0:21 a.m. A Columbia Falls woman called in with additional information regarding the mysterious Tylenol tablets she found on her floor.

 10:35 a.m. A handful of runaway mules were spotted on Church Drive.

 11:11 a.m. A resident on Highland Ridge Drive reported that two shotgun toting men dressed in suits were creeping around on his neighbor's property. The men were gone when a deputy arrived.

 11:26 a.m. An employee of a local pawn shop preemptively reported that customers in the store looked as though they could potentially steal something. The customers did not steal anything.

 1:30 p.m. At some point on Friday, approximately eight feet of a Somerset Drive resident's evergreen "shrub" was somehow damaged.

MORE>>>Flathead Beacon

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.

Montana spring evolves erratically. Warm days bring evening snow. Snow-capped mountainsloom to the north while the grass in my yard greens and grows. My garden awakens by inches, centimeters. I savor that slow awakening, grateful for this time of adjustment, to a season that asks for me to be more social, more outward.

 This spring, though, has brought a challenging juxtapostion. In the juniper outside our home’s baywindow robins have moved in, now busily refining their nest. In the Caplette family apartments (hosted by six grandfatherly spruce trees) mornings bring excited chatter.

 Last week, Conner Redtail, our dog and committed companion of twelve years died, out under the apple tree, bird song threading the air, a gentle breeze flowing.

 Death and birth. Juxtapositions.

 After Conner’s death, my daughter Rose and I packed up, headed to Yellowstone for a weekend, reveling in the warm air, the critters moving, flying, grazing, scavenging, cavorting — the tender awkwardness of buffalo calves, the explosive enthusiasm of spring runoff in the Lamar River, Tower Falls, in ponds and seasonal lakes.

 Then Sunday evening we came home to a great emptiness. Since then, I try to focus on life and not death, but loss seduces me. I miss Conner. Mourn him. Am confused by his sudden absence.

 Usually spring has meant crack-of-dawn wake ups with Max, my twenty-pound cat, walking on my face, nesting on my chest. More polite, Conner would hover, waiting to go out, to be fed. The three of us had a routine together while my daughter slept in. Lucky her, I would think. Now I wish I could revist that often-irritating early-morning routine, would gladly make evening space for the duo on the couch.

 It is beyond ironic that Conner would die just six months after Max, his arch nemesis, die just when he had the household humans to himself, along with all their attention, all the treats, the love; die almost exactly twelve years to the day from when I signed his adoption papers. Did we have a contract I hadn’t realized I agreed to? Twelve years and no more?

 As I prepare to transplant the seedlings I started from seed back in March — a deceptively healthy-seeming Conner lying on the staircase landing and watching me — I take time to consider what it is I want to grow in this season of my life. I don't keep track of which seedling represents which dream, which hope, which plan. For now, they all stretch toward light, thrive, warm and nutured in their grow-light environment, oblivious to the erratic weather just outside the window. I can do that for now, keep them healthy and safe.

 This morning as my daughter Rose and I shared breakfast, one of the juniper-robins flew at us and then made a hard left, headed to its nest. We watched and smiled. Rose said, It’s almost like having a pet.

 Poor robins. Already we are over-focused on whether they have been to the nest or not, peaking out through the blinds to see if one of them is there. It’s such a gift right now, to have life happening so richly, right outside the window, the natural flow of the season in place though so much in our lives has changed.

And hey, even the grey days and nesting-in ourselves is pretty great.

Bill Muhlenfeld is owner and publisher of Distinctly Montana magazine and other publications. He lives in Bozeman with his partner, Anthea, and always finds time to enjoy the great outdoors, when he is not writing about it.... 

So today we received a query to write about drive-in movies for the magazine.  What?  I had no idea that these still existed anywhere in the USA.  And in Montana?  It hasn't even stopped snowing yet.  How long could a drive-in movie season be?

My friend Google and I went on a research mission and found that there were 43 listed in the state with names like "Fortress,"  "Go West" and, of course, "Big Sky."  Wow!  Then I noticed a button at the top that pointed to "all, open, or closed."  I clicked on "open" and was left with just two, the Silver Bow in (of all places) Silver Bow and the Amusement Dive-in in Billings.  41 were, it appeared, permanently closed.

When I was young, in Illinois, drive-ins were a very big deal.  We first went with our parents and family in the old Ford Galaxy, and had a freedom of movement which felt both odd and joyous, to be out so late at night running for popcorn, chasing fireflies before the show, running again to the toilet or for cheesy chips and hot dogs.  As a teenager they were the venue of choice in high school for creating an inescapable closeness with a date who was kind of trapped...in a good way.  Who could care what was playing?

In some respects, things haven't changed much for the few drive-ins that are left.  Here are the "rules" for Silver Bow:

Please keep your pets inside your car or cab of your truck at all times

No outside food

We don't have outside speakers; so if you are planning on sitting outside or don't have a working car stereo please remember to bring a portable radio with you

No littering

Turn off your headlights

I hadn't thought about drive-ins for years I suppose, but I've been thinking about them most of today, and how much the small act of just going to a movie has morphed to something beyond our wildest imagination.  Really, why would anyone go to a drive-in today?  Nostalgia, I suppose.  Might be fun to try it though.  Silver Bow here I come.

Tickets to Paul McCartney’s Aug. 5 concert in Missoula went fast Friday morning, with all but a handful of the most expensive tickets remaining.

“We’re pushing capacity of 25,218 tickets,” said Brad Murphy, executive director of the Adams Center at the University of Montana. “We had a great day, and everyone who stood in line got a ticket.”

The lines weren’t overwhelmingly long, with an estimated 300 ticket buyers passing through the Adams Center despite Friday morning’s drizzle. Another 100 buyers made their purchase at Southgate Mall and Worden’s Market.

Most of the 25,000 buyers went online, and GrizTix boosted its capacity to deal with the demand. Sales went smoothly, Murphy said.

“You learn from the past,” he said. “We had all the controls in place, extra servers to deal with the online presence. We made sure our outlets were covered. It was the smoothest sale we’ve ever had for a show like this.”

The University of Montana announced May 5 that McCartney had added Missoula to his worldwide “Out There” tour — an Aug. 5 concert between shows in Minneapolis and Salt Lake City.

MORE>>> Billings Gazette
 

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.

Writing our mothers can be about doing detective work on the women who birthed us. We discover unanswered questions that send us to her friends or our relatives, looking for pieces of story, of their experience of the women who are our mothers.  I found that to be a simpler process right after my mother died because at that time, people didn’t second guess my motive in questioning them, though each had a line of personal discretion they would not cross.  

 Writing our mothers can be making a commitment to ask them questions while they are alive, recognizing that evasion is another kind of answer.  There are several life-story writing books that suggest questions to use.  

 In my BodyTalk practice, I often work on women’s relationships with their mothers because those relationships affect their health, their ability to be fully present to themselves. The information that comes up in sessions can send clients to their mothers with very focused, tailored questions. I’m sure that’s also true for women working in other modalities, including counseling. Asking your mother those questions may or may not bring useful answers. Either way, journal your conversation and your reaction.  

 Any exploration of relationship is ultimately a dialogue we have with ourselves. We can only see through the lens of our own perception. Explore yours. What are your memories? What were the circumstances of your leaving home?  How did you feel about your mother at that time?  How do you feel about her now?  How has your relationship with her changed?  How is it the same? And, an essential question: how does it mirror her relationship with her own mother?  

 What are your happiest, funniest, saddest, memories of your mother?  How are you like her?  What are your main differences?  What have you taught each other? Patterns of relationship are passed, generation to generation. If you’re a mother, which of those patterns are familiar in your own relationship with your children, especially your daughters?

 Writing our mothers can be a chronicling of the mundane: their favorite colors, season, song, meal, movie, or book.  Write a memory related to each of these.  My mother loved bright colors. I see her particularly in a red embroidered blouse we bought in Guatemala.  In fact, I still own it, though I’ve rarely been bold enough to wear it.

 I don’t know what my mother would have named as her favorite meal.  But I remember baking together.  We had a production-line approach to making pies.  My job was to prepare the perfect crust.  My mother readied the fruit filling, using apples bought fresh from nearby orchards or fruits and berries from our garden.  I loved to carve designs in the crust of the pies before we baked them, to nibble on unused shreds of pie dough. Pie dough is still a comfort food of mine. 

 In honor of mother’s day, begin writing about your mother.  In the process, you may discover unanswered questions that you can ask now, while there is a possibility of having them answered.  Or, you may find you can intuit the answer if you just allow yourself to write without editing what comes, filling a page, or setting a timer and staying with the question for ten minutes.  

 Mix your writings with favorite photographs.  Make it a tradition to add to your writings every year around mother’s day, or your mother’s birthday, or a favorite holiday.  Write and know her separately from your father. Separately from her role as a mother. 

 This is one of the richest explorations you can make. It is one you will revisit over and again in your life. If, as you journey and journal, appreciations come, consider making a written collage of those and present them as your Mother’s Day Gift -- to your mother and yourself.

Lacey Middlestead is a Montana native and freelance writer currently living in Helena, Mont. She loves meeting new people and helping share their stories. When she’s not busy writing articles for newspapers like the Independent Record and Helena Vigilante, she can usually be found indulging in her second greatest passion–playing in the Montana wilderness. She loves skiing and snowmobiling in the winter and four wheeling, hiking, boating, and riding dirt bikes in the summer.

A few weeks ago I wore flip flops outside for the first time this year. Freeing my toes from the confines of my Smart Wool socks is a pretty sound indication for me that summer is just around the corner. It also means it’s time to switch gears and transition from my winter sports over to my summer ones. With only the faintest bit of reluctance, I neatly packed away my snowmobile gear in my bag and hung my hockey sticks back up in the garage. I smiled knowing they would be back out again before I knew it, but for now, it was time to dust off my Trek cross-training bike and oil the chain on my new Honda dirt bike.

With the hectic chaos that usually defines my life, I have only made it out for one bicycle ride so far. I felt instantaneous elation upon first clipping into my bike pedals. There’s just a special kind of freedom one feels when biking along an open stretch of road with nothing but the sound of a headwind and the bike gears cranking to fill the empty spaces around you.

I headed west out of town along Birdseye road as it’s only a few miles from my house. I took spinning classes at the gym all winter long, but regardless of their intensity, my muscles always recognize when I start turning pedals on the real thing. I felt my quadriceps and hamstrings burning after only a few miles. But it was a good pain. I rode about 10 miles along the road before turning around to head home. I underestimated how quickly the sun still sets in early spring though and how the temperatures outside drop just as steadily. By the time I swung into my driveway, my hands and feet were numb with cold. I clunked awkwardly into my house with my feet still velcroed into my biking shoes. I cussed the whole way about how I shouldn’t have stayed out biking so long. But once I felt warmth flood back into my extremities I was reminded that, regardless of the cold, that first ride out was still worth it.

While I love the quiet and leisure nature of road biking, I also have a desperate need for speed at times. That’s where my dirt bike came into play a few weeks later. I had yet to try out my new Honda and was anxious to see how it felt.

One Wednesday night my dad and I loaded our dirt bikes into the back of his truck and headed toward Sheep Mountain in Clancy to do a little trail riding. It was a slow night of riding for me…..slower than usual anyways. My new bike is bigger and faster than my other one and I could tell instantly that it would take some time for us to get to know each other. But I sure loved the feeling of twisting the throttle and feeling the engine rev to life.

Although not quite as simple as riding a bicycle, I don’t think you ever forget how to ride a dirt bike either. Instinctively, my left foot clicked the gears up and down depending on my speed while my right foot found its way to the back break lever. A bigger bike means I’ve got a little more weight to throw around when taking sharp corners and rounding berms. But little by little that night, I began feeling my confidence come back and the bike started to feel like part of me. We rode for about two hours before calling it quits. The sound of the motor kept roaring in my head the rest of the night though.

On the drive back into town, I felt a sense of renewal having returned to two of my favorite activities. I also felt excitement build in me as I thought about all of the longer and warmer summer nights to come where I would find myself either pounding it out on the pavement with my bicycle or tearing up the mountain trails and motocross track on my dirt bike. There is so much good riding ahead…..some of it slow and steady…..some of it fast and furious. But either way, I will be shifting gears under the Big Sky of Montana where I can truly exist and feel alive.

Gov. Steve Bullock's office says more tourists visited and spent money in Montana last year than ever before.

The governor's office cited data Tuesday from the University of Montana's Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research.

About 11 million people visited the state in 2013, spending more than $3.6 billion.

That is compared to 10.8 million visitors who spent $3.27 billion in 2012. That also was a record year for tourism in the state.

The governor's office says the tourism industry directly employs 44,000 people in Montana.

MORE>>>Billings Gazette