Montana Buzz

 A daily digest of Montana news

Sept. 25, 2018

MSU has set a new record for enrollment -- 16,902 students -- a jump of 199 over last fall's record. Meanwhile, UM suffered another decline this fall, dropping to 10,962 students. (Bozeman Chronicle)

LOOKING for some of the country's best burgers? You don't have to leave Montana, according to TripAdvisor, because Billings' Burger Dive serves them.

The travel website recently released a list of the ten best burger joints in the country, and the Burger Dive came in No. 10.

Owner Brad Halsten says he was really surprised by the ranking, even though he's won other awards, including top burger at the World Burger Championship two years ago. All the success is pretty amazing considering that the restaurant is Halsten's first and he's only been in business seven years.

YOU wouldn't think 5-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady would be awestruck too often, but he was when he spotted a bear in Montana recently.

The New England Patriots quarterback posted a video on Instagram last week of himself outdoors grinning widely and whispering: "It's a bear!" He then panned his camera to a nearby bear sauntering off into the woods.

Brady didn't specify exactly where he saw the bear, but most likely he took the shot at his place at the Yellowstone Club at Big Sky, which he frequently visits in the off-season

WHILE newspapers have struggled financially and laid off many journalists in recent years, some analysts have hoped that more nimble, independent online news sites would fill the void.

That was the goal for Ed Kemmick, a seasoned Billings Gazette reporter and sure-footed writer when he launched Last Best News four and a half years ago. During that time, Kemmick continued to make his mark with hard-hitting accountability journalism that shined a light on those misusing power. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was often poking fun at himself and others.

Unfortunately, Kemmick eventually found the rigors of running the site, where he was writing breaking news, features, and commentaries, as well as doing the grunt work of accounting, ad sales, web-site development, budgeting and so on, pretty confining. “It occurred to me that in all my life there had been only a few relatively short periods when I lived as a full-time human being, free and untethered,” he said Sunday in announcing the site will suspend operations July 1.“Once the idea of reclaiming that kind of freedom took hold of me, it was hard to think of anything else.”

Kemmick hopes someone will step forward and revive his site or start a new one like it. If that doesn't happen, the good news for his many fans is that he expects to continue writing as a freelancer.

HAVE trouble spelling a word? Most folks do.

In South Dakota, a lot of people struggle with "chaos," and in Idaho they aren't sure about "businesses." So they ask Google "how to spell" those words, and Google, in turn, has produced a map of the most common "how to spell" words of each state.

In Montana, that word is "tomorrow."

" 'Or is it "tomarrow," or "tomorow," or "twomorrow"? (It's not, lol)' " quips Kristen Inbody in the Great Great Falls Tribune.

A GREAT horned owl is keeping a close eye on proceedings in the courtroom of District Judge Mike Menahan from its nest just a few feet away from the Lewis and Clark courthouse.

And Menahan, an avid bird watcher, and a court clerk have been closely watching the owl, which they dubbed Ollie. They've set up a watching station in the courtroom, complete with binoculars and a camcorder that can record Ollie's activities.

Ollie took over a crow's nest, and Menahan believes she's a young mother. If so, that wouldn't necessarily be a good thing. "There's not a lot of food around here," he noted.

Moreover, the nest is near busy Broadway Avenue, which would be dangerous territory for any young owls that flutter out of the nest toward the street.

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