Daily Digest
Ty's Take Slow week in the county, which this time of year usually means everybody's either fixing what broke over winter or getting ready for the season ahead. The briefs column is where you find the real texture of a place like ours—who's
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Sue Ray taught forty-five years at Chief Charlo and nobody had to wonder why—that's the kind of tenure you don't rack up unless you actually show up for kids, day in and day out, through all the changes a half-century brings
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The county's taking a hard look at what we've actually got to work with when it comes to tourism—inventory and strategy, they're calling it—and that's the kind of unglamorous thinking that keeps a place from getting
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The rails that built this place are mostly history now, which tells you something about how fast a region can remake itself when the economics shift. We've gone from empire to adaptation—coal giving way to refining and healthcare, the old transportation networks replaced
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The commissioners are meeting, the trolley's making noise again, and somebody's still worried about litter on the roadsides—which tells you everything you need to know about a Tuesday in Red Lodge. When a town this size can hold onto its institutions
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Every now and then a judge uses language plain enough that it cuts through all the noise, and that happened this week when the bench essentially told Mineral County that their sheriff and deputies didn't have a case worth pursuing. Those kinds of rulings—
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The school levy didn't pass, and Big Timber voters made clear they want a new direction on the board—which is their right, and it stings the way these things do when you've got kids in the system. What matters now is
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The Special Olympics athletes running their hearts out at MetraPark this week remind you why a town like Billings matters—we're big enough to host something that draws families from across the state, small enough that neighbors still show up to cheer. Meanwhile, out
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something worth noticing in how a third-grade class in Helena turned a fairy tale inside out—Gold E. Locks walked free, the three bears' case fell apart, and a bunch of eight-year-olds learned that the law isn't about who we
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Ted Turner didn't invent the mythology around himself—this country did, and he was smart enough to lean into it. The man bought land here, raised buffalo, and lived the way he wanted to live, which in southwest Montana means you become either a
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Montana's going to let people register and vote the same day come November, which is the kind of thing that sounds simple until you're actually running a polling place and trying to verify someone's residency while the line's
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Property taxes are climbing again in Billings, and if you haven't looked at your assessment lately, you're about to get a reminder that living in Montana's largest city doesn't come cheap anymore. The conversation around those numbers matters