Right at the five-hour mark, 43-year-old Betsy Cohen of Missoula finished her first marathon, trotting with a sure and steady pace.
The Missoula Marathon is a community event. As marathons go, it's on the smaller end. It's in its second year and had 1,421 registered runners and walkers for the 26.2- and 13.1-mile lengths, according to one un-official count. As was the case last year, this year's race bought in hundreds of first-timers like Cohen. There was also a sampling of long-time local runners, as well as the kind of veterans who seem to show up, tough and wizened, whenever an interesting race materializes. See the results here.
[more]
multimedia
Sights and Sounds from the National Folk Festival in ButteThousands of music lovers from near and far descended upon Butte, Montana this weekend for the 70th National Folk Festival. Festivalgoers ambled among seven different stages taking in music, dance and cultural traditions ranging from zydeco to cowboy poetry to gospel and blues.
Enjoy this multimedia glimpse from the festival.
[more]
an interview with Rob Whitehair and Pam Voth
On Making “The Little Red Truck”
The theatrical premiere of Missoula's very own "The Little Red Truck," an award-winning documentary about the Missoula Children's Theatre, screened Friday at the Wilma Theatre in Missoula and the Myrna Loy Center for the Arts in Helena. Now it's hitting the road with screenings from Portland, Oregon to Charlotte, North Carolina.
In this multimedia presentation, Director Rob Whitehair and Producer Pam Voth discuss the challenges and rewards of making the film.
[more]
Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)
Take Note, Illinois—Kentucky Knows How to Party
There were some redeeming sights in Illinois, to be sure. The most impressive to me was the Indian mounds at Cahokia. Seems a native civilization had a community there of 20,000 people sometime between 1000 A.D. and 1500. They were similar in style to the Mayans, hence the huge mounds, which were shaped like pyramids with their tops cut off. By the time the first white explorers arrived, the tribe had vanished, leaving no known descendants. How do archeologists know this without any evidence outside of some pottery shards and a few ancient cigarette wrappers? According to one marker I read, they were digging in the thousand-year old site, and came upon the ruins of a 400-year-old interpretive center.
When we left the mounds, we drove around Collinsville for a goddamn half hour trying to find the world’s biggest ketchup bottle. We did. The transition from the Indian mounds to the ketchup bottle was jarring. Man, if we could have tracked down the Jesus Putt Putt course, it would have been the tourist trifecta.
[more]
mopping up
Mount Sentinel Fire Snuffed Out
The throngs of gawkers are gone, but crews remain on Missoula's blackened Mount Sentinel, mopping up a 390-acre blaze that eclipsed the city's 4th of July fireworks.
The fire is now 100 percent contained, said Cindy Super, the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation's fire prevention coordinator. "It didn't do much overnight, even with really strong winds on it" -- 30 to 40 mph.
It was the first headline blaze in this young summer in western Montana. "We were able to put all of our systems through a test, a real life test," Super said. "Everything went well."
[more]
guest commentary
Logging Industry Misleads on Climate and Forest Fires
Recent editorials by timber industry spokespersons are a wildly misleading attempt to promote increased logging of western U.S. forests under the guise of reducing wildland fires and mitigating climate change. The timber industry fails to mention, however, that logging is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. A recent scientific study found that completely protecting our national forests from all commercial logging would significantly increase carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gases (forests "breath in" CO2 and incorporate the carbon into new growth), while increasing logging on our public lands would have the opposite effect.
The logging industry also makes numerous scientifically-inaccurate assumptions about fire. For example, the industry would have us believe that little or no natural growth of forest will occur after wildland fire. In fact, some of the most vigorous and productive forest growth occurs after burns, including in high severity fire areas in which most or all of the trees were killed.
[more]
firewater film company
Video: Missoula’s Mt. Sentinel BurnsBrothers Damon and Eric Ristau of Missoula's nascent Firewater Film Company sent us this great two-minute film of the fire that singed more than 300 acres of Mount Sentinel Wednesday evening. Enjoy.
Book Excerpt
We Shouldn’t Exist: Preliminary Notes from No Man’s Land
The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published this month by AK Press. Edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, Red State Rebels is a collection of essays by people who hail from predominantly conservative states but consider themselves "political progressives."
We are not supposed to exist. According to the political Steinberg map of the nation, we come from no man's land, fly-over country, the unredeemable middle, where political progressives are as rare as a Hooters in Provo, Utah. We are children of the wasteland. The rural outback. Where folks carry guns and use them. Where fenced compounds and utopian communes exist side-by-side with a cyanide heap-leach gold mine. Out here cell phones don't work. Not yet, anyway. And some of us would like to keep it that way.
Frank grew up on the wheated plains of eastern Montana. St. Clair hails from the humid cornfields of central Indiana. These states span the glaciated heart of the continent, a region carved and ground-smooth by the weight of ice. From a distance, the terrain of the Great Plains appears homogenous.
From a distance so do its politics and demographics. You must look closer to discover the diversity, the radical nuances.
[more]
multimedia
Conversations with Missoula Artists: Meet Marcy James
Missoula is home to a plethora of artists who express themselves in a variety of media. Alexia Beckerling ventured into the studios and performance venues of a handful of local artists and brought back multimedia glimpses into their creative worlds.
Meet Marcy James, a photographer who is currently working on a project entitled “Very Important Things.”
[more]Update
Missoula’s Mt. Sentinel Fire Quelled, Mapped at 390 AcresUpdate - 6:00 p.m.
The fire that blackened the west slope of Missoula's Mount Sentinel after flaring up at its base Wednesday night is now mapped at 390 acres, down from the estimate of 450, said Cindy Super of the DNRC early this evening.
She said the fire is now between 90 and 95 percent contained with only a few hotspots remaining. It should be wrapped up tonight.
The fire will be monitored overnight and, Super said, "We'll just have to see what tomorrow looks like. We want to make sure everyone stays safe and stays away from the crews working on it."
[more]
