November 28, 2023
Greetings Everyone,
Let the Holidays begin!! Actually, the Holidays began with the 'Parade of Lights' last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Organized by the downtown merchants this year, it was another grand event on Helena’s walking mall; capped off nicely with the annual lighting of the historic Fire Tower. There are celebrations, events, and gatherings of every kind all over town the next few weeks. Santa Claus is coming to town, and he’ll be making visits at any number of locations the next few weeks. I’m sure we’ll be invited to many of these events this week at Hometown by the various sponsors and organizations. We’ll have time to talk about all the Holiday doin's that will be going on this month Thursday morning at Hometown Helena. Sure hope you can join us, in person or via the zoom!
Our guests this week will be Craig Aasved and the leadership team from Shodair Children’s Hospital. We were privileged at Hometown to get to see the new hospital twice during its construction, courtesy off Craig and the team. It will be great to hear from them how things are going now that patients are being accepted and treated in the new facility. There is nothing easy or simple about providing these types of services to children in Montana. It’s a complex area, to say the least. The most remarkable thing about Shodair, in my humble, is that nearly all of the patients are children from Montana. This is due largely to the expansion of Medicaid a few years ago. Shodair could probably go full private pay, and be accepting children in need of their services from grateful families all over the country. But Shodair’s long-standing commitment has always been to Montana and Montana’s children. It will be great to hear from Craig and the Shodair team this week.
In other news, Emily McVey has the envelope for John Leaf’s Christmas present, and she will quietly and discreetly circulate this week and next. We’re planning to give John his gift at Hometown Helena on December 14th. As you know, John volunteers his time every week at Hometown Helena. We simply could not do it without him. If you can, please bring a modest contribution this week or next for John’s Christmas gift from the folks at Hometown Helena. Many thanks in advance.
Meanwhile, I’m off to pay our property taxes this morning. I gather the beat goes on…with a court decision on the 95 vs the 77.9 mills, and the poll of the legislators on a special session about to be conducted. At the very least, I understand my property taxes much better than I did a year ago thanks in no small part to our good discussions of the topic at Hometown Helena.
Looking forward to seeing you Thursday morning, either in person join the 6th floor of the Montana Club, or via the miracle of zoom courtesy of Aja Rail and the good folks at Pinion Global, Inc.
Jim Smith
406-949-1002
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