Opinion

In Philippians chapter 3, Paul looks upon his life as one with great privileges and attainments. After coming in contact with Christ, he made another assessment of his life and found that the things in which he had trusted were more than useless; they are actually “rubbish” and served as a barrier to his being what God wanted him to be. The same can be true with us today, and we need to pay close attention to this message from Paul.

On Thursday, President Biden announced the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the coming weeks will issue an “emergency temporary standard” that will mandate all employers with 100 or more employees to require their workers be vaccinated or undergo weekly Covid testing. This rule is estimated to impact 80 million private-sector workers, with businesses facing fines of up to $14,000 per violation.

Fire in the West is expected, and not so long ago, it seemed something the West experienced more than anywhere else. Nationally, big fires were treated as another freak of Western violence, like a grizzly bear attack, or another California quirk like Esalen and avocados.

As students and teachers throughout Montana are going back to school, we know that a lot of those schools--especially in rural and reservation communities--are struggling with teacher shortages. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers is a perennial challenge for rural schools in general, and schools in Indian Country in particular. But we also know that if we can encourage hometown kids to pursue a career in education, and help them get the training they need to be teachers, they are more likely to stay in small towns and make a career in their local schools.