http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/main/C8/L8/ New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains en info@newwest.net Copyright 2009 Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:48:31 MST Sat, 04 Jul 2009 09:48:31 MST This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/BoaXoncHUiE/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:05:10 MST Clean water. For Missoula residents Said and Sara Hemed, it would be a dream come true if they could finish digging a well in Said's native Zanzibar village so people there could have water to drink and use for washing -- without having to walk a mile to a water pump and haul it back in buckets. Said (pronounced sye'-dee) and his wife, Sara, a Montana native, have other dreams too. They want to provide classes for adults and children on the six acres Said owns in Mchekeni, a village of about 300 people in Zanzibar, a small island off the coast of Tanzania. Along the way, they've launched a group, Artisans for Africa, and are selling handmade arts and crafts -- batik purses, screen-printed fabrics, leather baby booties, jewelry -- to raise the money needed to finish digging a well on the property. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/zanzibar_man_and_montana_wife_aim_to_dig_a_well_bring_wellness_to_village/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/LT-vMViPKBc/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:48:23 MST Anything wolf makes big headlines--and, it seems, is never old news. For fourteen years since conservationists and the federal government brought the wolf back to the northern Rockies (plus several years leading up to the reintroduction), anything and everything about the Big Dog has been, to say the least, controversial. But something hasn't happened yet that could make it much more contentious. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/what_could_make_the_wolf_even_more_controversial/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/l8Rc8LI83RM/ Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:00:50 MST A few weeks ago I wrote about some creative ideas people are coming up with to support books in the midst of this changing media landscape. In keeping with that theme, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association recently launched the Reading the West program, with the goal of helping bookstores promote books that are set in the West or those written by Western authors. The first featured books are New Mexico writer Rick Collignon's Madewell Brown and Austin-based Jaqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I spoke to MPIBA executive director Lisa Knudsen this week on the phone from her office in Fort Collins about the program. Knudsen said that the MPIBA started the Reading the West program because "in these troubled economic times, we were looking for projects and programs that are free to our member booksellers and are a potential win win win--for the publisher, bookseller, and author." "I shamelessly copied from my fellow regional bookseller associations," Knudsen said, noting that the Midwest and Great Lakes Bookseller associations sponsor similar programs. The Reading the West program makes advance copies of the featured books available to booksellers, as well as materials to use in their display and promotion. The authors are also available for readings at regional stores. The MPIBA board hopes publishers will begin to send them information about relevant forthcoming books to be considered for the program, but for the first selections, the members discussed among themselves what good books of regional interest they knew were coming out. "Rick Collignon is very popular in our region," Knudsen said, "and the committee was enthusiastic about his latest book. We also wanted to do what we could to promote independent publishers." Madewell Brown is published by Unbridled Books, an independent publisher based in Colorado. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/reading_the_west_gets_the_word_out_about_regional_books/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/QLDWXf_GQbc/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:42:06 MST Putting a formal stamp on its difficult transaction that netted it 15 stores from the bankrupt Sportsman's Warehouse chain, UFA Co-operative Limited,of Calgary, Alberta, has quickly rebranded the stores as part of the Wholesale Sports chain it has owned and operated for many years in Canada. The new signs are going up right now, says Natalie Dawes, of UFA, but customers still might find temporary banners in some locations. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/ufa_rebrands_its_15_spsortsmans_warehouse_stores/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/fCE9752DCro/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:13:22 MST The American Medical Association this month passed a resolution that recognizes a host of problems with light pollution, including health issues -- such as breast cancer -- that are "associated with human eye exposure to light at night." The AMA resolution (view it in full here) explains that the increasing amount of light in the world, including streetlight glare and intrusive light that "trespasses" into bedroom windows and homes, is linked to higher rates of cancer and other health woes. It harms wildlife as well, the medical group says. As the AMA puts it: "Light trespass has been implicated in disruption of the human and animal circadian rhythm, and strongly suspected as an etiology of suppressed melatonin production, depressed immune systems, and increase in cancer rates such as breast cancers." In addition, it "disrupts nocturnal animal activity and results in diminished various animal populations' survival and health," the group says. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/ama_links_light_pollution_to_cancer_health_woes/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/7r4rjPIqxus/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:25:39 MST Beetle hysteria has raised its head again, and I am not talking about the Fab four. A prominent article in the New York Times titled "Tiny Beetle Adds New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts" quotes many foresters and others who suggest that beetle-kill trees across the West will create larger wildfires and by implications are "destroying" our forests. For instance, Montana's State Forester Bob Harrington said as much at conference recently, as in the article. While it may seem "intuitively obvious" that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increases risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise. At the heart of this and many other media reports are flawed assumptions about fires, what constitutes a healthy forest, and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/beetle_hysteria_again/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/TeT2Bs5inkc/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:37:03 MST The Missoula Downtown Association today announced that the federal government is sending more than $1 million in economic stimulus money to downtown Missoula. The money will be used to beautify and boost user-friendliness on North Higgins Avenue between Broadway and Circle square, providing more safety for cyclists and pedestrians. The ultimate goal? "Creating a more inviting, attractive and interactive street environment" to stimulate the downtown economy, according to the announcement from the MDA. Another chunk of the allotment money will pay for repaving three blocks of downtown Higgins, the association says. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/downtown_missoula_gets_1_million_in_fed_funds/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/O91KKWEwMZM/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:28:36 MST Last week I posted a piece about the closing of the downtown Missoula Starbucks, and expressed some ambivalance about the idea that locally owned versus chains was always a black-and-white issue. Today I came across a piece that takes a different kind of look at this issue, arguing that Walmart and Costco are killing the so-called category killer big boxes in product categories such as music, books, electronics, toys and more. (Hat tip to Roger Millar for the link). The story, by Stacy Mitchell, is on the Website of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, not a group I was previously familiar with, and it definitely has a point of view. But it makes some great points, and calls for more vigorous anti-trust enforcement on predatory pricing by the mega-retailers. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/big_boxes_bigger_boxes_and_independent_businesses/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/LYQgd_0kFD8/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:27:12 MST When you look at a map of Glacier Park, Going-to-the-Sun Road looks like the heart rate monitor of a gay Filipino man when he heard that Michael Jackson died. It's as twisted and bent as the plot of a Coen brothers movie. But you should go. For just a few short weeks during the peak of each summer, the entire road is plowed and passable, from West Glacier clear through to St. Mary's (home of the $3.50 bag of ice). We drove it the other way, though, and I'm glad we did. If you go east to west, like we did, your lane is the one hugging the mountain, not hanging out over space with nothing but a crumbling two-foot wall between you and an endless plunge to your death. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/going_to_the_sun_in_a_handbasket/C8/L8/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/missoula/~3/aEi7XhfrmxQ/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:19:18 MST Flathead County planners might be saying amen to that this week, in the wake of a lawsuit and ongoing allegations by a group of vocal locals who claim the county and a planning committee conducted a too-secretive planning process that violated Montana's open meeting laws. Planning processes everywhere in the state, it seems, are a battlefield in which elected officials and disgruntled private landowners are accusing planners and others of violating proper procedure. Insert the nation's legendary litigiousness into this recipe and you get a sulfurous stew, one that makes it increasingly difficult for anything with the word "plan" in it to get off the ground. The battle gets particularly strident where property-rights groups like American Dream Montana -- whose members are among those who filed the Flathead suit -- campaign against people they denounce as "smart-growthers" and (in their view) socialists run amok. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/flathead_landowners_sue_county_planners_over_secret_development_planning/C8/L8/