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THEY-PICK

They won’t rake your leaves but they will pick your apple trees.

This Fall Garden City Harvest is teaming up with the Great Bear Foundation in an effort to glean Missoula’s fruit trees.

Hungry bears preparing for winter are attracted to fruit-laden urban trees. The goal is to minimize the allure of Missoula’s neighborhoods and limit negative human-bear interactions. Most of the harvested fruit will be pressed into apple cider and given away this October. There is a $10 suggested donation for the service.

If you are interested in having your extra fruit picked please contact Jason at Garden City Harvest at 240-3848. Apple, plum and pear trees are eligible for harvest.

Local Music Soundoff

Tom Catmull and the Clerics are ready to show their roots.

They're releasing their new self-titled CD September 8 at 8:00 p.m. downstairs at the Elks Club. As Tom told us last winter, this album showcases the roosty side of the band so get ready for some knee-slapping. Russ Nasset, with a solo acoustic set up starts things off before the Broken Valley Roadshow takes the stage. Then Tom and the Clerics will play a short acousitc set before the big full-electric blow out. Tickets are $7 at Rockin' Rudy's before the show or $8 at the door.

For a little sneak peek, click here to listen to "Never Say Never", a perfectly rambling, roosty tune with a driving beat and some wicked pickin.

What to do?

On several occasions I’ve heard Missoulians lament the lack of “culture” in town, usually folks who have lived in a big(ger) city at some point. I, too, have felt bereft of entertainment choices on a Friday night, especially when comparing Missoula’s repetitive line-up of bands and bars to the nightlife of my last hometown, San Diego.

But anyone, including me, who next complains about having “nothing to do” on a weekend in Missoula needs to take a second look at the listings for what’s shaking in our hip little city. If you can’t find an event you’re dying to attend, I bet you’ll at least get a chuckle out of Missoula’s unique means of combining art, recreation, and food.

This weekend we’re offered an odd but impressive array of everything from fashion shows and food drives to antique exhibits, bike parades and poetry pig roasts—many of them in tandem. Check out this diverse variety of cultural offerings in the Garden City: [more]

Stumping the Sky

It’s a peace activist! It’s a plane! No! It’s an anti-abortion campaign!

A small plane trailing a giant banner crisscrossed the sky above Missoula today. The banner said, “STOP THE WAR” in large black letters. In smaller print were the words “Stop 10-week abortion” and a toll free number. [more]

Where there's Smoke ...

It's awfully smoky out there today. So smoky in fact that our air quality has been downgraded from marginal (where it's been for the last few days) to "poor." The "poor" designation means visibility is reduced to 6-7 miles.

But we can't just blame our fires. Some of the gray is coming from the fires around Missoula but some might also be coming from neighboring blazes in Idaho. "It's totally a mix," says Ben Schmidt, an air quality specialist for the Misosula County Department of Environmental Health. The smoke might clear in the afternoon if predicted westerly winds pick up, but then, we'll start getting more smoke from Idaho fires. Then again, we also have fires to the east of us, so "we're just going to have smoke," Schmidt said.

In southwest Montana central Idaho fires are pouring a good blanket of smoke into the Dillon and Ennis areas, says Jack De Golia, a spokesman for the Dillion Interagency Dispatch Center. "The source of the smoke is fires upwind of us, in south central Idaho, particularly between Stanley and Lowman,” De Golia said in a release today.

There are several large fires and at least 15 smaller wilderness fires burning around Missoula this week. For a good roundup, click here for our New West report, or click here for the list of Montana fires and here for the list of Idaho fires on http://www.inciweb.org. And, click here for more information on wildfire smoke. [more]

Letter to the Editor

Aspen Springs, a planned subdivision that gets to the very heart of the growth, planning and zoning battles in the Bitterroot Valley, goes in front of the Ravalli County Comissioners for decision this week. A meeting scheduled for Tuesday is bound to be a lively one -- especially after the planning board voted to recommend the commissioners reject the subdivision earlier this month. Today, one of those planning board members, Ben Hillicross, writes in a letter to the editor about why he voted the way he did on the subdivision. [more]

Home Tour

The first home in the development of Bitterroot Resort is finished and the owner, Tom Maclay, hopes the rest of the development is a blending of the Old West values with New West ideals.

Maclay is the developer of the Bitterroot Resort, which, should it come to fruition as he plans, will be the biggest destination ski resort in North America and shuttle skiers from the floor of the Bitterroot Valley to the top of Lolo Peak on the edge of the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness.

And while the swirling controversy continues surrounding the resort and its effects on the communities of western Montana, Friday was a time for the public to see Maclay's new home on the northwest portion of the property planned to be developed for the resort. The home offers the public a glimpse of just what kind of home and style the housing side of the Bitterroot Resort could offer. [more]

Dog Days of Summer

Lots of hot weather have the rivers running warm, low and with heavy Fish Wildlife and Parks Department restrictions in place. As we head toward summer, the colder nights will have water temperatures falling and the fish looking up again. The morning fishing is still pretty good. [more]

Planning Woes

Wednesday night, after nearly five hours of deliberation, the Ravalli County Planning Board voted down a motion to deny the proposed Aspen Springs subdivision and then 20 minutes later had a change of heart and voted to recommend the county commissioners to deny the subdivision. Sound confusing? It was.

Aspen Springs is the first of three mega subdivisions facing the overworked Ravalli County Planning Department, and many feel this subdivision will set the tone for how the county handles future mega developments. Aspen Springs proposes cluster-type development, which primarily is single-family home sites with a maximum of 35 units on seven lots for commercial and multi-family buildings – about 671 units in total – on 390 acres east of Florence.

Ravalli County is one of the fastest growing counties in Montana. Yet county commissioners have yet to enact significant countywide zoning regulations to manage growth. Agricultural land is being sold to small and large developers at a rapid pace and though the planning department has been directed by the county commissioners to work with the planning board on county-wide planning and zoning, they’ve been primarily busy with state mandated deadlines imposed on processing subdivision proposals, like Aspen Springs. [more]

Fire Season Ignite!

At least four of the large fires scorching land in Western Montana this week were started by people -- and across the Northern Rockies, reports show a high number of human-caused fires this season.

The trend highlights the need for people to be vigilant in what fire officials say is "very high to extreme" fire danger in our neck of the woods this summer, which is why come early Monday morning, Western Montana will be in Stage II fire restrictions. Stage II restrictions mean absolutely no campfires, no smoking except inside a building or vehicle and no off-road motorized use. They also mean no welding, using a torch or explosives or running a chainsaw or other equipment powered by an internal combustion engine for felling, bucking, skidding, road building or woodcutting between the hours of 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The Northern Rockies Coordination Center reports a total of 1,546 fire starts this year, 1,040 of them human-caused. That sounds like a lot, but there are a few big caveats to those numbers. [more]

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