The 2019 Record Store Day celebration at Cactus Records & Gifts starts the moment the 2nd customer gets in line outside of the doors, which open at 9 AM on April 13th, and wraps up when the doors close (approx. 7pm). 

Cactus Records has participated in the event since its first year, April 19th, 2008, and every year Cactus features live in-store music performances.  This year will feature performances by Wire Rider @ 6pm, The Dirty Dirty @ 5pm,  The Dusty Pockets at 4pm, The Million Sellers at 3pm, Bigsby Jones at 2pm, Laney Lou & the Bird Dogs (new album early release listening party/meet-and-greet/short live performance) at 1pm, and Elisha G.A. Mann at 12 noon.  Those of us at Cactus humbly submit that if you're not there, well, we hate to say it, but you might be square. 

In between, attendants can expect to find access to hundreds of limited-edition Record Store Day and regular inventory releases, experience lots of live music (starting at 12 pm), killer sales, an opportunity for music hunters to listen to and show off their trophies at the Burn Box after party at the Rialto starting at 8 pm, and as always, the ever-renewing love Cactus Records has for its oh-so-special and unique customers. 

And that’s not all!  There will also be great deals from a number of generous Bozeman businesses, including Burger Bobs & the Cannery, Pickle Barrel, free beer from the fine folks at Montucky and MAP brewing (provided you’re 21 or older!), breakfast sausages & hot dogs for sale from Lotte Dogs mobile hot dog stand, and shockingly generous giveaways, special sales, and other expressions of Cactus’s profound love and admiration for you, their customers.

In addition to all the in-store fun, Record Store Day also means the release of hundreds of exclusive pressings of LPs (and EPs) by The Grateful Dead, Dr Dre, Iggy Pop, Pearl Jam, the Death Grips, Bill Evans, Queen, Prince, The Raconteurs, Kool Keith, Wes Montgomery, The Rolling Stones, Jeff Tweedy, The White Stripes, Anderson Paak (and his band the Free Nationals) and countless more!  To find a full list of these releases go to https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialReleases?view=all .

On April 13th, Cactus Records will be just one of the hundreds of stores around the world helping bring music lovers and their local, independent stores together for the annual Record Store Day celebration.  Now in its 11th year, Record Store Day has been described by its creators as "a way to celebrate and spread the word about the unique culture surrounding nearly 1400 independently owned record stores in the US and thousands of similar stores internationally."  Traditionally, each year an artist has been declared "Record Store Ambassador", a post previously held by St. Vincent, Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Dave Grohl, Metallica and this year by Pearl Jam.

Cactus Records would like to thank all of their sponsors who were generous enough to donate goods and services to this year’s celebration of Record Store Day, including Map Brewing, Montucky Cold Snacks, the Pickle Barrel, Haufbrau, the Cannery, the Filling Station, Fire Artisan Pizza, the Whittier Parent Advisory Council, Country Bookshelf, Cosmic Pizza, jam!, Bozone, Bozeman Magazine, SLAM festival, Movie Lovers, Lotte Dogs, the Rialto and the Burn Box, all of the bands that will be performing in store, and of course, you.


For more information about Record Store Day, please go to https://recordstoreday.com, and be sure to check the Cactus Records events page for more info on the live music featured at the event.  The staff of Cactus Records and the music-loving community of Bozeman hope to see you there.

Cactus Records & gifts is located at 29 W. Main St. in downtown Bozeman and online at www.cactusrecords.net.

An organism that lives in a smelly cauldron in Yellowstone National Park has yielded new information about how its ancient relatives might have survived without oxygen.

Montana State University scientists said in their recent paper in the journal Nature Microbiology that the unusual microorganism has the genes necessary for two types of metabolism. One produces methane while the other uses different forms of sulfur to produce sulfide. Neither involves oxygen.

"That's a big deal. This is the first microbial population to be described that has both of these abilities. We show that methane oxidation may be coupled with the reduction of sulfite, which represents a previously unreported metabolism for life," said lead author Luke McKay, an assistant research professor in the Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture and MSU's Center for Biofilm Engineering.

Principal investigator Bill Inskeep, a professor in MSU's Thermal Biology Institute and Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, said the results have implications for the evolution of those traits through the Archaea, one of the three domains of life, along with Eukarya and Bacteria. Archaea describes single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus and which often have complex metabolisms. They have been found living in some of the most extreme environments on Earth.

The newly described organism, called Methanodesulfokores washburnensis, is believed to be a modern relative of an obscure group of microorganisms that lived around the time life began on Earth. That group, known as the Korarchaeota, might have been a very early branch in the tree of life. It is a subgroup of Archaea, one of the three domains of life. The other domains are Bacteria and Eukarya, the latter of which includes humans and animals.

Inskeep and former doctoral student Zackary Jay, another coauthor on the paper, extracted DNA from the sediments of Washburn Hot Springs in 2012. The specific pool lies near the base of Mount Washburn and measures about 25-by-100 feet across. It averages 149 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit and contains high concentrations of methane, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sulfide and sulfate.

"It's an ominous looking pool,” Inskeep said. “I wouldn't want to fall in."
On the other hand, McKay said, "This is an important environment with relevance to early life."

The Washburn Hot Springs, named after early Yellowstone explorer Henry D. Washburn, contain an interesting mixture of chemical ingredients that make the site extreme, Inskeep said. That, in fact, may explain why scientists didn't discover the Methanodesulfokores earlier somewhere else in the world.

"Washburn is extremely unique on the planet," McKay said. "The geochemistry of the spring makes it like a window into ancient environments on Earth. That's exciting because it provides a glimpse of the conditions that early microorganisms may have experienced after the origin of life, 4 billion years ago."

McKay came to MSU in 2015 with a particular interest in research that might relate to the origin of life. He acquired a postdoctoral fellowship through the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Besides studying the extremophiles of Yellowstone, he has studied microorganisms that live in extreme environments all over the world, including Antarctica and the hydrothermally active Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. More recently, McKay was one of nine scientists featured in the science documentary, "The Most Unknown,” which is available on Netflix.

He said he is especially interested in carbon and energy sources in microorganisms that might be important in early life.

To come to the conclusions that led to the Nature Microbiology paper and a related paper in the same issue, McKay worked with scientists from MSU, the University of Chicago, Indiana University and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. His MSU collaborators, in addition to Inskeep and Jay, were Mensur Dlakić, an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Matthew Fields, director of the Center for Biofilm Engineering and a professor in the Thermal Biology Institute and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology; and Korinne Klingelsmith, an undergraduate student majoring in biochemistry and microbiology.

Dlakić used the largest super computer in Montana — the research computing cluster at MSU called Hyalite — to analyze the newly described microorganism and find its position in the tree of life, Inskeep said.

"That kind of analysis helped us say that the genes for methane metabolism in this newly described organism might have been important in early members of the Archaea," McKay said.

Besides publishing their paper in Nature Microbiology, Inskeep and McKay are coauthors of a second manuscript in the same journal. That paper was written by Guillaume Borrel and Simonetta Gribaldo from the Pasteur Institute in France. In it, the scientists elaborate on the diversity and distribution of methane metabolism in the Archaea. They also introduce several new lineages that contain genes for methane metabolism. Some of the microbial sequence data used in that study is from the same sample taken from Washburn Hot Springs and was sequenced by the Department of Energy-Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California.  

"Collectively, these findings have big implications for the evolution of methane and sulfur metabolisms and their potential importance in early life," McKay said.

The 44th annual American Indian Council Powwow at Montana State University will be held March 29-30 at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. The powwow is free and open to all. This year’s powwow will be will be dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
 
“Our indigenous students at MSU care deeply about this issue, and we want to feel safe in our communities, and we want our children to grow up not having to look over their shoulders,” said Allison Longtimesleeping Reyos, an MSU student who is co-president of the MSU American Indian Council. “This MMIWG (murdered and missing indigenous women and girls) powwow dedication is also a way to remember and honor those who have passed on or who are still missing. They need to know we care.”

 
The MSU American Indian Council Powwow is one of the largest in Montana. The powwow weekend events will begin this year at 3 p.m. Friday, March 29, with a ground blessing ceremony for the planned MSU American Indian Hall to be held at the building’s planned location, south of Hannon Hall. The powwow will begin at 6 p.m. Friday, with a grand entry. There will also be grand entries at noon and 6 p.m. Saturday, March 31. Dance and drum competitions with cash prizes are offered.

 
The host drum group will be The Boyz of St. Paul, Minnesota. The head woman dancer is Wozek Chandler (A’aniinen White Clay of Fort Belknap). Head man dancer is Kasey Nicholson (Aaahniinin and Pikuni Nation from Fort Belknap Indian Community). The masters of ceremonies will be Kenneth Helgeson (Nakoda, from Lodge Pole) and Don Racine (Aaniiih, White Clay from Hays). The arena directors are Francis Sherwood, a member of the Arikara, Hidatsa and Navajo tribes, of Denver, and Kyle Felsman (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe of Arlee). The head dance judge is Ron Lodgepole (Chippewa, of Gilbert, Arizona). Head singing judge is Zach Felsman (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe of Arlee). Tiny Tots dancers, up to 5 years of age, will be given an opportunity to dance and will receive small prizes during each of the three powwow sessions.

 
Booths located in the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse will offer a variety of artisan work for sale, and nonprofit and government organizations also will share information. Concessions will be available for purchase.
 
Indigenous food, including bison sliders, bison stew served in a squash bowl, an elk chili and fry bread with wojape (traditional berry sauce), among other items, will be available for purchase from the Fork in the Road food service that will be served in the south side upper concessions of the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse.

 
Powwow organizers are seeking volunteers from the MSU and greater community to help with the event. Volunteers may volunteer at the south entrance of the fieldhouse during the powwow. Also, the American Indian Council has organized a silent auction with proceeds going to help fund the powwow.
 
The American Indian Council Powwow Fun Run, with 5K, mile and walking categories, will be held March 30, beginning at the Brick Breeden Fieldhouse parking lot. Registration begins at 8 a.m. the day of the race with the race starting at 9 a.m. The walk category will begin at 9:05 a.m. There is a $20 registration fee, which includes a race T-shirt.

 
The annual MSU Powwow Basketball Tournament, with cash prizes, will be held March 29-30. For more information, call Cheryl Polacek at 406-599-1311 or email powwowball@gmail.com.
 
The Presidential American Indian alumni brunch, is set for 9:30 a.m. Saturday, March 30, in the Great Room at the MSU Alumni Foundation. For more information about the brunch go to the AIC webpage at montana.edu/aic, contact the MSU Alumni Foundation at 406-994-2401 or email alumni@montana.edu. The brunch is free, but those who wish to attend should RSVP by Monday, March 25, by calling 855-850-2586 or emailing rsvp@msuaf.org.

 
The American Indian Council, an MSU student organization, raises funds to help ensure the powwow is free. The MSU Department of Native American Studies and multiple colleges, departments and programs, as well as off-campus organizations, also contribute. For more information about the powwow, go to montana.edu/aic or contact Lisa Perry at 406-994-4880 or lisa.perry2@montana.edu or Nick Ross-Dick, ned@montana.edu.

Self-portraits by artist Kelly Hartman and macramé pieces by fiber artist Julia Henderson will be exhibited in the Atrium Gallery at the Bozeman Public Library March 1 through April 30, 2019. The Bozeman Public Library Foundation, sponsors of the exhibit, will host a macramé demo on April 18, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m., free and open to the public.

In order to best explain her works of self-portraiture, Bozeman artist Kelly Hartman quotes artist Frida Khalo “I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.” Hartman adds “Time alone, particularly for me in the studio, allows the mind to wander, to go places the conscious body usually keeps barred. To this end, I find painting to be a lonely but cathartic endeavor.”


Hartman’s work also uses backgrounds she considers still life interpretations of patterned fabrics. Inspired by vintage-like floral fabric because of her day-job as a museum curator, she states “The innate femininity of it and the overall repetition of the patterns fit my identity as a woman and as a human. Our minds are repetitive; they beat circles around the things we hold most dear which makes us who we are.”

Julia Henderson likes to point out that while macramé is perhaps best known as a 70s handicraft, today it is having a massive resurgence among “modern bohemians.”  Macramé is seen as both as a functional aspect of home décor - plant hangers, floating tables and shelves, hammocks, clothes, chairs, curtains - and as an art form.

Henderson discovered macramé as part of the process of recovery from a violent assault.  She remarks “Macramé has become an increasingly large part of my life and is essential to my healing process. The act itself is meditative—simple yet consuming enough to achieve that ideal intersection psychologists call a “flow” state. I lose hours at a time tying knots, watching patterns emerge under my fingers as I bring beauty into the world. It gives me a sense of control, bringing order to a chaotic tangle of rope.”

Often blending macramé with weaving or crochet, Henderson works with found objects such as pinecones, feathers, and driftwood to add an organic dimension. She also works with antlers and old rusty drill bits or chains for a more industrial look, constantly surprising herself with the beauty found in old cast-off objects.

The exhibition will be on display during Library hours.  A percentage of sales will go to the Bozeman Public Library Foundation to ensure continuation of cultural programs at the Library for public benefit.  For more information about the exhibit, please call Sarah DeOpsomer at 582-2425 or email sarah@bozemanlibraryfoundation.org.

Montana State University is home to a wealth of information about fish in the state. Gathered by researchers over more than a century, the specimens, field notes and other data provide potentially valuable research information. But, with no information about the collections available online, or even in one physical location, the information hasn’t been widely accessible.

That will soon change, thanks to a grant of more than $300,000 from the Council on Library and Information Resources. The grant will fund “From the Mountains to the Prairies, From Trout to Dace: Revealing Climate and Population Impacts on Culture, Ecology, and Economy in Montana’s Fisheries.” The project, which will take about three years to complete, is a collaboration between the MSU Library, the MSU Department of Ecology, the Montana Entomology Collection and the Montana State Library.

“We are really excited to help others discover and use these specimens and data,” said Jason Clark, associate professor and head of Special Collections and Archival Informatics at MSU.

The funds will enable a multidisciplinary team to gather information about a variety of archival documents, field notes and prairie-fish and aquatic insect metadata that are available at MSU. Once digitized, the information will let scientists, historians, sociologists, economists and others study the cultural, ecological and economic impacts of human population growth and climate change on the biodiversity of Montana’s fisheries, Clark said.

The Council on Library and Information Resources awarded 17 grants for projects proposed to digitize “hidden” collections. The MSU team’s proposal included digitizing information about collections at the university dating back to 1911. Those include manuscripts on aquatic biodiversity and cultural heritage surrounding fisheries and fish conservation efforts in the American West; prairie fish specimens collected over the past century; and invertebrates that serve as food, pathogens and competitors for the fish. The archival papers of scientist Robert Behnke and anglers Bud Lilly, Datus Proper and Sylvester Nemes, from the library’s renowned Trout and Salmonid Collection, will be digitized as part of the effort.

The team will also develop related educational materials, said Justin Shanks, CLIR postdoctoral fellow at MSU Library. Those will include instructional materials for K-12 students, pedagogical workshops for educators and an interdisciplinary course for MSU students.

“Making these materials available to a wider community is an important part of this project,” Shanks said.

Once the project has been completed, the records will be available online via the MSU Library, as well as the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Montana Field Guide at the Montana State Library’s Natural Heritage Program, and the Symbiota, Fishnet2 and XBiod repositories, Clark said.

“By including this information in the Montana Natural Heritage Program’s database, it will be included in all state and federal environmental review processes and viewable to over 300,000 individuals that use the Montana Field Guide annually,” said Bryce Maxell, program coordinator with the Montana Natural Heritage Program.

Faculty and staff from MSU working on the project include Clark, Shanks, Department of Ecology head Diane Debinski, Special Collections librarian James Thull, associate professor Michael Ivie in the Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, affiliate professor Robert Bramblett in the Department of Ecology and museum collection specialist Sarah Rubin.

The team hopes that the data will be useful to researchers from a broad range of disciplines. 

Debinski noted that scholars could use the materials to study a range of topics, from biodiversity patterns to the culture of fishing and could be used in projects from history books to biological analyses to artwork.

“This information should be interesting to people in academia and beyond,” Debinski said.

A Montana State University researcher was included in a front-page New York Times story on Monday for using audio forensics to help the newspaper confirm the identity of a prominent Islamic State militant.
 
The story, published online with the title "The English Voice of ISIS Comes Out of the Shadows," explains how Rob Maher, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, contributed to The Times's investigation of the man who narrated some of the Islamic State's most notorious and gruesome propaganda videos.

The Times quotes Maher as saying that "the speech tone, pitch, cadence and pronunciation" of the narrator's voice matches audio recorded shortly after Mohammed Khalifa was captured in Syria last month by American-supported fighters.
 
According to the article, The Times turned to Maher and two other well-known audio-forensic experts to confirm that Khalifa, a 35-year-old Canadian citizen, was indeed the man who narrated videos for IS. Later, The Times reported, a U.S. official confirmed Khalifa's identity.
 
Maher uses sophisticated software and other tools to analyze recorded soundwaves and has published more than 20 papers on the subject. Most of his audio forensics research at MSU has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research and development wing of the U.S. Justice Department. He regularly receives calls from attorneys and investigators and has testified about audio evidence in courtrooms around the country. Maher recently authored a book, titled "Principles of Forensic Audio Analysis," intended chiefly for law enforcement officials and forensic investigators.

According to The Times report, "Terrorism experts say it is hard to overstate the role (Khalifa's) effortless English narration played in bringing the terrorist group’s propaganda to English speakers and luring some of them to its cause."
 

When Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services staff members wanted to advance their efforts to curb underage drinking, they knew that parents are the No. 1 influence on whether youth engage in risky behaviors. And they knew they wanted to bring in new expertise and fresh ideas.
 
"We wanted to make something that would really empower parents to work with their kids in a positive way," said Vicki Turner, director of DPHHS Prevention Resource Center.
 
That's when they teamed up with Montana State University researchers who specialize in tackling complex social problems. The result, announced by Gov. Steve Bullock on Jan. 23, is a one-of-a-kind suite of online resources that gives parents guidance not only about teenage alcohol use but also the day-to-day challenges that come with parenting children of all ages.

 Available at ParentingMontana.org, the tools include step-by-step tips for dealing effectively with a 5-year-old's meltdown, a 13-year-old's back talk and a 17-year-old's chore responsibilities, among other things. The guidance, categorized by age and topic, is grounded in the leading science on childhood development and parenting, according to Turner.

 
"We're already hearing from other states who are interested (in doing something similar)," Turner said.
 
MSU's Center for Health and Safety Culture developed the website as well as the associated videos and media campaign. What started for the center as a project focused on underage drinking grew into something more comprehensive after the center conducted a survey of Montana parents in 2017.
 
According to Center for Health and Safety Culture manager and research scientist Annmarie McMahill, the survey showed some things that wouldn't surprise most Montanans, including widespread support for reducing underage drinking. But the study also showed that many parents struggle with having the kind of daily social and emotional engagement with their child that contributes to dealing effectively with drinking and other risky behaviors.

 
"If parents can handle the day-to-day challenges in an effective way, then they have a solid platform when the bigger issues come along," McMahill said.
 
With that understanding, the project broadened, McMahill said. The center and DPHHS saw an opportunity to reduce underage drinking by getting at the root causes. Moreover, the parenting strategies would foster healthy social and emotional development in children, which has been shown to further reduce underage drinking, substance use and suicide, McMahill said.

 
"This makes Montana a leader in the nation," McMahill said, adding that she is not aware of any other resource like ParentingMontana.org.
 
Jay Otto, the principal scientist at the Center for Health and Safety Culture, and McMahill were the principal investigators for the project. Both attended the Jan. 23 news conference in Helena where Bullock announced the project.
 
The Center for Health and Safety Culture will continue to support the project over the next five years. Turner said she is interested to applying a similarly holistic approach to other outreach projects.
 
"It's been a wonderful partnership," she said.
 
The Center for Health and Safety Culture, housed in the Western Transportation Institute in MSU's Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering, serves communities and organizations in their efforts to cultivate healthy and safe behaviors and is dedicated to applying research to develop sustainable solutions to complex social problems.

Bozeman officials will reopen road closures that were in place all day Thursday and most of Friday. Roads will open by 5 PM on February 15, 2019. The closures, which were located along Babcock between 6th and 8th avenues and 7th avenue between Olive and Main, were put in place for the safety of emergency responders and Bozeman citizens during a fire of an under construction building known as SOBO Lofts.

The Bozeman Fire Department will continue to monitor the area but at this point there is no longer a need for an onsite presence. The area has been safely secured by a fence.

The Bozeman Fire and Police departments are continuing their investigation into the origin and cause of the fire however the property has been turned back over to the owner. Both Bozeman Fire and Police Departments will continue to collaborate and communicate with the owner and their insurance companies as the investigation moves forward.

There has been no determination as to the cause of the fire at this point.