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THE LOCAL YOKEL BECOMES A GIANT

Bozeman's Community Food Co-op, in its distinctive metallic-silver building that looks like a retro-grain elevator on Main Street (located, interestingly enough, across from Safeway), is in the minds of its ardent patrons the very paragon of rebellion against Big Box stores, industrialization of food commodities, and material-driven conspicuous consumption. Be a Yokel, Buy Local is the catchphrase. Yet what happens when the Co-op's own startling success forces it to grow and expand its footprint and staff? Ah, a fascinating dilemma. Only four years ago did the Co-op move into its brand new space—gargantuan, then— that is already outgrown. The Co-op now has over 150 employees spread across four buildings in 10 departments, an annual payroll of $2.6 million, and a 12 percent growth rate in which 140 new members are being added to the rolls every month. In this bit of reflection, Co-op general manager Kelly Dean Wiseman ponders the fledging from a once quaint mom and pop-sized operation to something a bit more, well, supersized. Can the Co-op remain different from the food markets that it long has stood in contrast against? Can it maintain its identity?
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Author Interview

Ryan Sager is a columnist for the New York Post. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Reason, National Review, and the Atlantic Monthly. He is also the author of The Elephant in the Room, Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party. Writing before the midterm elections, Sager predicted that the Republican shift towards Southern values—religion, morality and tradition, as he sees it—would cost the party in the West where people tend to put more value on freedom, independence and privacy. I interviewed Sager, who lives in Brooklyn, on Thursday, December 21st. [more]

Missoula Festival of the Dead

Día de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, is a national holiday in Mexico that finds itself a centerpiece of Missoula’s Festival of the Dead. How did it come to be here, and where are we taking it? [more]

HEAD OF THE HILL

It's not a surprise, exactly, but Pat O'Donnell has made it official. He's stepping down as head of the Aspen Skiing Co.

"Obviously it's with mixed emotions," he told the Aspen Times. "I'll always have a love of the business."

O'Donnell, 67, is retiring atthe end of the ski season, after 14 years with the Skico and 29 in the industry. [more]

Fiery Festival

Babb, Montana is about nine miles from St. Mary, Montana, on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park.

Every year the tiny town holds its 'Babbfest,' an outdoor music shindig boasting as much PBR, hemp t-shirts, Indian tacos and gourmet tequila shooters as any 20- or 30-something could possibly desire. Bands play all day long, local wares are sold in booths, and everyone generally has a jolly old time. Babbfesters camp at the festival, which makes sense: this year tickets were $40, and admission meant an all-you-can-drink party that reached its pinnacle of fun around 1 A.M. when the headlining band, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band out of New Orleans, began playing.

My parents love Babbfest. I've never been, so I tune in with a keen ear to their stories. They're fond of saying things like 'We were looking to win the award for the oldest people there' when they talk about it. I don't know why; they're fun. Not, you know, mosh pit fun, but they're fun.
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Bringing Bert and Ernie to Montanans

I’m guessing that many NewWest readers are like me: addicted to public television. If you can’t imagine life without “Nova” or “Frontline” or “Mystery!” and “Masterpiece Theatre," I wonder if you realize that Montana was the last state in the United States to get its own public television system.
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Mystery Mogul

The Los Angeles Times goes deep today on Denver business tycoon Phillip Anschutz, who in addition to his extensive interests in oil and gas, railroads, telecom (Qwest), movie theatres, film (Chronicles of Narnia), sports, and newspapers is also the central figure in a major redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles. The lengthy profile by Glenn Bunting has many good tidbits (his break-out deal in the oil business was a gamble on a Wyoming well fire) and goes to great lengths to find court cases and legal documents that will reveal Anschutz's methods and character. Unfortunately, the secretive mogul, who hasn't given an interview in more than 30 years, manages to remain pretty opaque, with few clues as to his inner motivations.

The Bacon Campaign

Montana Senator Conrad Burns announced yesterday that an appropriation of another $4 million would be added to Kalispell's US 93 bypass project, making the total appropriation $8.2 million. The bypass has been at the center of mega public debate in recent years as growth on 93's west side--along with drastic population increase in the Flathead Valley--has contributed to traffic and safety issues in and around Kalispell. The addition of new Kalispell high school Glacier High, located north of Kalispell, also became a motivating factor in the appropriations request, which was submitted by County Commissioner Gary Hall last fall and again early this year.

We shan't need be reminded that it's an election year in Montana. Burns and farmer Democrat Jon Tester are in the midst of one of the hottest US senate races around. Burns-- as we've been told again and again throughout the campaign-- is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee and has quite a history as a bacon-bringer for Montana.

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Disbelieving Tyler

The other day I was lounging by the pool at RallySport and two guys were discussing the latest doping scandal to degrade the Tour de France, which is now in its fifth day.

"Yeah, and now they're saying Tyler's implicated too!" one of them remarked.

"What a drag," said the other one, more in sadness than outrage -- as if Boulder rider and 2004 Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton, already serving out a two-year suspension for blood doping, had gotten caught up in some unfortunate, and unfair, turn of events.

When, it made me wonder, will local Hamilton fans admit the truth -- that the guy is guilty as hell? [more]

Plane Talk

It was way too early in the day to be talking, but listening, especially in the close confines of the airport gate and jam-packed airplane, was unavoidable.

My 7:40 flight out of Glacier Park International Airport was sold out. The gate agent began offering the standard $400-flight, usable for up to one year, and by the time we were boarding, she'd upped the ante to "breakfast, lunch, dinner, and $400 flight to anywhere in the U.S....please?"

A woman standing at the gate with her two children announced over her shoulder to her travel friends, "they're paying for hotel too, so we're staying until tomorrow. I'm fine with it-- we get another day in Montana!"

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