The Bozeman Hot Springs opened their new three pools on March 19, 2016 to much fanfare. After a four to five year planning and construction project, that includes state of the art DMX controlled #LED lights, Two fire pits, a stage for Bands, elevated patio areas, and yet to be debuted are two amazing fire walls.

Montana State University has earned a No. 14 ranking among medium-sized schools on the Peace Corps’ 2016 top volunteer-producing colleges and universities list. There are currently 16 MSU students volunteering worldwide.

“The Peace Corps is a unique opportunity for college graduates to put their education into practice and become agents of change in communities around the world,” Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet said. “Today’s graduates understand the importance of intercultural understanding and are raising their hands in record numbers to take on the challenge of international service.”

The Peace Corps, established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, sends Americans abroad to help address the most pressing needs of people around the world, according to information available on its website. Volunteers work with community members at the grassroots level toward sustainable change that lives on long after their service.

Alumni from more than 3,000 colleges and universities nationwide have served in the Peace Corps since the agency’s founding, including 471 alumni from MSU. In 2015, Montana ranked No. 3 among states with the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers per capita, with 4.5 volunteers per 100,000 residents.

View the complete 2016 rankings of the top 25 schools in each undergraduate category here.  

For more information on MSU and the Peace Corps, see http://www.montana.edu/engagement/volunteer/PeaceCorps.html.

The 3rd annual Food Scene Restaurant Guide from Bozeman Magazine is in production now and is set to be released in late May 2016. Last years guide included over 340 Southwest Montana restaurants taken from the bozemanmagazine.com Food + Drink section. Restaurants are listed by category and location in this one of a kind inclusionary guide.

Restaurants and bars interested in advertising please contact Angie at 406-579-5657 or angie @ bozemanmagazine.com, creative deadline is May 1 - don't wait!

Those breakfast potatoes Montana State University students devour on campus, they’re made with potatoes from Whitehall and fried in safflower oil from Big Sandy. Those fancy coffee drinks -- brewed with beans roasted in Whitefish. The dough for Miller Dining Hall’s hand-thrown pizzas (up to 600 in a day), is made from Montana-sourced wheat.

“And as you can imagine, that’s a lot of dough,” said MSU Executive Chef Martin Lewis.

Though he may not have realized it, Lewis was speaking both literally and figuratively.

MSU spent just over $1 million on Montana-produced food products last fiscal year. This year the locally sourced food budget promises to meet or exceed that level, having already exceeded $873,000.

On campus, food is served in three dining halls, 11 retail operations including concessions and at various events by the university’s catering service. In his role as dining hall chef and MSU’s interim Montana-made coordinator, Lewis knows intimately how much of the college’s food is produced within the state -- about one-fifth, in fact.

MSU has been buying some Montana-made products for years -- Wilcoxson’s ice cream and Montana Coffee Traders coffee, for example. But in 2006, the university food services launched an initiative to source as much locally produced food as possible.

“But when we started, it was really hard to source local food,” said Mike Kosevich, general manager of MSU’s dining halls.

For one, many vendors just couldn’t keep up with MSU’s quantity needs. Many small producers, who typically sold their products directly to customers at farmers’ markets or through community-supported agricultural co-ops, weren’t schooled in invoicing, food delivery practices and required licensing.

So MSU staff, including a Montana-made coordinator, began to work individually with vendors to help them jump those hurdles, said Todd Jutila, director of University Food Services. The coordinator helps vendors plan for the university’s needs, making recommendations on what and how much to plant, how many cattle to raise based on MSU’s projected demand and how to raise food for large-scale operations.

“They’ve been our North Star through the whole growth process,” said Garl Germann, owner of Montana Meat Company, “from four years ago when we first pitched selling grass-fed beef to MSU to now.”

But MSU’s orders quickly depleted the McAllister ranch’s beef. So Germann began contacting other area ranchers who used similar cattle-raising practices. After recruiting several, Germann founded Montana Meat Company – a co-op of ranchers who rely on Germann  to process and sell their beef and other meats to a variety of venues from small restaurants and grocers to large-scale organizations like MSU.

MSU also helped arrange to have Germann’s ground beef transported to an existing vendor in Spokane on what would otherwise have been empty trucks. The vendor’s large-scale patty-making machine turned Germann’s beef into hamburger patties that met MSU’s specifications. Last semester, Montana Meat Company sold about 20,000 pounds of beef patties to MSU.

The result: Montana Meat Company grew at a rate that was “anything but normal,” Germann said. He went from being sole proprietor to having 10 employees, thanks, in part, to a recently awarded grant. But without MSU’s help, Montana Meat Company would not be making one-sixth of its revenue from university sales, Germann said.

As MSU’s first dining hall executive chef, Lewis is a driving force behind much of MSU’s drive to use locally sourced food.

The offerings of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables on campus has increased due to the creation of Root Cellar Foods, a Belgrade-based produce distributor that works with several local growers. Before Root Cellar Foods was established, Lewis could choose to buy fresh produce shipped from California or locally grown produce that was frozen or unprocessed. Now he gets the best of both worlds. MSU will likely purchase 20 times more produce from local growers this year than it did last, he added.

Lewis says knowing his vendors personally enables him to develop specific products to fit his recipes, allowing him to be more creative.

“I go out and source products and have relationships with the producers,” he said. “I can’t have a relationship with a large, national vendor and say, ‘I like your chicken breast, but can you customize it to fit my needs?’ It fits the goal of creating better quality food for the customers and it’s a process where everyone wins. The product is better in the end.”

Kristin Blackler, director of the MSU Office of Sustainability, said it makes sense for the university to support local producers, particularly because MSU is home to the College of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the sustainable food and bioenergy systems program and a host of entrepreneurship programs.

“I am proud of the commitment MSU has made to offer more local food in our dining halls,” she said. “It’s exciting to watch the program grow and improve each year.”

Blackler is coordinating MSU’s efforts for the Governor’s Food and Agriculture Summit, set for Friday, Oct. 28, and Saturday, Oct. 29, in MSU’s SUB Ballrooms. The summit will explore the complexity of Montana’s agricultural and food system and develop a roadmap for growing that sector’s economy by creating statewide platforms for networking and mentoring, among other things. For more information, contact Blackler at Kristin.blackler@montana.edu or at 994-6825.

Today’s emerging drug trends in Gallatin County require strong community partnerships to prevent and reduce substance abuse.

Underage drinking continues to be a serious public health concern and remains the number one drug of abuse for Gallatin County youth.  In fact, in 2014, results from the Montana Prevention Needs Assessment Survey of 1,107 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 revealed that 9.9 percent of 8th graders, 31.9 percent of 10th graders, and 52.3percent of 12th graders had used alcohol within the past 30 days.

Recently, those of us involved in preventing substance abuse are seeing an increase in opioid and prescription drug abuse, an influx of overdoses due to synthetic drugs, an increase in recreational marijuana use by youth, an alarming use of electronic cigarette use by youth, and methamphetamine making its way back into our community.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has identified 12 Stakeholder Groups that are vital to any community-level prevention effort.  These include:
1.    Youth
2.    Parents
3.    Businesses
4.    Media
5.    Schools
6.    Youth-serving organizations
7.    Law enforcement
8.    Religious or fraternal organizations
9.    Civic or volunteer groups
10.    Healthcare professionals
11.    State, local, governmental agencies with expertise in substance misuse
12.    Other organizations involved in reducing substance misuse

Effective prevention activities in Gallatin County will require stakeholder groups to focus on reducing risk factors, and strengthening protective factors.  
Risk factors are characteristics of school, community and family environments, and of students and their peer groups:
•    Chaotic home environment
•    Ineffective parenting
•    Little mutual attachment and nurturing
•    Inappropriate, shy, or aggressive classroom behavior
•    Academic failure
•    Low academic aspirations
•    Affiliations with deviant peers
•    Perceived external approval of drug use (peer, family, community)
•    Parental substance abuse or mental illness

Protective factors exert a positive influence and buffer against the negative influence of risk, thus reducing the likelihood that adolescents will engage in problem behaviors.  Protective factors identified through research include:
•    Strong family bonds
•    Parental engagement in child’s life
•    Clear parental expectations and consequences
•    Academic success
•    Strong bonds with pro-social institutions (school, community, church)
•    Conventional norms about drugs and school

The Risk and Protective Factor of Model Prevention is a proven way of reducing substance abuse and its related consequences.  This model is based on the simple premise that to prevent a problem from happening, we need to identify the factors that increase the risk of that problem developing and then find ways to reduce the risks.

The abuse of drugs is not a harmless personal decision: there are real, long-lasting, and devastating outcomes for those who abuse drugs and for their families, friends, and communities.

We encourage all Gallatin County Stakeholder Groups to become 21st Century Partners in Prevention and reach out to new partners in a community-level prevention effort.

Written by Rick Gale & Gary Larson, Community-Coalition On Drug Awareness.

Paul Collins Beat and Dany Laj & The Looks will tour together all across Canada and the USA!

In the true spirit of DIY touring Dany Laj and Paul Collins have teamed up to bring their brand of rocking power pop to the masses! In what has now become a way of life the tour will involve up and coming bands on every stop. “We love to support all the new bands that are popping up everywhere!” says Paul Collins. As in most of the tours The Beat is involved in, they start as simple ideas, “Hey you want to do a tour?” “Hell Yeah!”  That was Jeanette Dowling, bassist for Dany Laj & The Looks response to Paul when he suggested their two bands join forces for this massive tour that begins in Toronto March 30 and ends in Brooklyn April 30, and hitting Bozeman April 20 at the Filling Station.

One added feature to the US dates will be the “Record Fair/Happy Hour with DJ concept that Paul has been pioneering now since last year. As Paul tells it, “This has been the single best idea to get the shows to be more fun and bring people out earlier so the opener can play to a crowd!” Cool local record shops are invited to come down and bring their selection of cool vintage rock LP’s to start the night off with a celebration of rock n roll records. Add in a happy hour and a DJ and you have an awesome rock n roll cocktail of fun!

So what can you do? There is no one pulling the strings here, we have no corporate sponsors we do it all ourselves, all we ask of you is to let your listeners or readers know about this event, the ticket prices are small but the fun is big, everyone is a winner here.

Help A Place to Stand get to the audiences it was created for: to educate, inspire and change lives.

Our mission is simple: to impact as many lives with our film as possible. 

We always knew that the early life of Jimmy Santiago Baca -- how his unlikely discovery of poetry while incarcerated in one of the worst US prisons transformed him from an illiterate, violent convict to a beloved, world-renowned writer -- was inspirational. Our feature-length documentary "A Place to Stand" has been called "a compelling look at the power of language" (Pasatiempo). Academy Award-winning Director Taylor Hackford ("Ray", "The Devil's Advocate") said it "presents Jimmy's story in the best way: by letting this great poet tell his own tale - and no one can tell a tale like Jimmy Santiago Baca." 

Our film has been seen by thousands in film festival screenings around the U.S., but our goal has always been more: to bring the film to schools, prisons, juvenile detention facilities and communities where this story can make the biggest impact. Jimmy's memoir remains very popular in prisons and in Los Angeles, it's the most stolen book from the Street Poets library. This is only part of what proves the hunger and need for this story. 

With your support, we will make the film and companion curriculum available for low-income communities and educational facilities nationwide. We know this film, Jimmy's story, can change lives. That's why we're fundraising. 

From the beginning, we wanted to do more than just produce and distribute our film -- we wanted to bring it to viewers on whom it could have a deep impact. So we designed curriculum and a student workbook. The idea is that the film can better reach its crucial audience -- teenagers, at-risk youth, and incarcerated individuals -- with a focused conversation surrounding its themes.

"Finding A Place to Stand", the film's curriculum, includes group discussions, activities, poetry prompts, and free-writes, and is centered on the concepts of individual power and strength. It has been piloted in nearly a dozen schools and has received much positive feedback from the teachers -- and the students! -- who have used it thus far.

You can view excerpts of the curriculum here: Finding A Place to Stand Curriculum Sample

In this world of increasing negativity, we need stories like Jimmy's, more than ever, to serve as a counterbalance, to communicate that there is always hope and always possibility for positive change. Jimmy is a powerful role model for populations without many role models: incarcerated individuals, adolescents on the edge, and others impoverished and neglected by society. 

We know that we have something special on our hands, but without your support, the film won’t go very far. We don’t have a big distributor or a studio behind us. We don’t have big money. All we have is sweat and determination and passion. That’s why we’re crowdfunding - we need support to fund our grassroots distribution campaign. 

This project has been a people-powered effort from the very beginning and we want to continue that tradition until we achieve our goals. Without over a thousand people contributing from $1 to $20,000, we would have never completed the film. Because of that, we aren't beholden to investors or other interests - we can devote all of our resources into the communities we're aiming to serve. 

Our Story

Director Daniel Glick with Producer Gabriel Baca and Director of Photography Michael Gordon shooting "A Place to Stand".
In 2010, a 26-year-old Daniel Glick visited a friend's friend at Auburn Penitentiary. He was deeply struck by the intensity of the place and started cross-examining Tommy, who had been in prison for 15 years at that point, about life behind bars. The friend recommended Jimmy Santiago Baca’s memoir A Place to Stand. Daniel bought it, read it, and instantly knew he had to make a film about Jimmy’s experience.

Daniel moved to New Mexico in 2011, teamed up with Gabriel Baca (Jimmy's son) to form Catamount Films, and spent the next several years creating the film version of "A Place to Stand". Their intention was not only to shed light on the difficult experience of incarceration but -- most importantly -- to spread the message that it is possible to overcome even the most difficult circumstances.

Make your donation here:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-place-to-stand-s-educational-campaign#/

The annual Sweet Pea Poster Contest is now OPEN! Do you want a chance for your creation to be our 2016 poster and to win $1000? Sweet Pea Festival 2016 is sponsoring its annual poster contest and a $1,000 prize for this year's Festival poster winner. All ages and levels of expertise are encouraged to enter. Hand delivered entries will be accepted at the Sweet Pea Office, 424 E. Main St., Suite 203B, Bozeman, MT (the Jacobs Crossing Building, 2nd Floor) during operating hours (Please call 586-4003 for weekly schedule) AND: Between 12PM and 7PM Thursday, April 28th Between 12PM and 5PM on Friday April 29th (DEADLINE!) Mailed entries should be sent to 424 E. Main St., Suite 203B Bozeman, MT 59715 and must  arrive by Thursday, April 28th, 2016.

All entries must be submitted with an entry form, found by clicking here.

Artist Nic Fischer will display original paintings, both oil and watercolor, addressing the expanse and grandeur of both the landscape and the mind, in the Atrium Gallery at the Bozeman Public Library.  The paintings will be up March 1st through April 30, 2016, and the Bozeman Public Library Foundation, sponsors of the exhibit, will host an artist’s reception with refreshments on Friday, March 11, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m., free and open to the public.

Fischer loves to paint, for him it is a form of meditation and a way to better understand his place on earth.  He conveys the simultaneous feeling of insignificance and infinite potential through his art.  “I moved to Bozeman for the landscape. Reaching a nearly infinite vantage point leaves me humbled and euphoric.  For some, this place is the ocean, for me it is a mountaintop.  Landscapes define people, and I am defined by the mountainous terrain of the Greater Yellowstone region,” says Fischer.

The 30 year old artist, now living in Bozeman, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and moved west the week after he graduated high school.  He studied art at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia, majoring in illustration and painting.  He met his wife, Alison, while working at Lake Yellowstone Hotel between 2003 and 2005.  He has also worked in Death Valley and the Grand Canyon, all places that contribute to his love of expansive landscape.

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 or opening reception, please call Sarah DeOpsomer at 582-2425 or email programs@bozemanlibraryfoundation.org.