Good morning; on the Beacon today, exactly one century after President William Howard Taft signed the legislation creating Glacier National Park, nearly 1,000 Montanans gathered in West Glacier on May 11 to celebrate a landscape they love, along with the wisdom and stewardship of the generations who helped preserve it. The Flathead County Commission gave the green light to begin requesting bids for the Sam Bibler Commemorative Trail Project on May 13, despite a $20,000 shortage in local matching funds for the project. At a May 14 graduation ceremony at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, 340 students were honored for earning a total of 358 degrees and certificates – FVCC’s largest graduating class ever. Glacier National Park officials say workers are making progress on plowing lower areas of Going-to-the-Sun Road following last week’s snow storm. Authorities say a 17-year-old girl who was jogging near train tracks in Columbia Falls was injured when she was hit by an Amtrak train. Kitchen Guy Jim Gray assesses a new way of admitting access to top restaurants: by selling tickets.
Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures. Recent acts of violence linked to medical marijuana are the result of a lack of state policy regulating the fast-growing business, law enforcement officials in Montana say. Public hearings in Montana are being held this week to discuss a plan to build a pipeline through eastern Montana to move crude extracted from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in the United States. The culture was are going strong in Missoula, with a conference of far-right conservatives scheduled to convene this weekend. Meanwhile, a national progressive group is opening up its first branch in a small city in Missoula. Ed Kemmick of the Billings Gazette writes on political polarization in Big Timber. And here is a look at the proposed ballot measures still alive and eligible to be circulated for signatures.