John McCaslin

1 week ago | flatheadbeacon.com | John McCaslin

Every day in my previous life I would duck into the basement of the U.S. Capitol to anxiously await a freshly bound copy of the Congressional Record, the daily chronicle of legislative proceedings published since 1873. More often than not the ink was still wet. These days, with everything appearing online, political geeks from Washington to Whitefish can merely click into the Record’s pages to learn what lawmakers accomplish when Congress is in session.

3 weeks ago | flatheadbeacon.com | John McCaslin

The Flathead is on the cusp of summer uncertainty. Given the current political and economic climate, tourism in the valley is markedly down and it doesn’t look like it will rebound any time soon. Concurrently, this summer is forecast to be hotter and dryer than usual through the end of August. So dry, in fact, that Montana is the only state in the nation with a “below normal” seasonal precipitation outlook, according to NOAA.

1 month ago | flatheadbeacon.com | John McCaslin

The appalling price of prescription drugs is one of perhaps two things Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and I will ever agree on. The other is Froot Loops. Not that I consume the multicolored breakfast cereal. It’s inexcusable that the Flathead version of Kellogg’s vivid breakfast treat uses synthetic dyes – Red 40, Blue 1, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 – whereas just across the border in Fernie the same cereal is served with natural food coloring.

1 month ago | rappnews.com | John McCaslin

As Debbie Keyser tells it, when 6-year-old Michael Cook visited her family’s Old Hollow farm for the first time in 1974 “he kept calling the front yard ‘the floor,’ because he’d never seen land or grass.”kA 5:ClQ=ECQm“%96J 925 2=H2JD 366? @? 4@?4C6E6 @C 3=24<E@A[” D2JD s2?:6= z6JD6C[ s633:6’D 72E96C[ C676CC:?8 E@ |:4926= 2?5 9:D d\J62C\@=5 D:DE6C[ |:496==6[ H9@ H6C6 8C@H:?8 FA :? E96 8C:EEJ 3@C@F89 @7 "F66?D[ }]*] !:4EFC6 pC49:6 qF?<6C’D ?6:893@C9@@5 — 2?5 6?G:C@?>6?E — :? E96 `hf_D D:E4@>[ “p== :?

1 month ago | flatheadbeacon.com | John McCaslin

Avocational archaeologist yours truly avows to be I had opined in a previous column about the wealth of prehistoric relics awaiting discovery in the backwoods of northwest Montana. Now wouldn’t you know comes word of a “one of a kind” potpourri of petroglyphs found near Whitefish, some so significant they surpass notable rock art finds of the western U.S. and Canada.