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A judge in Gallatin County recently blocked two bills aimed at addressing Montana’s housing crisis, siding with a radical anti-housing interest group. The decision to block Senate Bill 323 and Senate Bill 528 is misguided and unfortunate. These bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and were signed into law by Governor Gianforte. Housing affordability is a major issue in Montana. Many Montanans can no longer afford to live in the communities in which they grew up. To protect our Montana way of life, we need to find ways to i...
Alvin looked like he could have stepped out of an old-country Weiner schnitzel or biergarten commercial: rotund body, big features, big frame, distinctly Germanic features set in a jolly countenance, and big strong workingman's hands with calloused fingers the size of bratwursts. He wanted to learn how to tie flies. He enrolled in a course I was teaching. He was the nicest guy in the world, and we became good friends, but my first thought going in was that it would be a challenge for him to...
The Blackfoot Challenge recently learned of the deaths of four trumpeter swan cygnets hatched to Blackfoot swan 3A6 in Sheridan, Wyoming. Swan 3A6 was released in the Blackfoot in 2016 and nested in the Sheridan area this year. The cygnets were determined to have died of the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), or avian flu. While the current strain of avian flu is highly deadly to domestic poultry, it appears to be much less lethal to most wild birds. However, waterfowl (birds like ducks, geese, swans, coots, grebes, etc.), some raptor...
It is with a heavy heart that I announce I will be leaving the role as Pathfinder editor in the coming weeks. Seven months ago, I started the job wondering if anyone still read the newspaper, or if the days of local journalism had come to a close. I quickly realized that the local news is alive and well in Seeley Lake, because you, the reader, care. In my time as editor, I have seen concerts, heated meetings, infrastructure issues and the roar of the Seeley Swan High School gym during a good basketball game. It has been an honor to cover each...
I want to respond to Mike Marshall’s letter, published in the Pathfinder on Jan. 4. As I understand him, Mr. Marshall’s basic premise is that all or most of the dozens of bills passed by the Legislature that are being challenged in court are clearly unconstitutional. Constitutional matters are not so simple, nor does the actual data support his argument. But it’s an argument that has also been made by others, such as Democratic legislators and activists, so I’d like to address it. First, Mr. Marshall suggests the Legislature’s “legal ve...
Dear Editor, We live in a confusing time. A time when we protect unborn whales and pandas, but not unborn human children! Statistics say that in America there are an average of 90 human abortions every hour. In 1984, President Ronald Ragan proclaimed January 22 a Sanctity of Human Life Day. This year celebrates forty years of the Sanctity of Human Life. The dictionary defines sanctity as the state or quality of being holy, sacred, or of ultimate importance and inviolability. At Sparrow’s Vine Pregnancy and Parenting Resource Center we b...
As this new year begins so does a new Reading Challenge. The 2024 Missoula Reads reading logs are in, folks! Swing by your local library to pick up your copy. If you can’t wait, check out the new categories online on the Missoula Public Library main website (programs & events, ongoing programs, Missoula Reads). I was so impressed by the number of people who completed last year’s challenge! Way to go everyone. Prizes for completed 2023 logs should be arriving very soon. If you haven’t recei...
The horrific terror attack against Israeli on Oct. 7 revealed that anti-semitic hatred has a disturbing foothold in the world. Equally troubling is what has been exposed in our own country in the months since: the shocking tolerance (encouragement even) of antisemitic, genocidal hatred on college campuses. Like so many Americans, I was stunned when the heads of three elite Universities testified before Congress and refused to unconditionally condemn calls for genocide against Jewish people. This ugly episode shone a light on the creeping,...
Have you ever felt far from God? When the Israelites were in exile before the coming of Jesus, they were far from the dwelling place of God as he chose to dwell among them in the temple. Even though we are in an age of God dwelling with and among us, I often put myself in exile from God’s presence by removing myself from him in difficult times. I’m sure many of you do the same. Today I’d like to challenge all of us to turn our affections toward Christ and to find our deepest satisfaction in hi...
For the last five years of my surgical career in Billings I endured two or three sessions a week of “hot yoga.” Seriously hot, 104 degrees with added humidity. I had been experiencing the common occupational hazards of surgery--neck, back, and shoulder pain resulting from twisting, bending, and generally contorting the skeleton into improbable positions to see into the nether regions of the human body. With regular, seemingly tortuous yoga sessions I had none of the aforementioned somatic complaints. A friend of mine suggested that I went bec...
I'll take the stillness. I'll take the fact I don't have to shovel snow. I'll take streets that are mostly dry and fairly safe to drive on in the afternoons and the luxury of not having much of anyplace to go most mornings. I'll take the daily temperatures that produce highs, some days, that bring mist off the river. The mist, if everything goes just right, freezes overnight to appear as hoar frost the following mornings; some mornings there is enough sunlight to turn the whole landscape into a...
WOW!! Peter Stark has brought to life a time and place in our young nation’s history that would forever shape the future of the United States. But I think, more so, it would shape the destiny of all Indigenous tribes. It is the story of the lengths a corrupt, self-serving politician would take to expand the United States and a courageous Shawnee Chief who would rally this country’s first people, to unite and stop the destruction of their way of life. Stark will be presenting this new book in conversation with Montana Poet Laureate Chris LaTray...
December is a busy, generous month. The giving spirit of the holiday season often moves people to support the causes they love. As year-end approaches, people also evaluate tax consequences and work to maximize their contributions. At the end of 2023, the Seeley Lake Community Foundation received a very generous gift of $10,000 earmarked for our endowment. How did this happen? The donor simply called up the SLCF office to talk about what he was looking to do. Together we figured out the mechanics of this gift, and made it happen before his...
In response to your recent letter to The Seeley Swan Pathfinder, I am writing to express my profound disappointment and deep concern regarding your recent track record in the Montana state legislature. Your penchant for crafting bills that ultimately wind up in court, clogging the system and ultimately crumbling under the weight of the Montana Constitution, is not only irresponsible, but it is also a blatant disregard for the taxpayers’ money and the well-being of our state. Every time you push through a poorly conceived, unconstitutional b...
During the midst of this holiday season, the legislative assembly is being asked to approve a special session to be held on Jan. 15. The following is my rationale for voting against this call right now. The objectives, as stated by the nearly 20 legislators requesting this action, are to return a surplus collection of taxes, and to address high property taxes placing a burden on Montana’s residents. Thus far, there are four tax-related issues proposed for consideration. I’m not convinced that these can all be responsibly tackled during a spe...
What is health? Ms Webster defines Health as: “a condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit … freedom from physical disease or pain.” A more colloquial standard may mean something different. Does it mean freedom from all disease? Not having chronic disease? Managing the symptoms of the ailment of the day? Not having a bad flu? Or is it something different yet again. When speaking of health and disease, we may believe it is a bad flu and our success of avoiding it is what makes us healthy for the year. It may mean one of the many chronic...
Well-known author and forester Bud Moore began trapping at the age of fourteen and spent several winters in the 1930s running trap lines in the Lochsa backcountry. After working over 40 years with the US Forest Service, he retired in 1974. Anxious to get back to his roots and the land, he and his wife Janet moved to Swan Valley where they managed their 80-acre Coyote Forest. Later, he wrote the book, The Lochsa Story: Land Ethics in the Bitterroot Mountains. Beginning in 1983 at the age of 66, he spent a couple of winters living out of a tent...
Bob Sheppard’s letter, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023, claims that trappers are being unjustly persecuted by a federal judge’s injunction restricting wolf trapping and snaring to the original season, Jan. 1-Feb. 15, to protect the federally listed endangered grizzly bears. Bob Sheppard is a mainstay of the Montana Trappers Association. He lives in Ovando. One wonders if, and if so, how many grizzlies he has caught in his traps over the years. Mr. Sheppard goes on to infer that restricting trapping is the first step in a stealth agenda to ban hun...
For years, Montana has had one of the highest rates of military participation and veterans per capita in the nation. The 2023 Legislature took many steps to both help our men and women in uniform protect our state and country going forward, as well as recognize and honor their service. First, we passed a new law that prohibits foreign adversaries from owning critical infrastructure and agricultural land in Montana. This is crucial to national defense, making it illegal for hostile competitors like China to buy land near our nuclear missiles at...
There have been many interesting and influential Seeley Lakers since our community began. Jasper Seely, from whom our town got its name, is among the more fascinating, and a look at his life is also a look at America during a period of robust growth and change. Born in Niles, Michigan, in 1857, Jasper Seely would be 166 years old today. The town of Niles was settled in the early 19th century, although nearby Fort St. Joseph dates back to 1691. Niles has been called the City of Four Flags since it was governed at various times by the Spanish,...
Luke 2:17 And when they (the Shepherds) saw it (Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger), they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child (from the heavenly host). 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. Mary and Joseph now have a three-day old baby boy. He came into the world in quite a fuss. The Birth announcements was not cute cards with the picture of the newborn and the new family with length and weight duly...
As bears rest in their dens and families gather for the holidays, there is much to celebrate in the world of wildlife conservation-and much more work ahead. For grizzly bears, the slow march toward durable recovery in the lower 48 states continues, with populations making gradual gains in 2023 and bears reclaiming historic range, including the first documented grizzly sighting in the Missouri River Breaks region of North Central Montana in more than a century. As the grizzlies' numbers and...
Mack was flown to us at the university hospital nearly dead. He had contracted a vicious virus that had attacked his heart, and despite every available medication, a ventilator, and a cardiac assist pump, his heart failure was so severe that his organs were shutting down. Mack was sent to us in the hope that he could be saved with a heart transplant. His wife had died a year earlier, around Christmas, and now his daughter Lisa, 15, faced the loss of her remaining parent, again at Christmastime. She was alone with her desperately ill father, no...
First, I thank Andi and Nathan Bourne for making the Pathfinder an award winning newspaper that in a sense belonged to all of us. And I thank Andi and Nathan for inviting me several years ago to be a contributor to the Place For All column. My latest submission to that column in the 14 December issue was more an introduction to who and what I am, and it may be my last contribution. Most of my previous submissions dealt with our public lands and wildlife, and for my latest I had intended to write about our federal lands, my first and foremost...
This column could be considered an open letter to Montana judges and justices, as well as the various agencies and parties engaged in lawsuits over legislation from the 2023 and 2021 legislative sessions. It’s also meant to inform Montanans about how ongoing litigation could impact future legislative sessions and, more fundamentally, their own ability to know and understand the current laws of our state. I write today not to submit another critique of political biases and integrity within the judicial branch, which have been widely discussed t...
