The news as seen through the keyhole of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle
I AM AWAITING NEWS ABOUT THE EXPLOSION in downtown Bozeman. I can see the thick column of smoke rising straight up over the empty day care center across the street from my house announcing that something has happened. But I cannot find out what because the newspaper has already been delivered.
I am waiting for news about the explosion in downtown Whitehall. I hear someone say in the hallway outside my office on the Montana State University campus there had been an earthquake at 4:10 a.m. centered somewhere near Whitehall and maybe that is the cause. But I cannot find out how serious the damage has been because there is no story about it in my morning paper.
IN MY FREE MOMENTS I scan the news websites. The Bozeman Chronicle doesn’t update very much and then with scant new bits of information. The Billings Gazette yawns a bit because this is happening to someone else 140 miles away. The Montana Standard, in Butte, seems to update their online site less often than the newspaper itself. Radio? Nope. TV. Nope? Old news. What in God’s name happened to that poor woman who disappeared? Wendy goes to The Academy of Cosmetology on Mendenhall Street for her seven dollar haircut in downtown Bozeman on Saturday and learns a number of things. One of them is that the remains of the still unnamed missing woman have been found across the street from the blaze. This seems most gruesome and I begin scanning my sources, even trying to resurrect a Twitter account I had opened long ago and abandoned because it didn’t make any damned sense to me (being not under 40 years of age). There is nothing. When the newspaper plops on my doorstep Sunday morning I brush the snow off of the plastic bag and pop the paper out of the rubber band (seems a bit extravagant to have a rubber band AND a plastic bag) and the news is … the missing lady is still missing. All resources are focused on finding her. Fire suppression still going on. Continue reading →
