Rio Grande just north of town.

Basin refugee redefining Native art

The Montana Artists Refuge has ceased to exist but its legacy lives on.

When Bently Spang pulls on the gold jumpsuit and white platform shoes to become “Indian of the Future,” it’s hard to understand his ancestors’ influence on the Northern Cheyenne artist. In 2012, when the Ash Creek Fire near Ashland burned his parents’ home and 20 other homes, Spang felt compelled to record the experience from the perspective of the trees, still standing but charred. He took rubbings from the charred bark by using large sheets of white paper and rubbing them into the tree. “I was interacting with the burned tree,” Spang said. “They were telling the story of the fire. When I looked at the first few, I said, ‘Oh my God, that looks like the fire.’ He titled the series ‘On Fire.’ ” [Jaci Webb, Billings Gazette]

Spent this morning with Cheyenne artist Bently Spang. #nativeart pic.twitter.com/eGsfcnBm7r
— Jaci Webb (@Jaci56) August 1, 2014

Bently Spang is a Northern Cheyenne multidisciplinary artist, writer & curator. http://t.co/VQkWAD9qVE #NativeArtists http://t.co/Z1FeNjG19l
— Native Encyclopedia (@nativepedia) May 12, 2014

Northern Cheyenne artist Bently Spang reckons with the blaze that consumed his family's home. http://t.co/7iKV6i9EmO pic.twitter.com/XyDMFgMqQv
— Western Confluence (@ConfluenceWest) July 23, 2014

Smells Like Ted Nugent: Rocker Criticizes 'Stinkyass' Native Protesters http://t.co/nz2oKxwNsc #sturgis #southdakota #HiFromSD #blackhills
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) August 11, 2014

Suit filed over tasing of nine-year-old from Rosebud Sioux Tribe http://t.co/8tzFFmO5Sb #ndnz #sdgov #pierre #southdakota
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) August 11, 2014

Spanish immersion? Cool, whither Lakota or Yanktonai? http://t.co/kiOS7AaXL3 … http://t.co/FUJsWTZiPH … #redstatefailure #sddoe #sodak
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) August 11, 2014

Tester: thanks, Max

Montana Governor Steve Bullock surprised nobody yesterday by appointing Lieutenant Governor John Walsh to complete the US Senate term won by now US Ambassador to China, Max Baucus. Walsh had previously entered the race to be our nominee then contest earth hater and first-term At-large Representative Steve Daines in November.

Baucus sent the following letter to supporters:

Friends,

Serving Montana has been the honor of a lifetime. I want to thank all Montanans for the privilege of representing our state for the last four decades.

Last week, I embarked on a whistle stop tour of the state. It meant so much to personally say thank you to folks across the state.

In case you missed it, let me tell you a bit about our journey:

Our first stop was in Billings to highlight how infrastructure like Shiloh Road is helping bring more jobs to the state. Next, it was off to the Crow Agency to celebrate some of the work we've done together over the years to improve water infrastructure and build a brighter future throughout Indian Country.

It was then off to Two Dot for one last shot in a long standing tradition. What is the Baucus Two Dot Tradition?

The final stop for the day was in Butte where we announced the 7th Montana Economic Development Summit.

The second day started by honoring our veterans and service men and women in Great Falls. 

Next, it was off to Missoula where I first got my start to celebrate the ways we've all worked together to protect Montana's outdoor heritage.

Bringing justice to Libby and all of the residents poisoned at the W.R. Grace mine has been one of my top priorities over the years. The Whistle Stop Tour would not be complete without visiting my friends in Libby. They surprised me with a very touching dedication of a wing of the CARD clinic. While my next adventure will take me far from home, Libby will always be in my heart.

Then, it was back in my home town of Helena to reflect on the privilege of service Montana.

It has truly been a privilege to serve the people of Montana, and luckily, I have had the best staff to help me along the way. They even put together a wonderful video recapping my time serving Montana. Take a look.

Thanks again and tap 'er light.

Montana's now-senior Senator Jon Tester sent interested party this email message:

Dear Larry,

The Senate yesterday said goodbye to a true public servant, my good friend Max Baucus.

Max has spent his entire career serving the state of Montana.

Just out of law school, Max oversaw the adoption of our state's constitution guaranteeing Montanans the right to enjoy clean air and water and an open, transparent government.

And he spent the last 40 years serving our state in Congress.

As a Senator, Max fought to protect our public lands. He blocked efforts to gut Social Security and Medicare. He expanded health care access to millions who were previously denied coverage.

Max learned from his mentor, Senator Mike Mansfield, that working together is the only way to move this country forward. That's how he earned the respect of Senators from both sides of the aisle and how he was able to accomplish so much for Montana.

Since I joined the Senate, Max has been a mentor and a friend. And I told him so yesterday before his confirmation.

I will do my best to live up to the legacy of Max Baucus and Mike Mansfield and work every day to make sure Montana stays the Last Best Place.

I wish Max well in his new role as America's ambassador to China. I know he will always put Montana first.

Be well,

Bullock is expected to announce his choice to replace Walsh very soon: that's the surprise awaiting Montana Democrats.

Koch's Americans for Prosperity and Rove's Crossroads America are dumping plenty of cash into #mtpol. Surrogate strategy failed last cycle.
— Mike Jopek (@mikejopek) February 8, 2014

Rove Group Going After New Senator In First Big Attack | Super PAC spent $138,000 on TV ad buy opposing Walsh. http://t.co/gCLE9RRhrM #mtpol
— Mike Jopek (@mikejopek) February 8, 2014

#Montana noon temperatures are cold. Above zero at least but still on the cold side with snow. #MTwx #cold pic.twitter.com/yjggMdckjE
— KBZK TV Bozeman, MT (@KBZK) February 8, 2014

Did you honestly believe Brian Schweitzer was going to run?

Schweitzer tag here.

Yes, Montana sucks more than DC
3 (37%)

No, DC sucks more than Montana
3 (37%)

meh
2 (25%)

Thanks to all voting. The post got 79 hits.

Montana family survives attack on civil liberties in South Dakota

You know the drill.

So, interested party got a phone call from Murdo.

A couple of hours previously on I-90 between Box Elder and New Underwood: two bored highway patrol watching thousands of bikers going west to Sturgis for the Rally pulled from the median to intercept a speeding vehicle that had just passed the eastbound freegan family going to Indiana for the funeral of a brother.

While the lead patrolman went after the speeding rig, the second pulled alongside our long-haired family, made eye contact, dropped in behind, turned on his lights, and stopped the Subaru adorned with Ron Paul bumper stickers and Montana plates.

Trooper Bader, shield 73, asked Mr. freegan to join him in the squad car then told him that probable cause was a six-inch crack in the Subaru's windshield. While the otherwise nicely-behaved dog in the back seat of the squad car watched, Bader asked that since Montana has a medical cannabis (cop said "marijuana") law, did Mr. freegan have a card?

After Mr. freegan refused to answer citing his Fifth Amendment rights, Herr Bader announced that he and the weaponized dog would do a walk-around.

While Mr. freegan sat in the squad car, Mrs. freegan and two frightened children watched from the Subaru as cop and dog did their dealio. Mr. freegan watched as the dog then sat down next to the Montana car.

Bader and drug dog returned to the squad car then informed Mr. freegan that the thing had alerted on the Subaru. Knowing there was nothing in the Subaru, Mr. freegan produced a 'one-y' and a small amount of medical cannabis from his person, then repeated his right to possess.

The subsequent questioning of Mrs. freegan elicited similar recitations including her view that South Dakota's state police was harassing her family.

Something apparently got through to Trooper Bader: he issued no ticket for the cracked windshield; but, he cited Mr. freegan for possessing paraphernalia and Mrs. freegan for knowing of the paraphernalia then sent the family on their less-than-merry way.

The freegan family will fight the citations (hopefully from the safety of their own home) and said they will never again return to the chemical toilet.

Montana wildfire cross-pollination underway

Monsoonal moisture is setting up over the southern Rocky Mountains bringing downpours and cooler temperatures; the rain barrels are full after nearly an inch at the foot of the Ortiz Mountains. It's sticky again this morning.

Locations in Colorado seeing wildfire activity also received precipitation while parts of the eastern prairie in that state are under a red flag warning.

Wyoming has not been as fortunate, though the Casper Star-Tribune shows showers in their forecast near the Squirrel Fire. The Oil Creek Fire north of Newcastle is still working though she's expecting containment soon.

The Black Hills are inadvertently stimulating job growth among humans out doing structure protection from clearing fires, too, even having killed a few of us, leaving families grieving over a fire started by an RV owner.

Montana's Ash Creek Fire is working hard as she erases a tiny portion of a century of livestock infestation and fire suppression: reports say nearing 300,000 acres. Unfortunately, families on the Northern Cheyenne have lost homes baiting a sector showing the highest levels of job growth: elastomeric stucco and rain catchment.

Matthew Koehler is a radical conservationist; but he doesn't like Democrats very much after having crossed Pulaskis with Montana Senator Jon Tester over the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act. Hence, he and this interested party are often politically sideways in the Montana blogosphere.

However, we get terrifyingly close to agreement recently with a post he writes in A New Century of Forest Planning as responsibility for mega-fires catches up with the news. He even invited me to participate.

President Obama: vivisect the Forest Service soon.

Rewild the West.

NPR is reporting at 10:04 MDT that Syria is using weaponized wildfire on their border with Turkey.

Inciweb: The Ash Creek Fire has now become Southeastern Montana Complex overcoming the 300,000 acre threshold.

Basin family featured at the Helena Vigilante.

Chemical toilet home to 8th best test takers

Deseret News is an unabashed mouthpiece for the LDS Church in Utah. It's in the twitter feed mostly for its weird news value. A trivioid popped up this morning that made me go look:

#8 South Dakota

Average SAT score: 1737

Average ACT score: 21.8

At the top of the list are Minnesota and Iowa. Montana, Wyoming, and the other Mountain West states score very well, too; yet, New Mexico and Nevada are in the lower half of states. DC is 51st.

Intersecting with these results comes a piece in the New York Times Education section describing the spiking use of pharmaceuticals among students:

The number of prescriptions for A.D.H.D. medications dispensed for young people ages 10 to 19 has risen 26 percent since 2007, to almost 21 million yearly, according to IMS Health, a health care information company — a number that experts estimate corresponds to more than two million individuals. [P]rescription stimulants became a point of contention when a girl with otherwise middling grades suddenly improved her SAT score.

Data on which states dispense the most ADHD 'scripts are ancient: anyone find anything recent?

You are the change: vote

Thank you for voting to wrench the courts from the hands of earth haters, religionists, misogynists, racists, plutocrats, and xenophobes.

South Dakota Democrats: you have few choices except to flee the state. Same for Wyoming readers. Vote for Ron Paul.

Montana Dems: the power to preserve the Last Best Place by turning her blue is in your hands. Ron Paul deserves your support today, too.

New Mexicans: vote for rain.

The revolution begins...now

This land is your land. This land is my land. h/t freegan: take back your land now:



From Minnesota Public Radio:

Lenny Russo, James Beard nominee and chef-owner of Heartland Restaurant in St. Paul, joins The Daily Circuit to talk about the industry.

The Netherlands is considering a ban on cannabis for tourists. Sir Richard Branson penned alternatives at The Globe and Mail:

In contrast, there are higher levels of use in countries with a “zero-tolerance” approach to illicit drugs; the rate of cannabis use in the U.S. is 14 per cent, versus 5 per cent in the Netherlands, where licensed coffee shops sell small amounts of marijuana.

Simone still stalking Boulder Hot Springs

The view is breathtaking, the building complex is massive, the plunges are set at 109 or so (the pool maybe not so much); and, hipneck is not the only curio walking the grounds. hipneck is the skilled caretaker who trained ip on the mechanical systems at Boulder Hot Springs, part of the more than one million dollar improvements to the heating system that utilizes the 174 degree discharge from a geothermal source under Bull Mountain. He and others are rebuilding the greenhouse to grow the retreat's organic food.

The pipes to the radiators used to converge in a clawfoot bathtub in a basement straight out of The Silence of the Lambs where the homemade plenum acted as a manifold to heat the former hotel.

From the Helena Independent Record:

It’s said that a prostitute was murdered in the old office area — stabbed by a mining executive from Butte — and that she haunts the halls. Although few have seen this so-called “lady of the night,” she’s become quite well known. Simone’s Suite is located on the first floor. It has two beds, four tall windows and a big boudoir bathroom.

And, while this blogger has never seen Simone, there are places in the not yet restored parts of the west wing that give me the willyboogers just thinking about it.

By my reckoning, this IR photo was taken from the outside pool area, west wing to the left