Over at the Missoula Notebook, I take a look at the latest chapter in the story of one midwife’s fight to bring a birthing center back to Missoula. Just as she completed work on her new center’s first birthing room, the local hospital banned her from its premises.

This matters more than you might think:

While most mothers who begin their deliveries at a birth center finish there, some end up transferring to a hospital (usually for non-emergency reasons, such as changing their minds about receiving an epidural). Naturally, if one of Hebl’s patients transfers to the hospital, she will want Hebl to come with her, but—in early October—Community Medical Center banned Hebl from its premises under threat of arrest.

Read the rest here.

I’m proud of how relatively little I contribute to “the economy.” Driving an eleven-year-old car, carefully planning my first new-shoe purchase in five years, and squinting at a non-digital, non-HD television, it’s hard to imagine how I could be happier.

A lot of the credit goes to just living in Missoula, and I’m not alone in feeling this way. A recent survey found 94 percent of Missoulians “satisfied with the overall quality of life in Missoula.”

Read the rest here.

Things have gotten so bad that the White House today declared a nationwide state of emergency and advised that it would be “taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” but of course this only raises new worries. With emergency powers, will the administration even need to await Congressional approval before empaneling tribunals that will decide who’s too sick to be saved?

After all, while reports of President Obama’s “civilian national security force” roving the streets at night in FEMA vans—clad in clown masks and HAZMAT suits and urging flu sufferers to surrender “so we can take care of you”—are as yet unsubstantiated, perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

The rest is here.

Two years into my Montana residency, I’ve already achieved journeyman status at standing next to my grill with a can of Pabst in my hand, floating down the Blackfoot on an inner tube, and reacting to every new City Council resolution by exclaiming “this is Big Brother government at its worst!” But those skills will only carry me so far. To approach true Montananness, what I really need to do is get better at killing things in the woods.

Read the rest here.

If passed, the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act would designate the first new Wilderness Areas in Montana since 1983, and I’m up here, in a plane provided by the non-profit Ecoflight, to get a first-hand look at what the bill would actually mean to miles of backcountry in some of the most cherished wilderness in the state. Down below me is the battle zone: forests and landscapes treasured by hikers, loggers, snowmobilers, mountain bikers, horse packers, anglers, hunters, and oil and gas firms, among others. The Tester bill aims to protect wild land while satisfying as many of these groups as possible. But can it succeed?

Read the rest here.