Columns
Explore Daily Inter Lake Columns featuring local sports commentary, outdoor adventure stories, lifestyle tips, and community perspectives from Northwest Montana.
Giving Together: Turning Tax Season into Opportunities for Students
On a spring morning in Kalispell, a group of elementary students huddle around a table, testing a small robot they…
'The purpose of education' - and the failure to pursue it
It would seem obvious that how we educate our children is also how we preserve our culture. It is the solid foundation that allows us to even speak of a culture — a shared experience that defines who we are.
Howse, history and the spirit of exploration
Exploring history is a lot like exploring a strange new continent — there are lots of dead ends and false hopes, and the occasional high promontory that offers a clear view of, in one case, where we have been, and …
Education or violence: The two-pronged revolution of Bill Ayers
When the Students for a Democratic Society organization was wracked by a schism in the summer of 1969, Bill Ayers sided with the faction that favored widespread revolution across the face of America. It is instruct…
Dr. Bill Ayers: Or how I learned to stop bombing and destroy the system from within ...
By the mid-1960s, all hell had broken loose in the American education system, most obviously in the universities that were at the center of the Vietnam War protest movement, but more subtly in the public school sys…
How America dropped the baton
Every culture is either self-propagating, or by definition it is self-destructive. Culture has no meaning and no value unless it is passed on to the next generation.
Gravel mission turned out to be gem of a trip
I’m in love with gravel.
Education: 'It's a hideous mess, but it's OUR mess'
We have spent the last two weeks surmising that the lever that pushed America from the land of the free to the “land of the free lunch” in a short five decades was progressive education.
Life lessons learned from my father
It’s going on two years since my dad died, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t think of him in some small way. His words and wisdom are so intricately woven into me; I realize that more now than when he was still…
An education in how things went so wrong
There was a man who once said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
As we go over the cliff, just who is in the driver's seat?
A few months ago, I asked the question, “How did we get here?”
What I learned during anguish on Amtrak ride
It could be worse.
What's for lunch? Whatever the Mama Grizzly wants!
A lot of people wonder why I like Sarah Palin so much.
Putting principle ahead of popularity
Last week, I had the pleasure of introducing many of my readers to author Dorothy Thompson for the first time.
Story emerges of long-lost cowboy hero
History is kind of my bag. I’ve always enjoyed writing about the cast of characters who left their mark on the annals of places such as the Flathead Valley.
A tale of two strong conservative women: Yep, it can happen here
A famous 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, titled “It Can’t Happen Here,” envisioned the arrival of a fascist regime in America in the guise of a voluble, charismatic president named Buzz Windrip.