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Local Music Sound Off

This week's featured local musician on New West is Amy Martin. Amy hails from Iowa and has called the Garden City home since 2000. Her songs blend traditional and original folk with social activism.

Amy sent us a single from her latest release, Deliverance. Click here to listen to Day of Reckoning.

Keep checking back to New West’s Missoula page for more music by local artists. And if you’re a local musician or in a local band, and would like to offer a sample of your work to the New West community drop us a line at courtney@newwest.net.

Update: Amy's now a 2005 Grammy nominee. Her album "Deliverance" has been nominated for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Granted, she's competing against the likes of John Prine and Joan Baez (as well as 161 other artists), but it's a much-deserved distinction nonetheless.

Film

Here’s a good option for those of us perplexed by the prospect of a looming 5:30 PM sunset. A documentary premiering this week on PBS stations nationwide profiles the life of South Dakota’s Vernon Sager.

According to reviews, Sager’s apparently a true cowboy, a rancher among a dying breed. Vernon apparently isn’t deterred by 3 a.m. wake up calls, or thirty below temperatures on his spread outside Porcupine. His ranch also happens to sit smack in the middle of one of America’s most isolated and economically depressed areas, the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Part of PBS’s acclaimed Independent Lens series, the film’s by Jon Alpert and it airs here in Montana Sunday at 4 PM. A great time slot as we adjust to the depressing thought of winter day light savings.

Health Care

The mega-retailer Wal-Mart has announced plans to expand health care coverage for its employees. According to the New York Times, less than 50% of the company’s 1.2 million American workers are currently covered by the company, compared to over 80% at competitor Costco.

The news could be good for hundreds of Wal-Mart employees at its eleven Montana stores, as some one in five Montanans currently have no access to health care. [more]

Lolo Peak

Wilderness advocates will gather Thursday at Missoula’s Wilma Theater for a talk by a retired Lolo National Forest supervisor, and ardent opponent of a proposed destination ski resort on Lolo Peak.

Orville Daniels, who was supervisor on the Lolo the last time the conceptual idea for a resort was proposed, will give a talk entitled “The Spirit of the Valley, Protect it or Lose it Forever.�

The forest management plan on the Lolo is up for revision, and some think more wilderness ought to be part of the discussion. Specifically, the group Friends of Lolo wants key parts of Carlton Ridge, east of Lolo Peak, added in to the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness, or at least designated as a wilderness study area. That would all but stymie plans for a resort, though any expansion of wilderness itself takes an administrative order from higher up, or an act of Congress.

The event runs from 6 to 8:30 PM, parkside at the Wilma (formerly Marianne's).

Missoula Mayoral Race

A shuttle service connecting shoppers along the traffic-clogged North Reserve corridor and more high density developments aimed at getting people out of their cars are among a list of growth management proposals offered up by Missoula’s mayoral candidates today.
[more]

Broadcasting News

The Billings Gazette is reporting that Yellowstone Public Radio GM and all around Eastern Montana radio institution Marvin Granger has been put on suspension by the chancellor at Montana State University-Billings.

University and station officials are not saying why, other than that his suspension - with pay - has to do with “personnel issues at KEMC.� An investigation by the university’s human resources and financial services divisions is forthcoming. Granger himself has declined to speak to the press, telling the Gazette, he’d first like to meet with his lawyer tomorrow.

Granger’s suspension came Monday, the same day YPR kicked off its annual fall fund drive.

Montana Energy Symposium

All eyes are on Bozeman this morning, for the kick off of the first ever Montana Energy Symposium. The Schweitzer Administration has been planning this event since taking office earlier this year – and the conference comes amid skyrocketing gas prices, and mounting criticism from conservationists and economists on several of our new governor’s goals.

Energy industry leaders, environmentalists and four other governors are among the list of expected attendees. Noticeably absent is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration, who had been scheduled as a keynote speaker, but apparently cancelled due to a trip to North Korea for nuclear talks.

Expect up to the minute coverage of the symposium from New West’s Brooke Hewes, who will be blogging from the Montana State University campus throughout today and tomorrow.

The Rattlesnake Wilderness

The Rattlesnake Wilderness is turning 25 this Wednesday, and several stories over the weekend, including this one in the Missoulian and a photo spread in the Independent have showcased our little backyard gem’s history.

The Snake’s 61,000 wilderness acres and adjoining 28,000 acres of protected recreation land, is undoubtedly the closest wilderness area to a sizable urban center in America. [more]

Abortion Debate

A new law that creates a buffer zone between anti-abortion activists and patients hasn’t deterred protesters like Harris Himes of the Big Sky Christian Center from showing up each Wednesday morning at the Blue Mountain Women's Clinic’s front gate.

“We’re not trying to impede anybody’s entrance into the clinic,� says the Hamilton pastor, “We’re simply trying to raise the awareness level that abortion is really a grisly affair.� [more]

Solar Energy

Nearly two dozen schools, including two from here in the West, are competing for a noble cause right now in DC; sustainable, energy-efficient housing.

It's part of the Department of Energy's Solar Decathalon, in which students from various universities from across North America and even Spain strive to design and build, what DOE organizers will soon decide is the most "attractive, effective and energy efficient solar-powered house." [more]

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