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First Friday

New West Missoula is proud to host the "Faces of the Pov" exhibit at our downtown office in April. We hope you can join us for an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. this First Friday, April 3.

"Faces of the Pov" features portraits of Poverello Center residents and clients by local photographer Cathrine L. Walters and local painter Kimberly Anderson.

Where: NewWest.Net office, 415 N. Higgins, in the alley behind Worden's Market
When: Friday, April 3, 2009 from 5-8 p.m.
What: "Faces of the Pov"

From the exhibit's statement:

365 days a year, the Poverello Center serves Missoula's neediest families and individuals by offering them food, shelter, help, and hope. The halls of the Poverello Center are filled with amazing of stories of struggle, catastrophe, recovery, and personal triumph. We are thrilled to offer Missoula the chance to meet some of our clients and share in their stories of adversity and their dreams for the future. Please join us for an evening of art, music, food, drink, and friends. [more]

Yellowstone Club Bankruptcy

Editor's Note: Following is the full text of a statement from Tim Blixseth, founder of the Yellowstone Club, in response to allegations contained in a lawsuit prepared by the Yellowstone Club creditors committee.

"For more than two years I have kept silent watching my dream - the Yellowstone Club - and myself being ripped apart in the media, engineered by greedy and self-motivated individuals. The accusations against me are provably false, as we will now prove - in court. Some are as demonic and absurd as to defy a rational response.

I have been deeply hurt by these preposterous accusations, and my divorce. I have been staying out of the media fray knowing that it is futile to fight false charges in the media. I will now fight back - as my adversaries now know - in court.

My ex-wife's entire goal was to wrest control of the Club from me in the divorce action with the advice and plotting of an unscrupulous law firm.

[more]

March Goes Out Like a Lion

A local diesel mechanic named Gabe Desalvo has disproved global warming through the careful study of his surroundings, NewWest.Net has learned.

“See the icicle on that ’87 Monte Carlo,” Desalvo said, motioning to a thick ice form clinging to the bumper of a rusted muscle car slouched in his front yard.

“They ain’t been that huge since the winter of ought-3,” he said, referring to the unusually cold months of 2003 that produced some of the “girthiest” icicles Desalvo has ever seen. [more]

winter in the rockies

The West's winter wonders and the adventures they inspire make for great photography -- we call it snowtography. And so NewWest.Net and its Snowblog present the Snowtography Contest. Whether it's skiing or snowboarding, wildlife or snowscapes or snowball fights -- whatever -- venture outside and capture winter in the Rockies for a shot at cool prizes.

The online contest is sponsored by the Missoula-area businesses Edge of the World and The Dark Room and open to pro and amateur photographers alike, shooting in the Rocky Mountain region. [more]

BRAWL OF THE WILD

Just above the Mexican border in Yuma, Ariz., a crowd of sports fans decked out in Grizzly maroon and Bobcat blue and gold will pile into Famous Sam’s bar on Saturday morning to watch, as both comrades and rivals, what they know as the “big game.”

Nearly 4,000 miles north at the Peanut Farm in Anchorage, Alaska, and 2,000 miles east at the Seville Quarter in Pensacola, Fla., parties are being thrown for the same reason.

This year there will be nearly 70 satellite parties held nationwide to celebrate the 107th Cat-Griz meeting, one of the oldest rivalries in the country. [more]

The Big Sky Buffet

Editor's note: NewWest.Net and Montana blogger Dave Budge are teaming up to bring you The Big Sky Buffet, a smorgasbord of recipes, restaurants, equipment, eating anecdotes and tricks and tips on how to prepare food. This first recipe for Blue Onion Soup comes from Rebecca Schmitz.

What follows is one of my favorite easy meals. Now that the leaves are turning, the weather’s growing colder, and there’s snow on Lolo Peak, it’s time for soup. This particular one, Blue Onion Soup, will appeal to both French onion and blue cheese lovers. I’ve been making it for years, and know the recipe by heart. Be sure to have lots of good crusty French bread on hand, and perhaps a little extra blue cheese to sprinkle on top [more]

Timber giant takes a hit

As the Plum Creek Timber Company becomes increasingly prominent in the real estate game, the nation’s biggest private landowner is learning to deal with the ebbs and flows of those two unpopular headline grabbers of late: the weak housing market and its associated credit worries.

Less than a week after the timber giant reported that third quarter profits were down 36 percent from last year, the company’s director of land asset management in Montana, Jerry Sorensen, spoke to a room of about 300 – including prominent developers, Realtors, planners and economists from around the Northwest – about Plum Creek’s transition into the real estate market at the second annual NewWest.Net Real Estate and Development of the Northern Rockies Conference. Sorensen opened up his presentation with a Bob Dylan quote: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

“The timber industry,” Sorensen said, “is certainly in transition – everybody knows that.” [more]

missoula city council election

Editor’s note: In the run up to Missoula’s City Council elections November 6, NewWest.Net/Missoula will be publishing interviews with the candidates.

NewWest.Net/Missoula: Who do you like in the presidential race and why?

Lewie Schneller: At this time I would support Hillary Clinton. For one, she’s married to Bill Clinton. It’s two Clintons for the price of one. I think Hillary is clearly prepared and motivated. I think its time for this country to have a female president. I think it's her destiny. We need a change from the George W. Bush style of the overbearing patriarchal authority figure. Just look at the mess he’s made of everything. He’s depleted the nation. It’s going to take a mother figure to restore America back to health. [more]

missoula city council election

Editor’s note: In the run up to Missoula’s City Council elections November 6, NewWest.Net/Missoula will be publishing interviews with the candidates.

NewWest.Net/Missoula: What are some tools you think Missoula should use to manage its growth?

Don Nicholson: We’re not going to manage it. The problem is badly over-exaggerated. We’re not growing too fast. We’re close to one or two percent (annual growth). We’ve overbuilt apartments badly. We need to let the market do its thing. Growth is not unmanageable, not out of hand. [more]

multimedia slideshow

This summer in Montana, dozens of wildfires consumed hundreds of thousands of acres of parched land. Yet thousands more were left unaffected by fire, partially due to the initial and rapid response of the people who make up one of the West's most romanticized and revered professions: Smokejumpers.

It's easy enough to see where the fascination with smokejumping stems: Tough, dirty firefighters, padded up for flight, readying themselves to jump into a forest afire. But, when you get personal, you see there is so much more to smokejumping than just the adrenaline, the sweat and the bravery. It's what happens before the jumps, after the jumps and between the jumps that captured NewWest.Net photographer Anne Medley's attention.

During the height of fire season in August, Anne hung out with Missoula-based rookie smokejumper Carrie Johnson as she prepared to jump. Click the image for a multimedia glance into Carrie's life as a smokejumper. [more]