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The Trinity project that will provide 130 much-needed affordable housing units off Mullan Road in Missoula is the direct result of partnership and collaboration between Missoula County, the City of Missoula, Missoula Housing Authority, BlueLine Development and Homeword. We are writing to share information with readers about Trinity Apartments and provide facts in response to former County Commissioner Jean Curtiss’ recent letter to the editor published Oct. 20. Curtiss claimed Homeword, BlueLine and the City made promises regarding the c...
Montana is currently experiencing a crisis in judicial overreach accountability. Last year, Montana state legislators passed multiple laws to protect Montana students, both those in grade school and in college. The laws were designed to ensure students can speak freely on campus, participate in the exchange of ideas, and experience the full benefits of Title IX’s equal protection for female students. However, instead of enforcing these new laws and protecting our students’ constitutional rights, the Montana Federation of Public Employees (MF...
From Kim Chambers, Commissioner Candidate What is going on in the Missoula County Commissioners Office? At a recent candidate forum, incumbent Commissioner Dave Strohmaier said the Commissioners are not at the top of the organizational chart within Missoula County government. However, the Commissioners portion of the Missoula County website says different. In part the website says, "The Board of County Commissioners has the jurisdiction and power to represent the County and has care of the...
From Save Holland Lake An ad-hoc coalition of citizens called Save Holland Lake says nearly 99 percent of public comments to the U.S. Forest Service opposes a massive development proposed by a Utah ski developer on public land at pristine Holland Lake. The Flathead National Forest received just more than 6,500 public comments on the Forest Service and ski developer POWDR's proposal to triple the size of the Holland Lake Lodge in western Montana's rural Seeley-Swan Valley, and about 99 percent...
Last week in The Pathfinder, I described the Systemic Immune System which mostly serves to protect internal organs and is activated by clinical infections of all sorts including the COVID virus and intramuscular vaccines such as the COVID vaccines. The larger “compartmentalized” mucosal immune system which is integral to the lining (mucosa) of the airways (from the nasal passages to the lungs) was also described. When the airway is exposed to the airborne pathogen (like the COVID virus), the immune cells (lymphocytes) in the airway lining are...
It is very awkward for me to do this, but to lend credibility to what I have written below, I will state my background. I have a doctorate degree in immunology from The University of Notre Dame. I spent a career at the National Institutes of Health and in the pharmaceutical/biotechnology industry studying the regulation of the immune response. I have authored or co-authored over 70 scientific research publications on the same. Enough said. In the past two years, I have spent hundreds of hours monitoring and studying scientific reports on the...
Editor’s Note: This is continued from last week’s Part 1... I found myself at the center tree now, in Nolan Yellow Kidney’s Sun Dance lodge. I was there wondering why they’d asked me, the newcomer white guy, to help tie up the prayer cloths and leave the tobacco offerings at the base of the tree. With all the people watching I was nervous as I carefully wrapped the many-colored cloths around the aspen trunk. Then, while trying not to cover the photo of a woman’s face that someone had put up, a voice behind me quietly said, “It’s okay, you can c...
Lime green lichen grew between the hooves, shreds of faded hair and rawhide still clung to them and gnaw marks from mice and grizzlies had long ago turned gray against the white bone. I was surprised that the elk hoof bundle was still there. Time had changed the forest, and through the falling snow, I had taken a while to find the tree in which it hung. The old No. 9 lookout phone wire had held tight though and there it was. I remembered back to the day I’d hung it up, was it really almost 40 years ago? The bull had known I was on his trail. I...
As former members of the Montana Fish & Wildlife Commission, we generally refrain from criticizing decisions made by our successors. However, the current Commission’s recent actions regarding the new wolf trapping and hunting regulations are so egregious that we must speak out. The anti-wolf legislation passed during the 2021 Montana legislative session and signed by the Governor, put Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) and the Commission in a difficult position—they had to develop regulations to implement biologically unjustified and unethica...
Editor’s note: Wetzel was a writer and died in 2018 at the age of 102. Her husband was Winston Wetzel, the superintendent of the Missoula County High School system who accompanied the development and realization of the Seeley-Swan High School. This tale is printed with permission from her daughter Gretchen von Rittberg. How would you feel if your children had to ride a bus for five hours a day to attend high school? Shooked? How would you feel if your neighbors’ kids rode a bus for five hours a day? Indifferent? In Montana a community that car...
This Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021 will be the 20th anniversary of an event that has totally changed our lives and how we look at the world. On that morning back in 2001, I walked through the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City as I went to my office in Lower Manhattan. Memories from that day are as clear to me today as the skies were on that fine fall day. As I walked past the bottom of the North Tower just before 9 a.m., I heard a dull boom directly overhead. My immediate thought was how odd...
Senate Bill 379, currently being considered by the Montana Legislature, may be a dream come true for Northwestern Energy, but for ordinary, hardworking Montanans, it’s a nightmare. In 2008, Northwestern bought a 30% share of the Colstrip 4 generating station for $187 million. The Montana Consumer Counsel testified that the book value of Unit 4 was $37 million, but NorthWestern managed to convince the PSC that it was worth a lot more than that: $404 million! The PSC decided that Northwestern could recover all that, plus a 10% return, from its cu...
As I wrap up my eight years on the Public Service Commission, I ask myself, “What are the qualifications of a good commissioner?” As a life-long Republican, my answer may surprise you, because the stuff that makes for a great PSC commissioner is uniquely different from other political offices. Truthfully, the nature of the job – the wise regulating and rate-setting of utility monopolies – has almost nothing to do with a commissioner’s political party. But there are three basic qualities a voter should look for when selecting the person to...
Sheriffs take an oath to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of Montana. We will uphold our oath, protect public safety and respond to our shared constituency through open communication and education as we continue to face the public health risks of COVID-19. As leaders in your community and the elected officials who represent you and your constitutional rights, we want to ensure we are all doing our part to protect the vulnerable citizens in our state while also keeping Montana...
Now is a very good time to attack the houndstongue noxious weed. Some plants are classified as "noxious weeds" because of some conflict with livestock or agricultural production. Houndstongue is not only legally noxious, it is very obnoxious to residential people and their dogs. Individuals may have their property scott free of the weed one year but find a new invasion the next. It spreads as fast as a virus using the neighborhood deer herd as a vector. Popular herbicides run off it like water...
Montanans are no strangers to challenging and unprecedented times. In 2017, we tackled the most expensive fire season on record and the largest since the big burn of 1910. Through economic downturns, we have made sacrifices in order to help neighbors in need and rebuilt again. Even dating back to the Granite Mountain mine disaster over a century ago, we made sure we came out of it a stronger community. With coronavirus now reaching our state, we again face challenging and unprecedented times. This pandemic not only gives way to extraordinary...
As the scope and threat of the coronavirus pandemic becomes clear, people all over the world hunger for two things: an effective vaccine and truthful information about the disease. The former may be more than a year away, but the latter is critical to stemming the pandemic in the meantime. This is Sunshine Week, a time each year when people like me to write columns about some legislature’s wrong-headed move to limit access to public records, and then try to make the case for greater access to public information and transparency in g...
Let Us Join Together to Discuss Divisive and Demeaning Speech We address this letter to all people of faith and of good will in our State of Montana. We are at a crucial time in our nation’s history, as well as that of our state, where racial, political and religious divisions have regrettably deepened. People on all sides have spent so much time fanning the flames of division that the higher callings of our religious traditions have been neglected. While we cannot speak for everyone from the various contexts of our siblings in faith, we a...
On Nov. 10, Wild Skies Raptor Center in Potomac admitted an adult Golden Eagle with the classic symptoms of lead poisoning. The bird's talons were clenched and its wings drooped to the floor. His blood hardly had enough red blood cells to carry oxygen to keep him alive. Brooke Tanner, one of the rehabilitators, analyzed the eagle's blood and found lead concentrations beyond what her instrument could measure. Despite attempts to save him, the eagle died 36 hours later. About three weeks before th...
The Public Service Commission has always been a somewhat surly bunch. The PSC’s devoted staff has often had to deal with varying degrees of political game-playing, deception, threats and intrigue. Sure. Politicians politic. The question is, at the end of the day, can elected officials bury their egos and ambitions long enough to put the people’s business ahead of their own? Recent events would suggest that where the Montana PSC is concerned, the answer is “no.” That might surprise you, given that the commission is entirely Republican. But polit...
For centuries, citizens have turned to their local news publication for local breaking and investigative news, as well as to learn about hot-button issues in their communities. In the last 15 years, with the rise of digital communications, many readers have changed their preferences to digital formats and social media over print for their news. But long before social media came onto the scene, news media have enabled us to exercise all five freedoms. As we celebrate National Newspaper Week, we are raising awareness about our five First...
MISSOULA - They call it the widow maker. It’s also called the left anterior descending (LAD) artery and one year ago mine was almost completely blocked. Had my occlusion been total, I’d likely not be penning these words today, which explains the artery’s nickname. The cautionary tale is that I didn’t see it coming. I have no family history of coronary artery disease. My annual physical exams and periodic health screenings didn’t pick up any red flags of high cholesterol or high blood pressure. And I’m fairly active. I noticed my first sympt...
HELENA - The Legislative Session is up and running here in Helena. The first week is usually fairly calm as all of the individual committees organize themselves and legislators begin putting text to their bills and start getting them scheduled for committee hearings. One of the first things we did was pass our rules under which we will operate during the session. You have probably heard a lot of the back and forth in the media when it comes to the rules, but that happens every session. In the end, we came up with a set of rules that everyone...
Identity theft can be a time-consuming and costly hassle, but there are measures you can take to protect your personal information and avoid the headache. One tool that can help is credit monitoring. But what exactly does credit monitoring do? And more importantly, is it enough to keep you safe? What is credit monitoring? There are a three primary national consumer credit bureaus, and you may have a credit report with more than one. Although the reports are often similar, they’re not necessarily identical because some financial institutions o...
"Everything in this newspaper is important to someone." It's become something of a mantra for me, in recent years. Weekly community newspapers are eclectic, to say the least. We publish photos of ribbons being cut at bakeries, and donations being dropped off at local food pantries. We print the school honor roll, the court report, and in-depth stories on decisions made by planning commissions and town boards. Sometimes we cover murders, abuse, and horrific car crashes, and when we do our...
