My Page: Courtney Lowery

From the Flathead Beacon

WEST GLACIER – Exactly one century after President William Howard Taft signed the legislation creating Glacier National Park, nearly 1,000 Montanans gathered here on May 11 to celebrate a landscape they love, along with the wisdom and stewardship of the generations who helped preserve it.

“Today, we recognize this anniversary, acknowledging that the story of this landscape is much older than a mere hundred years, and that the story will continue well beyond this significant event,” Park Superintendent Chas Cartwright told the crowd gathered beneath a tent outside the West Glacier Community Building. “Each of us has a personal connection with Glacier National Park – Glacier connects us to the very core of our nature.”

News Nugget

National Geographic this week launches a new TV channel of 24/7 nature programming and one of the first programs to be featured is centered on the Yellowstone Grizzly.

Expedition Wild: Expedition Grizzlies follows naturalist Casey Anderson as he documents the in-peril Yellowstone grizzly population and tries to teach an orphan grizzly how to be a real bear.

Here’s a sneak peek from Hulu:

What’s really cool is Expedition Wild is produced in Montana by Montanans who know Yellowstone and its bears, Bozeman-based Grizzly Creek Films.

According to a story in the Christian Science Monitor, National Geographic hopes “Nat Geo WILD” will replace the Fox Reality Channel in some 50 million homes across the United States. We can only hope. Something tells me we might all be better off if 50 million homes opt for studying nature over studying the “Househusbands of Hollywood.”

News Nugget

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says talk of his department creating new national monuments in Montana and other Western states was just “brainstorming.”

The issue became big news after after an internal memo about the subject was leaked last month, setting off alarms in many, if not all, Western congressional offices and certainly across the Rockies. Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg is even planning legislation that would halt such activity.

But, Salazar maintains that the feds are not out for a land grab. He tells Ledyard King of the Gannett Washington Bureau in today’s ,Great Falls Tribune, “They were brainstorming sessions that basically said, ‘These are the areas that could be protected, and the way you protect them is through a variety of different means, and this is one option, but it doesn’t mean that’s the option that we select.”

And, when Sen. Jon Tester’s questioned him about the issue at a Tuesday hearing, he said, “There are no plans that we have to move forward” and that there have been “no directions from the White House that we move forward on monument designation.”

King’s story in the Tribune is a good exploration of the issue, read it here.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer is No. 1 on the Washington Independent’s list of five politicians who could boost Obama’s populist appeal. The list, out today, also includes Iowa Gov. Chet Culver as well as Sens. Jim Webb, Sherrod Brown and Dick Durbin.

The reasons for Schweitzer as the No. 1 choice among “rising stars” that Obama could hitch himself to? For starters, he’s a “‘pickup-driving, gun-loving’ Democrat,” who “possesses the appealing centrist profile that could strengthen Obama’s efforts to court moderate Democrats and independents. Additionally, as head of the Democratic Governors Association, giving speeches in bolo ties, jeans, and cowboy boots, Schweitzer has created a national profile for himself.”

(Note: At least they didn’t mention the cattle dog. Now, I know that all of this is partly the fault of Schweitzer himself, but good golly (as he might say), can’t anyone see anything in Schweitzer other than his guns and his bolo tie? Does it register to anyone in the beltway that he might actually have an actual record to look at?)

In any case, the Independent suggests that come 2012, Schweitzer could have strong appeal as a running mate for President Obama and while they haven’t seen eye to eye on everything, they could be odd, but good bedfellows.

And, although Schweitzer has on numerous occasions insisted Washington was not his next move (last time I asked, he said he might find himself running cattle in Patagonia after his Governorship), we did wonder a few weeks ago why he was at the last minute part of a national press conference on a new national advisory board on sportsmen and conservation. He was in town anyway for a Governors’ meeting on energy, and maybe the press staff just figured they needed a bolo tie to counter the suits. Who knows.

Planning

Local planners in the Intermountain West are the ones who could ultimately shape the way climate change effects the region, say the authors of a new report released this week by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy and the Sonoran Institute.

State, regional and federal policies can still make an impact, yes, but the real impact happens on the ground, particularly in how our communities grow, say the report’s authors.

“While policies at the federal, regional, and state levels serve as important guideposts for reaching sustainability, they require local implementation to be successful. In most communities, land use and transportation policies potentially reap the greatest rewards,” the authors write in the executive summary.

First Friday

NewWest.Net is proud to host Jazmine Raymond and her works this January at our downtown office.

We hope you can join us for an opening reception First Friday, January 8, from 5-8 p.m. at the NewWest.Net office at 415 N. Higgins Ave. in the alley behind the Old Post.

Raymond specializes in working with clay, paint, jewelry and wearable art.

She writes, “My medium is the sensory object.  I love contrast, texture, color, space and enjoy the balancing act of composition involving all elements. My current work always refers to my personal experience, usually directly external but always referencing the internal through the subject, and is often expressed through portraiture.”

Western Politics

Matthew Daly and Shannon Dininny of the Associated Press have a big story out today that uncovers a “vast entitlement” in the program most often referred to as county timber payments or as it was formerly know, the Secure Rural Schools and Self Determination Act.

The law was originally passed in 2000 as a way to help rural communities that were seeing dramatic drops in revenue from logging on federal lands, namely rural schools that heavily relied on that income. The act came after concern for in the 1990s for the spotted owl and other endangered species spurred a reduction in timber harvests. Total, the legislation has allocated more than $3 billion to counties. And, as the AP reports, Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho and Montana got the majority of that money—80 percent. Oregon alone got $2 billion.

When the Act came up for renewal again last fall, and especially after a Bush administration proposal that would have sold off public lands to pay for the program rose and then fell, Western congressional leaders, including Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Max Baucus pushed hard to extend the program, saying it was instrumental in keeping rural communities in their districts a live.

But, as Daly and Dininny discovered: “A four-year renewal of the law, passed last year, authorizes an additional $1.6 billion for the program through 2011 and shifts substantial sums to states where the spotted owl never flew. While money initially was based on historic logging levels, now any state with federal forests - even those with no history of logging - is eligible for millions in Forest Service dollars. Doling out all that taxpayer money is based less on logging losses than on the powerful reality of political clout.”

Election '09

The elections that attracted national attention Tuesday were all on the East Coast, with New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (suddenly burdened by his previous job as head of Goldman Sachs) going down to defeat and conservative Republican activists like Sarah Palin failing in their effort to override the local party and elect a fellow-traveler to an open Congressional seat in upstate New York. Unsurprisingly, voters across the country were worried about the economy, not too keen on incumbent office-holders, and wary about measures that might cost them money.

In Colorado, open space and marijuana were the issues of the night, in Boise, the streetcar desire played a role in the elections and in Montana, the liberal bastion that is Missoula finally has a liberal city council.

Here’s a quick and dirty roundup of highlights from election night: 

Photo Gallery

As the sun began to set, there were as many photographers as ghosts ready to march. Slowly skeletons, ghouls, drummers, dancers, and dressed up dogs emerged on Missoula’s Higgins Ave. to celebrate Missoula’s Festival of the Dead. As the sunset turned to twilight and twilight turned to dusk, the revelers paraded down Higgins Avenue in a sea of light, color, motion and sound.

Every year a pack of photojournalists from the university marches in and out of the parade in search of photographs that capture the spirit of the festival. They seek moments of celebration and remembrance. They put to work what they have learned about lighting and journalism in the real world classroom. 

We graciously thank the participants who accepted our camera lens and our bright flashes as our students learned how to capture the spirit, light and emotion of the rich parade celebrating the spirits of the dead.

Update

Details are beginning to firm up for President Obama's visit to Bozeman later this week. Obama will hold his town hall meeting about health care at a Gallatin Field Airport hangar in Belgrade Friday, Aug. 14. Gates open to the public at 10:45 and the program starts at 12:55.

The meeting is free and open to the public but you will need tickets. Here's where to get the tickets:

Tickets are required and will be available at the following ticket distribution location beginning at 9:00 a.m. Thursday, August 13. Tickets will be limited to two per person and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Bozeman City Hall
121 N Rouse St.
Bozeman, MT 59715

Belgrade City Hall
91 E Central Ave.
Belgrade, MT [more]