Three films shot last summer in Montana are scheduled for imminent release. Can’t say that these look like blockbusters, but then I was wrong about Debby Does Duluth.

A Plumm Summer was shot in Bozeman and Livingston and set in 1968. We couldn’t invent a more gripping plot line than the published version itself:

Two young brothers from a distressed Montana home go head-to-head with the FBI to crack the kidnapping case of the beloved TV puppet, Froggy Doo.

Hmm. Can you imagine the writer trying to pitch that one?  

If your hand isn't already in the air for Number One, here is some Number Two: We all know that  horror and Montana are synonymous. How about this for a movie plot synopsis:

Paper Dolls is a terrifying psychological thriller set near the beautiful landscape of Glacier National Park, Montana. Two high school friends, Travis and Nate, are on a road trip to Canada when they're attacked by mysterious and vicious creatures. Nate is stolen into the woods and Travis will stop at nothing to get him back.

This winner was shot last August up in Flathead and Glacier Park country. Not to ruin the film for you, but it’s about some guys who suddenly come nose-to-armpit with Bigfoot…who, truth be told, is already well known at our local Laundromat in Wisdom. He's an annual visitor. 

The third Montana movie is called Iron Ridge and was written by Great Falls native Stu Brumbaugh. Brumbaugh also directed Iron Ridge. Oh, and he stars in it. Matter of fact he was the executive producer for the film. And the electrician. Not a bad all-around billing for a former ski instructor. But in the movie business you either sink or swim… or you don’t. And this movie probably stands a good chance of turning a profit because of Stu's astute stewardship.

Stu's plot summary reads:

When two friends from the city take a vacation to the wilds of Montana, they find themselves lost in the depths of the big sky country.

Just as an aside here….did you ever notice that the heroes of Montana films always seem to get lost, kidnapped or terrified in the Big Sky backwoods? It's almost a requirement for any Montana movie.

I wonder how Montana native Gary Cooper would have played a run-in with Sasquatch? Fer darn sure he’d never be terrified or lost.

Yup.

Conservationist writer Pat Munday of Butte authors a weblog called ecorover that although frequently…err, rabidly… leftward in slant, nevertheless offers interesting perspectives on the Big Hole River Valley. Munday has a curious eye for detail, which is reflected both in his writing and photography. A March 26 blog entry with early spring photos, highlights his walk along Hogback Ridge (below) north of Dillon.

Add one cool new dinosaur to the ever increasing population of dead ones they’ve found spending eternity in Montana. This behemoth was a 7 foot mama lizard with two scaly juveniles, the first burrowing dinosaurs ever discovered. (You think you’ve got mole problems?) Our latest native family was found near Lima, in southwest Montana.

No speculation as to the reason for death of these herbivores, although spending 95 million years in a hole with your two kids would give anybody a serious migraine.

Montana State University paleontologist David Varricchio, lead author for the study says that the existence of a burrowing dinosaur suggests the possibility that some species would have survived past the Cretaceous age [after that nasty asteroid hit], but only if they still had access to food sources. (Well, there you go. Wal-Mart Supercenters didn’t start arriving in Montana until a few years ago.)

Read the details of this interesting discovery at Mongabay.com. And then follow the The Montana Dinosaur Trail and Judith River Dinosaur Institute links to other creatures too terrifying to describe here.

“Pry it from our cold dead fingers”, says the Army's National Artillery Museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Butte citizens may be left with that impression anyway, after a request to return a Civil War cannon to its original site was turned down dead-bang. The 5,920–pound Big Boomer was gifted to a Butte Civil War veteran’s group in 1903 by copper king William A. Clark, but in 1960 was rolled south to the Fort Sill Museum. After 47 years in Oklahoma, Norman DeNeal of Butte wants to say, “Never mind” to that little oversight. “We’d Sooner not”, came the reply. The sabers are rattling.

Reporter Justin Post has been following this story at the Montana Standard.

Go Boom. A skeet shooting festival in early Butte features the Civil War cannon.

Photo courtesy of the World Museum of Mining

If the development of cell phones and high speed internet had been actual Communist plots, we would surely have barred those technologies from the Big Hole Valley. Well, somebody somewhere must have feared the Red Peril, because we've been living without those subversive conveniences for years now.

We still chuckle when we see visitors unsuccessfully trying their city cell phones on the main street of Wisdom. (Traveler Alert: Want instant messaging in Montana? Use the Post office.)

There IS another communication alternative, but it’s more of an adventure than a solution.

While the nations’ Baby Bells gradually remove their slotted phones from street corners around the country, Wisdom, Montana still sports a well attended open telephone booth. It has a short metal cord that extends two feet…almost within reach of the park-bench close by. The phone usually-sometimes-always-never works in summer, and it’s too damn cold to touch in winter. We think the local telephone company…with a clear view of the action from their offices across the street…may have replaced the old rotary dialer with a push button model just to increase the comedy factor. Winter or summer, you can count on those buttons to occasionally work. (Traveler Alert: The better alternative is the inside pay phone at Wisdom River Gallery down the street.)

But now we see the recent intrusion of high speed internet. It's the final catastrophe. “Honey, grab the kids”!

Like the promise of bird flu, DSL has arrived, and with it of course comes the end of civilization as we know it. It’s only a matter of time before our girls will be asking to wear their cardigan sweaters backwards. What next…bobby socks instead of nylons? The horror.

The USDA Wildlife Services on March 6 confirmed the recent loss of a calf to wolves in the Big Hole Valley. Keep your head down for 45 days as the affected Wisdom rancher has been granted a shoot-on-sight permit. The wolves moving into the valley are thought to belong to the Mussigbrod Pack. There goes the neighborhood.

http://www.kxmb.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=103870

 

Five southwest Montana counties show a slight increase in unemployment over the typically weak winter quarter, but most county rates are down a full percentage point from last year. Keith Kelly, Labor Commissioner for Montana says that the numbers are so low, it’s become “a talent war in Montana’s tight labor market”. As we move into spring and summer that’s always welcome news in light of those bygone years when we read about middle-class flight to find jobs. Montana has seen consistently positive employment rates since 1987.

Commenting on last year’s employment data Kelly said “Montana has experienced a year of escalating residential and commercial real estate activity, record high commodity prices, and strong growth in wages. This combination of robust economic activity helped to push unemployment rates to historically low levels.”

Who are the biggest private employers in Beaverhead county?

Size Class 4 = 20-49 employees; Size Class 5 = 50-99 employees; Size Class 6 = 100-249 employees.

Barrett Hospital & Healthcare 6

Barretts Minerals Inc. 5

Debco Construction 5

Parkview Acres Care & Rehabilitation Center 5

Great Harvest Bread Franchising 4

Pfizer Minerals 4 R E Miller & Sons 4

Safeway 5 Southwestern Montana Family YMCA 4

State Bank & Trust Co. 4

Reference:

http://www.ourfactsyourfuture.org/?PAGEID=67&SUBID=154#jfrsn

http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/global/story.asp?s=6201546

It’s always nice to read other people’s comments about your own favorite place to live or visit. This short bit of high praise comes out of Michigan, but is directed at our own Big Hole Valley. From the weblog of Dr. Nelson L. Price:

In recent years my wife and I have been privileged to spend a bit of time each year in the Big Hole Valley in Montana. It is one of the most scenic spots in America. It is a basin sixty miles long and fifteen miles wide bordered by the Pioneer Range on the east and the Rocky Mountain cordillera of the west. Streams flow from virtually every valley to form the Big Hole River which merges with the Beaverhead River to form the Jefferson which merges with the Madison and Gallatin Rivers and flows into the Missouri River into the Mississippi and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

The ranch house sits on an table 5860 feet above sea level. The view is right up the river. Mount McCartney, the tallest free standing mountain in North America at about 9,000 feet, forms the ranch boundary to the east with the river on the west. The ranch is about one tenth the length of the valley.

All of this is approximately three hours from Yellowstone over the Beartooth Highway, the highest roadway in North America appropriately dubbed “America’s most beautiful highway.” The elevation is slightly less that eleven thousand feet. The alpine vistas are enthralling. The route home is through Virginia City and Nevada City, two engaging old gold mining towns.

Lewis and Clark along with their Native American guide, Sacajawea camped here. Nearby Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce fought the Battle of the Big Hole River and started their trek toward Canada. On the ranch and nearby are abandoned gold mines. The fertility of the valley has earned it the name “The valley of 10,000 hay stacks.”

Moose, elk, black tail and white tail deer, antelopes, gold and bald eagles, proliferate on the ranch along the Big Hole River known as one of the ten best trout fishing streams in America.

http://www.nelsonprice.com/index.php/?page_id=90

There is genuine satisfaction in reading about another set of convicted misfits who skipped that day in nursery school when we talked about playing by the rules.

Since 1982 Texas resident William Hudson has been coming to Montana to hunt. But since 2000, Texas resident William Hudson has also been coming to Montana to poach. And because he was a big eater, Hudson invited his wife to join in his annual trip to the Montana public meat market.

Acting on a tip to the state's poaching hotline (TIP-MONT), game warden Shane Brosovich found that Hudson had overlooked the pesky little regulation requiring an out of state hunting license. So he borrowed one. Judge Judy would have chortled.

Poaching isn't just a cooking technique in southwest Montana. The "P" word carries some rather hefty fines and penalties. In this case $22,500, loss of hunting privileges in 23 other states and extra benefits. ..like Mr. and Mrs. Hudson now get to see their names lit up on computer screens all over the country.

Two Montana wardens traveled 1500 miles to correct the impression that kidnapping Montana natives and hanging them in your living room is a legitimate hobby.

How they ever will cover the bare spaces on those walls should be a major concern to Mrs. Hudson because the Montana wardens retrieved 13 mule deer and white-tailed buck deer racks, one big horn sheep ram head, 11 non-trophy bull elk racks, and a trophy 6×6 bull elk rack. The Hudsons were evidently good shooters. Just not good hunters.

Message to Texans: "Don't Mess With Us." Read the dirty details.

Butte, Montana has more gnarly history in its brick-lined back alleys than you can read in three lifetimes.  But when it comes packaged as a Montana PBS documentary, it’s worth setting aside some viewing time in your present incarnation.

Mine tragedies and murders and mayhem in old Butte have always carried headlines. But it was a hidden cache of illegal explosives that caused a disastrous industrial fire in the city’s warehouse district and took the lives of 57 men including 13 firemen. 

The 1895 fire devastated Butte’s young fire department, leaving only two remaining members. Read more about this story at the Montana PBS site. And watch the documentary when it airs a second time on March 5.

The United Nations is not…er…universally admired in the state of Montana. Though momentarily stalled in the Montana House, a bill to ban flying the U.N. flag on state property says more about the frustrated ire of some Montanans than any fear of international sanctions against our state. (Not to worry. There were 17 rock-solid, deep-dish, irrevocable sanctions against Iraq before the UN firmly and aggressively folded.) Still it’s interesting to fantasize about a few Big Sky cowboys spurring an international confrontation over a second blue flag on their own front lawn.

Read the whole story.

Ever wonder what life-experiences shape the strange minds of our great science fiction writers? Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Gibson, Stanchfield? They must all have lived in a twilight zone somewhere. And in fact, Justin Stanchfield, science fiction author of 60 stories and 10 plays still lives in just such a zone. Wise River, Montana. Go figure.

 

The Montana Standard does a profile on Wise River's Justin Stanchfield: Rancher by day, Writer by night.

Butte cyclist Levi Leipheimer has won the prologue to this week's 97 mile Amgen Tour of California by leading 144 other riders in a grueling two mile, uphill race to San Francisco's Coit Tower. Average speed? 23.994 mph. Telegraph Hill is sometimes called "Heart Attack Hill" among other breathless labels, but it's a ride in the park if you train in Butte. The 2nd annual Tour of California runs for eight days and covers some 600 miles.

See photo and read more.

Montana state senator Dave Lewis, (Republican, Helena) has cosponsored a bill to bring back wolf hunting in Montana, and it has already passed in the Senate. Well this should be interesting. Lewis outlines his argument in a letter published today;

Why establish a wolf hunting season in Montana? Just a few years ago the return of the wolf was hailed as a great victory for wildlife management. What happened is that the numbers have grown so rapidly that the impact on elk numbers is starting to be noticeable.

We will stand for almost any injustice or diabolical plot perpetrated on the citizens of the state but cut in to elk numbers and the game is over. I have argued for years that the most powerful constituency in the state are elk and their friends. People who do not hunt elk love the fact that we can see them often and enjoy the fact that Montana is one of the few places where elk are part of the landscape.

Read the whole thing, before the fur flies.

So there goes the neighborhood: $155 million is the price tag. "Honey, do you suppose we could make those payments if we cut back on your Botox injections?"

 

Adjacent to Big Sky, Montana, (just a buffalo chip's throw from the Big Hole Valley) is the Yellowstone Club with its three million dollar entrance fee. Well, that's the net worth requirement for just raising your hand to inquire. And then comes those silly membership fees ($250,000) and of course the annual dues ($16,000). Bother.

 

Although the exclusive development has been plagued by hefty EPA fines and legal entanglements, nothing has discouraged real estate magnate Tim Blixseth from planting his dream double-wide in the mountains.

 

Its about 15 months from completion, but through the miracle of pretend, you can already view the finished bungalow, that is before the contractor received all those change orders.

 

Read the story in Forbes. And reactions from those pesky Montana neighbors in New West.