Flathead Valley Commentary: Kalispell, Montana News

I recently attended a public showing of the film “Not Evil, Just Wrong” in Kalispell. Sponsored by the Northwest Montana Patriots, it was billed as a documentary exploring the economic impact of global warming “hysteria.” I hoped it would broaden my perspective on climate change issues, but the film was a disappointment.

First, while I hoped for an intelligent refute to the mainstream understanding of greenhouse gas pollution, the film instead fixated on Al Gore and, strangely, Rachel Carson. It was a transpicuous attempt to distract audience attention from science and focus it on anger toward individuals. Especially in the case of Rachel Carson, an author and scientist whose most famous work was completed 50 years ago, the film squandered valuable time that could have been used exploring pertinent climate change issues.

A strange thing happened on the chairlift at the Yellowstone Club this afternoon. It stopped for an hour while my wife and I were forty-three feet above nine feet of snow. Usually when a lift stops you are stuck in a wind blown part of the hill. In our case it didn’t matter too much, because we were alone on a detachable quad chair, snug in a giant plastic bubble. No wind and no cause for alarm because within 15 minutes of when the lift stopped, Jon Reveal, the mountain manager of the resort, came roaring up the hill in his snowmobile. He stopped underneath us and said, “Not to worry, there is a power outage in the entire southwestern corner of Montana. Besides that we have a separate auxiliary power for each one of our nine chairlifts.”

Here in the throes of yet another record setting-football season, it’s no doubt premature to talk about what the University of Montana program has done under the seven-year tutelage of Bobby Hauck.

While not one to ever take anything for granted, I can’t help myself.

Admittedly, I have become accustomed to winning over my tenure – first as the voice of Lady Griz basketball and for the past 17 years broadcasting football and men’s basketball – but the run of this football staff is at once unprecedented and amazing.

The Beacon recently ran Christian Science Monitor writer Todd Wilkinson’s timely story on President Obama’s new National Park Service (NPS) director, Jonathan Jarvis. Jarvis has a tough row to hoe, leading an agency that can’t even agree on why it exists.

The debate centers on a philosophical question: Are parks for people, or do parks exist for their own sake? Some take guidance from the law that established Yellowstone in 1872, as inscribed on the Roosevelt Arch at Gardiner: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.”

Ever have one of those vendors that supplies something that is so amazing that you can't cure yourself of them?

I deal with one of those in the software side of my world. And of course, their customer service is nowhere near ideal. They rarely communicate with their clients. They do a few things that are downright rude.

And yet – the stuff I get from them is so productive for me, even though it pains me to deal with them, I still use it.

Note: The addition of wine and beer to a meal are integral parts of the culinary world, and so this week, I deviate slightly from food to write about something I feel passionately about.

Before I made my mid-life career switch to the culinary field, I was knee-deep into some pretty nasty politics in a northeastern state and, as I now observe from afar (with great gratitude that I’m no longer involved), the politics there continue to devolve.

In January, I posed a question on flatheadbeacon.com asking when the U.S. Highway 93 Bypass would be finished. Of the 127 readers who responded to the unscientific poll, 53 percent of them said “never.” And who could blame them? The idea of building a highway to circumvent downtown Kalispell had been discussed for decades.

Then, in March, we published a story on how, even with federal stimulus funds being thrown around (seemingly everywhere), the bypass was still a long way off because the Montana Department of Transportation had secured right-of-way designations for just 155 (or 57 percent) of the 273 parcels needed for the road.

There is a move across the country to encourage renewable electrical power and several bills are moving through Congress mandating its usage. While many loudly shout about the positive use of alternative and renewable energy along with the need for America to be independent of foreign oil, they also do all they can to roadblock using wood to create biomass power. The opposition puzzles me and at some point those folks need a serious rethinking of what biomass power means to the future of Montana and the nation’s energy supply.