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The Parade of Lights – Great Falls

Come light up the season and the Electric City Christmas Tree at the 27th Annual Parade of Lights in Downtown Great Falls on Saturday, Nov 27th at 6pm.

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To register a float contact kellie@downtowngreatfalls.net

This year’s theme is “All is Merry and Bright”

According to the National Weather Service in Great Falls, our winds will be making a return on Saturday evening, so dress accordingly

Great Falls Tribune – The end of an era

The Great Falls Tribune originated in 1885 as a weekly newspaper and is was the oldest business in Great Falls.

Great Falls no longer has a local newspaper.

According to the Fairfield Sun Times in May of 2020, The Great Falls Tribune will pull the plug on their print facility.

The very last edition of our local paper rolled off the presses on Sunday, July 12, 2020.

The Great Falls Tribune lived in Great Falls for 133 years. Now it lives in Helena and is printed by the Helena Independent Record, which is ironically, owned by Lee Enterprises.

Back in the day, instead of being proactive when the digital age came along, the paper continued it’s print model, somehow expecting it’s readership to increase.
Instead of selling out to a corporate profit driven behemoth like Gannet, The Tribune could have scaled down the size of their press that would be better suited to the local population and market, and then developed their own IT Dept exclusively for online content.

Currently, the profits gained from the Tribune by Gannet doesn’t stay in the local community, or even the state. They instead go to back east shareholders.

According to this piece from the Missoula Current, all was not well at the Tribune.

“Now it appears that similar things are happening at the Great Falls Tribune. T.J. Gilles, a former writer for the Tribune and a contributor to the old Billings Outpost and to Last Best News, sent along a link to a Facebook group discussing what’s going on at the Trib.

Commenters aired familiar complaints. They said their rates were going up, they were getting less news, and prices varied in wildly unpredictable ways. One canceled when the monthly rate jumped to $47 a month, then found that a friend was paying $22 – but getting billed for $27.

One woman’s rate jumped from $32 to $51 a month, supposedly because she was on a route with few customers. Another dropped a subscription after the price went to $44 a month, while others were paying only $36.

One woman with a bargain rate said, “When my paper tries to raise the rate, I call to cancel and they bargain over the rate to keep me. I’m still paying the rate from before three rate increases.”

As it is now, and probably for the sake of money, Gannet is selling the Great Falls Tribune building here in Great Falls (shareholders get a pay day), and never minding that Gannett stock is on the losing end of 5.15 -0.15 -2.83%.

Short of a few words printed on a piece of paper, The Great Falls Tribune will no longer have a direct physical presence in the state.

We see this sort of thing all the time, especially over the past 20 years. Independent news or media companies being gobbled up by shareholder interests mostly from out-of-state who seem to think they know more about us than we know about ourselves.

Companies that stuff nearly everything they own into a tiny little building because, OMG, money.

 

 

Park and Ponder Coffeehouse

You really never know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

With that in mind, I’m thinking of the Park and Ponder Coffee House that used to exist at Gibson park here in Great Falls.

The Park and Ponder, though small, was one of the things that made Great Falls great.
Sometimes less is more. Some folks here in town are so worried about making Great Falls great, that they’re letting the things that actually did make Great Falls great slip right through their fingers.

The food at the Park and Ponder was actually better than the cardboard flavored stuff you might get up on 10th Ave South — It had a calm cozy atmosphere and the staff were always helpful and friendly.

In the description on Travelmt.com it says, “The Park and Ponder Coffeehouse allows our guests to enjoy nature in the heart of the city. Customers can sit outside on the deck while the children play on the nearby swings and slides. Full breakfasts and lunches are served seven days a week . Wednesday evening we serve dinners while the Municipal Band plays in the band shell”.

It goes on to say, “The Park and Ponder Coffeehouse etc. is located in Paris Gibson Park. A large pond, home of ducks, geese and swans, is situated in front of the coffeehouse and provides a pleasant relaxing view for our diners. This beautiful city park is the pride of Great Falls and a must see park.”

The listing is still posted on the site, so I would suppose that some tourist is going to be doing less pondering and more wondering about just where in Gibson park the Park and Ponder Coffeehouse is located when they get here.

The video below is from early spring 2008 at the Park and Ponder when Dustin was only 2 years old

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Elk herd on the move

HUGE herd of elk in West Loveland, Colorado.

Listen close, you can hear the cows talking to the bulls!

#ThanksgivingTravel

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How negativity rewires your brain

Donald Hebb, a neuropsychologist, believed that neurons which fire together, wire together. What he meant by that is that groups of neurons connect in our brain as a result of particular life experiences.

For instance, whenever we think a thought or have a feeling or physical sensation, thousands of neurons are triggered and they all get together to form a neural network. The brain learns to trigger the same neurons with repetitive thinking.

Basically, if you keep your mind focused on criticism, worry, and victimization, your mind will find it easier to bring up those same thoughts for similar situations. Our thought patterns wire our brains to react positively or negatively to the situations we are presented. We get good at what we practice, so why don’t we try being a little more positive?

Dr. Robin Kowalski professor of psychology at Clemson University explains that everyone complains, at some point, at least a little.

There are a few varieties when it comes to complainers:

Those who vent:  This is a very displeased person who doesn’t want to hear solutions, no matter how helpful they may be.

Sympathy Seekers: You know the type. The ones always fishing for attention with their “I’ve got it worse than you do” attitude or their constant and everything sucks demeanor.

Chronic Complainers: those living in a state of complaint, do something researchers call “ruminating.” This basically means thinking and complaining about a problem again and again. Instead of feeling a release after complaining, this sort of complaining can actually make things worse. It can cause even more worry and anxiety.

Bouts of negativity are normal and encouraged to reset our systems. What you want to be mindful of however, is if you are being excessively negative. Why you ask? Because negativity breeds negativity.

Most of us may have been unintentionally reinforcing the nasty habit of complaining, by virtue of … complaining.

Everything around us can influence us and can sometimes even create a lasting impact on our brains. We can increase our IQ, learn new skills, recover from brain damage, gain emotional intelligence, and even unlearn certain harmful habits, behaviors, and beliefs.

While our brains can substantially benefit from positive influences, it can also be damaged by negative factors and can change for the worse.

According to some studies, constant complaining can negatively affect your brain and can initiate more severe problems like anxiety and depression.

Alex Corb, Ph.D., author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time.

“In depression, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the brain. It’s simply that the particular tuning of neural circuits creates the tendency toward a pattern of depression. It has to do with the way the brain deals with stress, planning, habits, decision making and a dozen other things — the dynamic interaction of all those circuits. And once a pattern starts to form, it causes dozens of tiny changes throughout the brain that create a downward spiral.”

Negative people, more often than not, are serial complainers. They have a habit of projecting their negativity onto people, things around them, and are usually fairly vocal about their unfavorable thoughts.

While all of us have a tendency to complain when we get into a tough situation, there are some serial complainers who manage to find something negative in just about anything.

While some people are inherently spiteful, most don’t really like being in this constant state of complaint. Every time they do, they lose a positive part of themselves and soon they are so overcome by negativity that they almost know no other state of being.

The resulting long-term effects of this are usually grave mental disorders like depression and anxiety. Their behavior slowly declines and there’s not a whole lot they can do about it.

While remaining positive all the time is much easier said than done, we should try to curb our complaints for only the most severe situations. Perennially negative thoughts are often the foundation of more serious mental conditions and brain disorders and taking preventive measures is better than looking for cures later on.

So remember. Life is too short to turn to the dark (negative) side. When you feel yourself being overcome with adverse thoughts try reading something, watching a comedy, or talking to a close friend.