Grunge rock is more than 20 years in the past, but flannel has never really gone out of style in the Northwest, especially for outdoor wear. And now, Missoula has a chance to prove that by winning the "Flannel City Face-off".

Casual wear clothing brand Duluth Trading Company is sponsoring the online contest giving people a chance to vote for the "Most Flannel City in America". The contest has already moved into the quarterfinals, with the Garden City narrowly bearing Burlington, Vermont in the first round.

Now, Missoula is facing off against Duluth itself, and was trailing by a dozen votes in the balloting through Wednesday morning. Other first round winners included Denver and Cleveland in Missoula's bracket, and Portland, Maine; Charleston, West Virginia; Anchorage and "The U.P.", or Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

MORE>>>KBZK

Six Montana places have been chosen by Outdoor Magazine as the Best Places to Work.

Outside annually recognizes the top 100 companies in the United States that help their employees strike the ideal balance between work and play.

The companies listed are Seeley Lake Elementary - which tops the list at #1, PartnersCreative in Missoula, Ecology Project International in Missoula, Mercury CSC and Foundant Technologies in Bozeman, and the Flathead Beacon in Kalispell.

Outside Magazine Executive Editor said these companies set the standard for workplaces that really value their employees and offer an experience that's fulfilling inside and outside the office.

The 100 amazing companies on the 2014 list made it through a year-long vetting process.

MORE>>>KTVQ

Kyle Ploehn is an artist, illustrator and writer living in Billings Montana. He likes to spend the few hours he isn't painting hiking the mountains of Montana.

The first part of a series of owls painted in the style of scratchboard illustration. I continue to explore my fascination with owls in this piece and push the acrylic medium in different ways. These images are almost ghosts, fragmented memories of great birds in search for something lost in time. I've always been a fan of haunting, misunderstood ghost stories of displaced people always searching for the ones they lost. I kind of feel that stories like that are fading, replaced by more crowd pleasing horror ghosts and reality shows of ghost hunters. So my owls are lost ghosts searching for the misplaced sense of wonder in the unknown.

The original is still available, an 18x24, framed for $650.

8x10 matted to 11x14 prints are available for $45. Contact me at [email protected], if you're interested in purchasing a print. Or stop by my website at http://kyleploehnart.com

A third man goes down for using a drone in Yellowstone National Park. Donald Criswell of Molalla, Oregon, was charged with violating the National Park Service's ban on unmanned aircrafts. He allegedly flew over the crowded Midway Geyser Basin and close to bison in August. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to the charge of violating a closure and was fined $1,000.

In September, Theodorus Van Vliet of the Netherlands pleaded guilty to controlling an unmanned aircraft that crashed into Grand Prismatic Spring.

Andreas Meissner of Germany also pleaded guilty in September to charges from operating a drone, which crashed into Yellowstone Lake in July.

MORE>>>ABC/Fox

Jenna Caplette migrated from California to Montana in the early 1970s, first living on the Crow Indian reservation, then moving to Bozeman where she owned a downtown retail anchor for eighteen years. These days she owns Bozeman BodyTalk & Energetic Healthcare, hosts a monthly movie night, teaches and writes about many topics.

The other day I was in the Peak Alignment class at my gym, rotating my right ankle this way and that, in various positions. It’s a true testimony to the promise of and potential for healing. I suspect that most of us have an injury that has surprised us by how well it healed and I suspect that we worked hard for that outcome. Here’s the story of my 2008 ankle adventure. 

It was the last Sunday of  September, the Hyalite mountains alive with deep green and brown, vibrant gold and red, the air scented with change, warm and crisply cooling all at one time.  A glorious day for a hike. When I saw an unexpected turn to a waterfall along a mountain trail, I didn't hesitate long before deciding to follow it.

As the trail rose, I felt the first tingles of misgiving. Wearing hiking sandals, I had left my walking poles at home. I had been having trouble with balance, worried about slipping and falling if the trail got too rocky and steep. 

When I stepped over a creek, I paused to enjoy its tiny cascade, small and sweet, then climbed on, lured by the promise of a waterfall. When I reached it, I found it beautiful but brief -  a quick cascade over stepped rocks that  fell in to a pool, then narrowed to become the creek I had crossed earlier. I could hear the roar of a larger fall above, would need to climb over and around a boulder and up a mountain-goat steep slope to see it. 

I sat on a shelf at the base of the boulder, studying the graveled slope I had already climbed, negotiating with myself. Prudence won out. Sighing, I stood up. 

I heard bones snap when I fell as if I had heard them break every day for years, this fall, this break, as eerily familiar as if I had not just known it would come, but had already experienced it.   

My first thought was that it would be good to put my foot in the water to cool the injury and keep it from swelling. The lower fall's pool was within reach but I would have to crawl to it. My stronger impulse was to use the energy medicine protocols I had learned, to believe in them enough to trust them to help. 

I began the self-care Fast Aid procedure I learned in my tranining to become a BodyTalk practitioner. It includes a series of techniques that helped bring me out of shock, alerting my brain to my ankle's injury and asking the brain to begin to heal that injury. I found a rhythm of tapping and breathing.  As soon as I finished one cycle I started the next, again and again. 

I knew someone would find me, could hear voices echoing from somewhere up the trail, but out of cell phone reach, I guessed that it would take at least three to four hours for someone to alert Search and Rescue and for them to reach me. It was cold in this spot. As the afternoon progressed it would be much colder yet.  A long, cold wait,  caught up in the fear of what ifs, what now?  

As I tapped, suddenly my toes tingled, squirmed. Their awakening surprised me. I hadn't known the feeling had left them. 

I kept tapping, breathing, working with the Fast Aid protocol. As suddenly as the feeling had come back in to my ankle, a knowing came that I could walk if I wanted. Not only that I could, but that for me, in this moment, it was so much better to stay with this trance-like focus on healing, to move with it, than it would be to lie and wait for help when I knew my mind would get the better of me. 

I rummaged in my pack, ate the very few almonds I had brought, drank some water and thought about the challenge that confronted me. It was probably three miles to the trailhead and my car. Once there, would I be able to drive? It was my right ankle that had snapped. 

I conjured the presence of a friend who had trained as an EMT and had a real practicality about how to handle emergency situations. I wondered what he would do with with the things I carried in my backpack: fluorescent green hiking socks; a long-sleeved, flannel shirt that I had given my ex-husband and stolen back when we divorced fifteen years before.  I looked at those, dug to the very bottom of the pack and found what I didn't remember I had left there even though I hadn't worn it in months: a foam rubber, black knee support. 

A plan came in to focus. 

I bent, reached, gathered up two robust, relatively straight sticks, broke them to the same 3 inch lengthes and put them on the ground next to me, picked up the socks and pulled one on to each foot. With the sock making a padded covering for my right ankle,  I braced a stick on each side of my ankle, then tightly wrapped the knee support to hold them in place, pulling  its Velcro closures tight, creating a makeshift walking cast to support for my ankle, my suddenly vocal ankle that I had taken for granted for so very many steps, over so very many years. I wrapped the long-sleeve flannel shirt tightly around it all, tying its arms securely, closed my pack, hoisted it and myself up, stood, and . . . walked. 

After a bit, I noticed a long stick with a forked top tucked in to bushes along the trail, picked it up, and let it help me take the next step, leaning in to it, on to it, walking in a state of expanded awareness, my focus on and in my ankle, on the miracle of its willingness to keep carrying me, one step after another, down the trail.  

People along the way wanted to help, were curious and concerned. One young woman lent me -- a complete stranger -- gorgeous, resilient walking poles. She wrote her name and cell phone number on a scrap of paper so I could contact her later to return the poles. Her name? Charity.  

Further along, a couple recognized me from the downtown business I had owned. Later, on their way back down the trail, they caught up with me again. The woman, Judy, said  she would walk with me. Her husband would go on ahead, then come and pick her up once she had driven me home in my car. I wanted to demure but already was learning I needed help, that I couldn't just handle this one alone. Without Judy's company,  I don't know if I could have made it that last mile of the walk. I talked with her about any and everything then, using the chatter to distance myself from my exhaustion.  

As soon as she drove me far enough out of the mountains to get cell phone reception, I called my daughter and asked her to call the friend who had inspired my creative walking cast. He was the one who later peeled down the sock on my right ankle, took one look and said:  “We're going to the Emergency room.” Several hours later he arrived to pick me up just in time to watch the Orthopedic sketch the bones of my ankle. The x-ray had revealed that both the tibia and fibula were broken.

That following spring I took a Wilderness Emergency Medicine course. Three years, two surgeries, and multiple sessions with a physical therapist and a host of other healing practitioners (including myself), I walked the same trail, dismayed by how steep and rocky it was, astonished that I had been able to walk it with a broken ankle.  

Mostly I take the strength of my ankle for granted. I like it when something, like ankle rotations at the gym, remind me to be appreciative of — and a little awed by — the gift (and commitment) that is healing.

The mystery of who killed John Bozeman in 1867 takes a new twist this weekend when historians present a new suspect in the death of the city’s namesake.

The Extreme History Project will stage the original play “Who Killed John Bozeman?” at the Museum of the Rockies on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

The play is the only event scheduled this year to honor the 150th anniversary of the town’s founding in August 1864, when John Bozeman, Elliott Rouse, William Alderson and a handful of men started a town where the Bozeman Trail crossed Sourdough Creek.

The play is a chance to celebrate history, introduce an audience to the city’s founding fathers and take a new look at the mystery surrounding Bozeman’s death, said Marsha Fulton, who co-founded the nonprofit Extreme History Project with Crystal Alegria.

MORE>>> Bozeman Chronicle

A Montana delegation led by Governor Steve Bullock is back in Big Sky Country after an eight day trade mission to China.

 Many of the business participants think their investment in the journey is about to pay big dividends.

 "There's not a business in Montana right now, that alone or in partnership with other businesses could not do business with China," said John McKee, the owner of Headframe Spirits in Butte.

 As one of nearly a dozen business owners on the trade mission, he's confident the connections he made will help get his liquor flowing into China.

 "There's not a meeting that I took that I couldn't honestly foresee writing a deal from. And we will be writing a deal - we will be selling booze in China. It will be sometime within the next year, I'm hoping within the next six months," said McKee.

MORE>>>KPAX

9:47 a.m. A Whitefish woman reported that last night a black car drove into her driveway and turned around.

11:22 a.m. A woman driving down Highway 2 West complained that a man in a white pickup cut her off and waved his middle finger in her direction.

11:45 a.m. Someone reportedly busted the window out of truck and sprayed some sort of unnamed chemical on the handle bars of a bike parked on Electric Avenue in Bigfork.

12:21 p.m. A woman on Three Mile Drive reported that earlier this morning she was awoken by two women who were trying to break into her house through the “dog room.”

1:34 p.m. A Kalispell woman suspects that it was her ex-husband who broke into her garage and stole her tools.

1:35 p.m. A Somers resident complained that the orange cones he puts in front of his property are continually ran over and occasionally destroyed. He suspects that his neighbor does it intentionally.

MORE>>>Flathead Beacon

Kathleen Clary Miller has written 300+ columns and stories for periodicals both local and national, and has authored three books (www.amazon.com/author/millerkathleenclary). She lives in the woods of the Ninemile Valley, thirty miles west of Missoula. 

Because my one-year old grandson, Jack, lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, I frequently find myself on Skype in order to see him as often as I can (and engrave onto his impressionable developing memory that I am “Grandma”). 

            Jack has visited three times in his young life, and so each time his beaming countenance rises on my computer screen, I pry my own face away long enough to show him things here that he might remember. 

            “See Cody?” I ask as I turn the camera to our German Shepherd who was a favorite during his last visit.  The feeling is mutual; Cody cooperates to look at the screen, and when he sees that Jack is securely settled in his high chair it signals “orts on the floor” and “discarding the yucky bites” and so he assumes the canine attentive posture in hopes of being on the receiving end of illegal snacking.

            This morning I was vacuuming when the delightful computer chime rang out.  I swiftly shut down the Dyson (Oh darn; This chore will have to wait!) and dashed to answer the call as if I hadn’t seen the toddler for months when, in fact, it had been less than 24 hours since our last virtual visit.

During our initial greeting that consists of peek-a-boo, hand clapping, face slapping, and my rolling my tongue like a lizard, I espied in my peripheral vision our friendly flock of turkeys—some two dozen of them—waddling across the gravel and strutting onto the lawn out back.  It was a clear and sunny day, so I turned the laptop to face the picture window and emoted like a birthday party clown for Jack to “Loooook!”  I couldn’t see the child’s reaction (probably fear), but heard my daughter reassuring and further instructing “Turkeys!  See the turkeys?” whereupon several deer (of all ages) entered the outdoor pageant, nibbling on the grass and maneuvering around the plentitude of poultry

            I cracked one of the windows to the melodious chirping of multitudinous smaller birds.  Katharine and Jack were able to hear their cheeping as a button-nosed bunny hoped on stage from deep within some shrubbery, just before Cody became aware (it takes Cody awhile to become aware) of the pageantry. He predictably went berserk, barking and tearing from window to window while knocking over chairs, his targets utterly nonplussed at the verbal assault. 

            After I satisfied my protector that there was no need to attack, Katharine told me that Jack had been watching with great interest.  “It’s just like in Snow White when all the animals come out of the woods to help her do the housework!” she enthused, being a rabid Disney fan still, at age thirty.  She dressed like Ms. White just last Halloween; uncannily hangs every heroine’s costume in her closet.

            “Ah-hah-hah-hah-hahhhh …” I trilled, imitating the signature tune Snow sings.  I must admit I felt somewhat supported in my tedious efforts with such an auspicious menagerie cheering me on.

            It was Jack’s naptime so I reluctantly disconnected and redirected my attention to the vacuum.  Acknowledging my forest friends I resolved to think of house cleaning as a fairy tale…even if my prince was on the golf course.