Summer has finally come to Missoula and, now that school’s out, most children get to kick back and relax. Though there is learning regression that takes place during the summer months, there is also some much needed respite from school that helps young minds process learning and prepare for another school year.

For those parents interested in continuing your child’s learning process this summer, here are some fun, well-balanced and supportive ways to encourage your child to grow.

On more than one occasion I’ve heard from parents about starting the summer with the best of learning intentions and then losing focus by week two and never getting back on track. Goals like reading for a half hour a night seem great but, depending on your family, they can be awfully lofty.

For a summer reading program: The Missoula Public Library

It’s like when I accidentally washed my “dry clean only” shirt and when it wasn’t ruined, I’ve never looked back and I’ve tossed it in the wash ever since. I try to encourage families to set goals that are both beneficial for learning and retaining information and reasonable.

Instead of setting a goal of reading a half hour every day during the summer, a more positive goal might be to finish three, four, five books over the course of the summer. A goal for completing a specified number of books rather than daily reading allows for long days on the river or road trips.

For outoor discovery day camps: Montana Natural History Center

Three books for the summer might not sound like much, but a 2012 study from the Pew Research Center found that 25% of American’s ages 16 and above did not read one book in a year. Suddenly, three books sounds pretty good.

Another fun activity is to keep a Wonder Journal. My co-teacher and I had our students spend some time outside wondering about the world this past school year. The kids wrote down questions they were wondering like, “Where does wind come from?” “Who invented stairs?” and “Where is that squirrel going?”

For perfoming arts camp: Missoula Children’s Theatre

Keep a journal of interesting questions and set a goal of researching and answering ten of your favorite questions over the summer.

Missoula is great because there are many incredible day camps to attend in just about any subject area you or your child can imagine. Camps are a great way to excite and inspire young minds while providing some structure to long summer days.

I hope all of your children enjoy a fun, stress-free summer of learning in Missoula.

Places to find Missoula summer camps:

• Outdoor Adventure
• Nature and earth science 
• Gymnastics
• Missoula Public Library Summer Reading
• Missoula Children’s Theater
• Missoula Parks and Recreation

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Annie Graham and Brandon Kendall are convinced that education can be fun, exciting, and meaningful. Brandon has been a teacher in Missoula for the better part of a decade. Annie is a proud parent of six children and a home school teacher. Check out their blog for fun (and educational) adventures around Missoula. Visit their Learning With Meaning website for ideas on dynamic and project based learning at home and in the classroom.

Newly crowned U.S. Open Champ Justin Rose was born on an auspicious day in golf history. On the day Rose was born–July 18, 1980–it was in the midst of the British Open, but “almost” more significant…it was the day the movie Caddyshack was released. Rose first challenged for a major title at the 1998 British Open when he led for much of the final round before being overtaken by Mark O’Meara.

If all goes well in the first two games of the 2013-14 season Robin Selvig will pick up career win number 800 against the University of Portland Pilots. Ironically the last time the coach picked up a “Century” win in Missoula it was against another team from Portland, the Portland State Vikings for win 600 in March of 2004.  For only the second time, a team from Philadelphia will face the Lady Griz in Dahlberg Arena as the Temple Owls will visit Missoula on December 14^th in a return game as Montana played at Temple to open last season. The LaSalle Explorers from Philly were in the 1985 Lady Griz Classic and faced the Lady Griz for the title on another Saturday–December 14^th.

Twos notes on incoming freshman forward Mekayla Izaak. The Bend Oregon star has been assigned a special number “ 22” for the upcoming season, 22 is the number Coach Robin Selvig wore for the Grizzlies from 1971-74. Izaak is the first player to sign with the Lady Griz who wasn’t alive the last time the Lady Griz won a game in the NCAA tournament (Montana beat San Diego State in March of 1995 and Mekayla Izaak was born in May of 1995.)

Sean “SJ” Touhy was portrayed in the film The Blind Side which was the story of his taking in Michael Oher and helping him succeed in school and football, and now it is “SJ” turn to play college sports. Touhy will be a freshman on the basketball team at Loyola University of Maryland. The Greyhounds reached the quarterfinals of the Collegeinsider basketball tournament this past March before losing to eventual CIT Champion East Carolina.

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Chris Walterskirchen has been an observer of Montana sports for nearly half a century. A Kalispell native, Chris has worked in various capacities for professional and college sports organization of at various times: ranging from announcing and statistical work to the concessions and even a stint as a costumed mascot.

Chris has academic degrees in communications and elementary education. His style of sports trivia involves more than just who won and who lost, but also focuses on the obscure or human side of sports. In this blog you will learn things like the Grizzly football team has won 210 games over the 19 seasons since they have had Monte as their mascot or that UNLV is the only school that both the Griz and Lady Griz have both faced in the NCAA basketball tournament

When not following sports Chris enjoys taking care of animals of all kinds (a peacock rescue?) and reading to pre-schoolers.

We regularly post both job listings and job hunting and interview advice. Be sure to watch the Make It Missoula Facebook page for new job listing announcements.

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An energetic, detail-oriented web developer / systems analyst is wanted for a bicycle touring association. The right candidate with have a bachelor of arts degree, two to four years’ related experience or an equivalent combination of education and experience. If you speak scripting languages such as ColdFusion 8 or 9, PHP or .NET, this could be an ideal fit. The employee develops and maintains web sites, works with staff, and keeps the system updated and secure. This 40-hour-per-week job pays $34,000 to $38,000, plus benefits. For more information, call us at (406) 728-7060 or email us at missoulajsc@mt.gov and ask about job #2984490.

A bachelor’s degree in business administration, public administration or sports management plus the right experience could equal a new job as assistant director of facility operations. This position  requires at least three years of full-time experience in public-assembly facility management. Besides event operations, the employee will have experience in sound, lighting, video, staging, rigging and electric. Custodial, operations, technical, and personnel oversight is part of the job. Pay is $45,000 to $48,000 plus benefits. For more information, call us at (406) 728-7060 or email us at missoulajsc@mt.gov and ask about job #2984485.

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Looking for a job in Missoula? Be sure to check out our Missoula Job Listings.  Be sure you “LIKE” the Missoula Job Service Facebook Page for daily post on job opening. You’ll also find Missoula-area information on Job Hunting Resources, Job Hunting Tips, Job Interview Tips, tips for writing Cover Letters and Resumes.

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We just spent last week exploring the beautiful northwest corner of Montana.  Every year for the last 6 years, we have gone on a camping trip with our kids when school gets out.   We decided years ago to try and stay within the Montana region because we want our boys to appreciate where they live and there are so many amazing areas of Montana and the surrounding areas.  We’ve been doing this for 6 years and still haven’t seen or done all the Big Sky country has to offer!

The Northwest region of Montana is a breathtaking area of our state.   It still feels very untamed and wild.  We enjoyed the fishing, hiking and the remoteness.  My husband and I also introduced our kids to Troy, Montana.  A true, small Montana town with great hospitality!  We went to Troy because Ethan’s fishing reel broke and we needed a replacement.  So, we stopped by the “Bait and Booze” to pick up a new rod and reel for him.  Our kids got a real chuckle out of the fact that the bait store was also the liquor store.  That’s small town Montana at its finest!

We stayed a variety of campgrounds during the week.  Every one had its pros and cons.   We stayed at everything from a KOA, to a private campground to National Forest campgrounds.  We loved them all and enjoyed what each one had to offer.

Camping is a great time for families!

The KOA was the most expensive but was a special treat for our kids.  The KOA in Kalispell offers free 3- wheel bikes to ride, bumper boats, swimming pool, hot tub, arcade, miniature golf, basketball, horseshoes, a petting zoo and a playground.  This was a great place for the kids to play and have some fun.  They also offered a free all-you-can-eat breakfast which was a super deal and very handy!  In addition to the higher cost, the other draw backs were the small campsites, lack of privacy and check out was 11am sharp.

At McGregor Lake we stayed at a private campground.  It was mid-priced.  It offered full hook-ups and fishing access.  The campground was brand new but had large sites.  It was also located between two lakes to which we could walk.  It wasn’t very private but fortunately there weren’t a lot of people that night so it felt more private.   This was a pretty basic campground without a lot of frills.  Again, check out was at 11am.  They weren’t as strict as the KOA but we definitely knew when it was time to leave!

National forests are a fun and frugal way to camp.

Finally, we stayed at two different National Forest campgrounds.  The campsites were private and large.  Plus, each campsite was provided with a large picnic table, fire ring and fire wood.  Plus, the two campgrounds we stayed at were located next to water so the fishing access was exceptional.

But the winning benefit of these campgrounds was the price!  $10 a night!  We were also very impressed that you could get to a campsite at anytime during the afternoon and you didn’t have to check out until 2pm the next day.  In fact, after checking with the campground host, we were able to stay for an extended amount of time for no additional cost.

Enjoying Big Sky Country!

National Forest campgrounds don’t offer electricity, wifi, water or sewer.  If your camper has a generator, you’re allowed to run it for periods of time.  But we welcome the time to “unplug” and just enjoy nature and each other.

So this summer as you get out and enjoy the beautiful Big Sky Country, consider what your needs are when it comes to a campground.  Montana provides a wide array of camping options for all levels of campers!

Overall, we were delighted with the National Forest Campgrounds and found them frugal, beautiful and a perfect space to celebrate summer and our special family time!

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Miming is the most powerful mode of individualism that Bill Bowers knows. The unspeaking art form is an identity that Bowers was born into, an instinctive expansion of his Missoula roots.

“I’ve been a mime since I was a little kid,” says Bowers. “Since I was born, I’ve basically been a mime. So much about me being a mime is about me being from Montana. I was a mime before I ever knew what the word was, or was ever interested in performing it.”

One of the purposes of art is to sponge the dirt and soil of day-to-day life off of our consciousness. Indeed, for Bowers, art is not just a washing, but a reconciling and a cleansing, an opportunity for him to not only narrow the gap between perception and reality, but animate all those slight and not so slight things that compose his – and our own – humanity.

“My theory is that I’m a mime because I’m from Montana,” says Bowers, a fifth-generation Montanan. “Montana is the classic big, quiet place, and I came from the classic stoic Montana family. There was lots going on in my family, but no one actually discussed anything.”

Add the dimension of Bowers being a gay kid in Missoula in the 1960s, and it’s not hard to comprehend why Bowers gravitated to an art form where reticence reigns.

“That’s a lot of silence to deal with,” says Bowers. “It all combined inside of me.”

While Bowers had a strong inclination of the mime’s career path as a youngster, his relationship with one of the world’s greatest practitioners of pantomime, French-born Marcel Marceau, put in motion a chain of events that have helped put Bowers on a short list of the greatest living mimes.

“About fifteen years ago,” says Bowers, “I was working on Broadway, and I left to work with Marcel Marceau. At the time it was the opposite of a career move. I ran off for three years and studied with him. That was life changing. Working with Marceau changed the direction of my life, it made me a writer, and it made me create my own solo work as a mime.”

Bowers learned from Marceau that to think creatively, one must be able to look anew at what we others normally take for granted. He also learned that the mine needs to perpetuate the feeling of pure contemplation, and that the mime’s aim should be to represent not the outer appearance of things, but their inner significance.

Since his relationship with Marceau – who died in 2007 – Bowers has enjoyed standing ovations and sold-out performances across the nation and world. He does this by stirring emotions and touching the soul in indescribable ways.

Indeed, Miming is the expression of Bowers’ joy in labor. That labor is silence. That silence is met with a variety of responses.

“It’s interesting what silence does to people,” says Bowers. “Often, people have very intense emotional responses. Places that are silent – churches, temples, libraries – they are places of contemplation. Miming allows things to enter you a different way. And a lot of people spend their days trying to suppress those feelings. It’s a different experience to not be distracted by the world’s entire stimulus.”

Bowers suggests that audiences treat miming like any other artistic medium: let it express itself to you first. Missoulians will have the opportunity to let Bill Bowers express himself, Friday, June 28, when MCT, Inc presents “An Evening with Bill Bowers;” proceeds of the 90-minute retrospective go toward the Next Step Prep scholarship fund.

Bowers has been an instructor at MCT’s Next Step Prep since its inception five years ago. Next Step Prep brings students from small communities across North America to Missoula to train with some of the top educators and performers in American theater, dance and music. His principle as a teacher is rooted in the belief that expression is not just about communication; it is also about connecting with people. With some tutelage, students can learn to use their expression to open up, break loose, and build confidence.

“In the arts,” says Bowers, “you have an interest in empathy and understanding. That comes with the territory that we are all in. And as a mime, I like to observe how people do things and I look for stories to tell.”

Gregory Boris, Next Step Prep Managing Director, says that Bowers’s empathy as an instructor is in sync with Next Step Prep’s inclusive philosophy.

“Performance art is about human connections and personal connections,” says Boris. “That’s the reason we bring people like Bill Bowers in. That’s the beauty of having someone of Bill’s caliber working with kids.”

Fresh off a recent performance at the White House, Bowers will appear at a festival in Serbia and at Scotland’s famed Edinburgh Festival Fringe later this summer; he has his own take on just why the art of miming hasn’t sustained in the United States the same way it has in many other countries.

“It’s hard to learn,” says Bowers. “But more so, our culture has moved toward if you can’t do it in five minutes, forget it.”

Mindful of the fact that nothing in art is ever permanent, Bowers presses on with his thought-provoking skits and themes.

“If I don’t do it, it could literally disappear.”

World class mime Bill Bowers performs at the MCT Center for the Performing Arts. “An Evening with Bill Bowers: Stories With and Without Words” June 28, 2013; begins at 7:30 p.m. All tickets $20. Proceeds benefit Next Step Prep scholarship fund. Box office: 406-728-7529. Tickets go on sale June 17 at 9:00 a.m.

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Read more of Brian’s stories about the fascinating places and personalities that shape Western Montana in his blog archive.

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Brian D’Ambrosio is a Missoula writer, editor, instructor, and media consultant. D’Ambrosio’s recent articles have been published in local, regional, and national publications, including High Country News, USA Today, Wisconsin Trails, Bark Magazine, Montana Magazine, and Backpacker Magazine.

His latest book about legendary vigilante screen actor Charles Bronson, Menacing Face Worth Millions, A Life of Charles Bronson, is available for purchase on Kindle. He is also the author of Montana Summer: 101 Great Adventures in Big Sky Country. D’Ambrosio’s next book, Desert Horse: A Life of Marvin Camel, a biography of the Montana boxing legend, will be published by Riverbend Publishing in 2013.

Ok, so let’s be honest this blog post is not for all the women who have had Dad’s gift wrapped and tucked away ready for the big weekend surrounding Father’s Day for weeks. This blog post is for the women who like myself find themselves at the LAST minute wondering how they can make Father’s Day special.  I gotta start off by saying my oh my, men are hard to shop and plan for!

To Shop:

1. A waterproof case for dad’s phone since he will be out enjoying the rivers now that the runoff is waning. No more excuse here for “Babe, my phone got wet- sorry I couldn’t call”.
2. To me tools are like shoes. You know they want them but no idea what to give them.  So a gift certificate to Murdock’s will be perfect!
3. Sling Shot- let him channel his inner 5 year old.
4. I always find myself giving Stano pictures of our kiddos and each year trying to come up with a new way other than just in a frame. Had I not waited so long this year I would have love to have tried Wood Snap. They print your image directly onto a wood veneer so you can see the wood grain.  Score!
5. But since I did wait, here are some fun ideas I found on Pinterest.

To Do:

1. Go fishing! After all we live in Montana and my fishing guide tells me the fishing is good this time of year. Don’t forget that the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department has announced that fishing is free June 15-16 (see website for details).
2. One of our favorite things to do on Saturdays in Seattle was to visit the farmers market. I can’t wait to take Stano and the little ones to Missoula’s Farmers’ Market to get all the things we need for Sunday’s dinner.
3. BBQ for dad.  If your house is like ours, dad is the boss of the grill. So for Father’s Day I found a great and easy recipe on Kaela Carpenter’s blog  that would allow me to cook for him while he watches me attempt to not burn the chicken!

I hope you find something helpful here as you plan last minute to celebrate the men in your life!

Happy Father’s Day to our amazing Dad Stano!

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Kim Staninger is a busy mother of three children (referred to online as Strawberry Shortcake, TinkerBell, and Turbo) and CEO/Founder of Epio Solutions a marketing and public relations agency. When not chasing kiddos or working with clients, Kim is exploring all that Missoula has to offer families and women on the go. Find her adventures and discoveries here on MakeItMissoula.com.

As a young lad I was a little different from my peers. Not an outcast, really, but the kind of guy who would routinely get picked next-to-last for the sandlot baseball game or neighborhood buck-buck team, even though I was athletic, if small. But it was my eccentricities that always kept me out of the inner circle.

One of these peccadillos was a fascination with a newspaper column called Hints From Heloise. It ran in the daily paper, and was full of tips and tricks to help you run a tight ship in the kitchen and household. Heloise was depicted in a black-and-white photo with a tower of bone-white hair and thick eyebrows so dark they seemed to absorb the light. I always thought she looked like Betty Crocker’s trashy sister.

I was fascinated by all these goofy little household hints, even though the closest I ever came to running a household was slowly starving a colony of ants by neglecting my Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm all summer.

Now, as a fully functioning adult who is responsible for a large share of the cooking, cleaning and household chores, I have come to realize that a lot of the hints I have held dear to my heart for decades are—how can I put this?—complete bullshit.

Take this one, for example: use a pizza cutter to quickly and neatly cut a pan of fudge into clean squares. Make sure the pan of fudge has been chilled in the refrigerator before you slice it. Yeah, right. I tried this several times, but I have just really gotten tired of hearing people complain about pepperoni bits and mozzarella strings in their fudge.

Battered bacon anyone?

I love this one: to keep bacon from spattering when it cooks, dust it in flour before you put it in the pan. I always take this a step further by dipping the bacon in egg before I dredge it in flour. Who doesn’t like battered bacon?

Here’s one for those of us who don’t usually eat organic produce: sprinkle some baking soda and gently scrub and rinse your fruit and vegetables to remove any residue and dirt. Seriously? This may have worked twenty years ago, but this GMO-pumped, pesticide-soaked, chemical-drenched supply of fruits and vegetables we bring into our homes is not going to be washed clean by a simple sprinkling of baking soda. My solution is to run store-bought produce through the dishwasher on Pots and Pans cycle, with a few ounces of Gunk™ original flavor engine degreaser. Delicious!

Reanimating crystallized honey: If your honey has turned to hard crystals, simply put the container in a bowl of hot water for a half hour and it will turn back into honey. Say what now? A lot of these tips seem to be generated by people who tend to think ahead. (“Remove the fully cooked turkey from the oven, and don’t forget to put the potatoes in one hour ago.”) Man, when I get a honey jones, I want my honey right now! I did try to speed up the process once by microwaving the honey jar for one minute. Next tip: how to clean exploded honey and melted plastic from inside a microwave.

How to separate eggs with a funnel: break an egg into the funnel, and the yolk stays behind while the whites run out onto the counter. Wait! Don’t forget to get a glass five minutes ago to put under the funnel. And when you’re finished, always remember to return the funnel to the garage.

How to avoid a stovetop fire? Maybe move your box of Kleenex?

One popular—and potentially lifesaving—tip concerns how to put out a stovetop grease fire. They say to use all the open boxes of bacon soda you have laying around. Well, first off, I’m not using the one they said to keep behind the toilet to absorb turd odors. And the one in the fridge? It’s buried so deep in the back on the bottom shelf that by the time I’m able to pull it out of there the hook and ladder crew that put out the house fire will already be enjoying some chicken wings at Hooters. The best way to put out a grease fire is to stop, drop and roll…roll the hell out of there and run for you life. And next time, dust that bacon, my friend.

One of my favorite cooking tips was one that appeared in Sports Afield, a magazine I was enamored with as a young outdoorsman. I used to load up my rucksack with food, fill my canteen with water from the hose, and hike for several city blocks until I found the perfect neighborhood tree where I could sit in the shade and read Sports Afield for hours and hours.

The tip showed an easy way to tell if the oil in your cast iron campfire skillet was hot enough to start frying fish. It suggested that you take a strike-anywhere match and skim it across the surface of the hot oil. If the match ignited, then the oil was ready. I doubt the writer of the tip ever actually tried it, or the tip would have been more about how to signal an emergency medical evacuation using a giant column of black smoke.

Damn contacts!

When it comes to chopping onions, there is entire subgenre of tips devoted to getting around that eye-burning, weeping price you pay for oniony deliciousness in your recipe. One idea is to breathe through your mouth. You know, like you do when you’re putting a box of baking soda behind the toilet. Another tip is to cut the onion underwater. Honestly, I don’t know if I could hold my breath that long.

Wear a respirator or gas mask. Dude, I’m making chili, not cooking up a batch of meth. Here’s a good one: wear contact lenses. Hey, that makes sense! Guess what—I don’t wear contacts. Instead of some irritation and tearing up, why don’t I put a trash can lid directly into my eye. No thanks.

My favorite tip is to whistle while I cut. It’s simple! It’s entertaining! It’s uplifting! It sometimes works! As you’ll see in the accompanying video, it’s not foolproof. But I think it’s worth a shot. Just don’t choose a tune like “Flight of the Bumblebee,” or you’ll get lightheaded and pass out on the floor, and someone will have to come along and revive you with a box of baking soda. And a funnel.

   Check out all of Bob Wire’s posts in his blog archive.

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Think of it as Gonzo meets Hee Haw: Missoula honky tonker Bob Wire holds forth on a unique life filled with music, parenthood, drinking, sports, working, marriage, drinking, and just navigating the twisted wreckage of American culture. Plus occasional grooming tips. Like the best humor, it’s not for everyone. Sometimes silly, sometimes surreal, sometimes savage, Bob Wire demands that you possess a good sense of humor and an open mind.

Bob Wire has written more than 500 humor columns for a regional website over the last five years, and his writing has appeared in the Missoulian, the Missoula Independent, Montana Magazine, and his own Bob Wire Has a Point Blog. He is a prolific songwriter, and has recorded three CDs of original material with his Montana band, the Magnificent Bastards. His previous band, the Fencemenders, was a popular fixture at area clubs. They were voted Best Local Band twice by the Missoula Independent readers poll. Bob was voted the Trail 103.3/Missoulian Entertainer of the Year in 2007.

You can hear his music on his website, or download it at iTunes, Amazon, and other online music providers. Follow @Bob_Wire on Twitter.

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All 12 of The University of Montana’s football games in 2013 will be televised by either Max Media of Montana or ROOT Sports, announced UM Athletic Director Kent Haslam.

Learfield Sports, the athletics multimedia rights holder for the university, reached an agreement with Max Media to be the exclusive local telecast sponsor for Grizzly football.

Max Media will not only produce and telecast the Grizzlies’ four non-league football games in the 2013 season, but they will also televise four Big Sky Conference games per a contract with the league.  (The Big Sky holds the television rights to all conference games).

“I am thrilled that all 12 Griz football games will be televised,” Haslam said. “I know how important television coverage is to Griz fans everywhere and appreciate the partnership with Max Media of Montana and ROOT Sports. There has been a lot of hard work by many including Learfield Sports, the Big Sky Conference office and our television partners to get this done.”

Per Learfield Sports’ agreement with Max Media, the Grizzly athletic department will retain exclusive streaming rights to those four non-league games to ensure fans can watch games on its official athletic website (GoGriz.com).

Through regional distributors, Learfield Sports and Max Media also will aggressively collaborate to expand distribution for UM beyond state lines in order to reach a larger fan base.

Per the agreement, Max Media can distribute its rights to its ABC and FOX stations in Missoula, Kalispell, Butte, Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena and the Billings’ NBC affiliate, in addition to stations in home viewing areas in close proximity to UM.

The eight Griz games Max Media will distribute are Montana vs. Appalachian State (Aug. 31), Montana at North Dakota (Sept. 14), Montana versus Oklahoma Panhandle State (Sept. 21), Montana at UC Davis (Oct. 12), UM versus Cal Poly (Oct. 19), the Griz at Sacramento State (Nov. 2), Montana at South Dakota (Nov. 9), and the Griz-Weber State contest (Nov. 16).

ROOT Sports will be televising four league games: Montana at Northern Arizona (Sept. 28), the Griz versus Portland State (Oct. 5), Eastern Washington at Montana (Oct. 26), and the 113^th Griz-Cat game (Nov. 23) in Bozeman.

Barry Beach Back in Prison fighting to be released, again

Barry Beach, who was convicted of the 1979 murder of Kimberly Nees then released from prison by a district court judge who granted him a new trial only to have the State Supreme court reverse that decision and send him back to prison a month ago, is fighting for his freedom once again. The State Attorney General’s office responded this week to a motion filed asking that the State Supreme Court reconsider its decision. Beach’s taste of freedom was cut short by the court’s decision to reverse the District Judge’s ruling. (read more) other links: Beach prison interview

New Superintendent for Glacier National Park Named

Missoula Summer is in full swing and everyone is ready to play host to the tourists who often stop in the city on their way from Yellowstone National Park north to Glacier National Park. Visitors to Glacier will see the park as it undergoes a transition to a new park superintendent, Jeff Mow. Mow, who resume includes serving as the head of Kenai Fjords National Park in Alaska, will take over Glacier’s interim superintendent Kym Hall’s position in the park on August 25. (read more)

MDT discuss future of Missoula’s Downtown Bridges

Missoula is often considered a city surrounded by rivers. The Blackfoot flows into the Clark Fork just east of town. The Clark Fork wanders through downtown Missoula separating the downtown Missoula from the rest of the city. With rivers playing such an important part in the city, the bridges which span them are a vital part of it. Officials from the Montana Department of Transportation met to explain to citizens the need to repair the Higgins Avenue and Madison Street bridges. MDT will go through a extensive planning and study process to determine the needs of Missoula and the repairs for the two bridges while gathering information from citizens about their wants and concerns. (read more) other links: future of Missoula’s bridges

Firefighters fight Apartment Fire East of Missoula

Missoula firefighters scrambled to evacuate residents of the Vantage Villa Apartments east of Missoula. The complex, located in the Hellgate Canyon on East Broadway, caught fire around 2:15 Thursday. Firemen were able to safely evacuate all the residents without any injuries. The three story complex is owned by the Missoula Housing Authority and once contained the agency’s headquarters. The building, which is fifty years old, houses mostly low and middle income residents. (read more) other links: audio account

MCPS Summer Lunch Program feeds hungry Kids

Summer time means long hot days, BBQs, camps for kids, and unfortunately for some less food than they would normal get during the school year. Missoula County Public Schools has realizes that for some families “no school” means one more meal to worry about finding for their children. MCPS is combating this problem with a free summer lunch program for kids 18 or under. The school system has opened five spots to receive these meals, Franklin, Lowell, Russell, Hawthorne and Chief Charlo elementary schools will all be giving free lunches out at 11 am. In addition to lunch service, Franklin, Lowell, Russell, Hawthorne and Chief Charlo elementary schools will be serving free breakfast to children starting at 8:30. (read more)

Each week, Tom Diddel recaps the week’s most talked-about stories in Missoula. Visit the Make it Missoula News & Opinion section for more talk of the town.

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Tom Diddel has lived in Missoula on and off for nearly thirty-eight years. He enjoys skiing, hiking, and many other outdoor activities. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Montana and is currently working as a Freelance Writer and a Para-Educator.

 
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