Photo courtesy of Jim Petersen
	Jim Petersen, of Livingston, protests for Tibetan human rights along with about 3,000 Tibetans in Dehli, India, in April. “Victory for Tibet” is written on Petersen’s face in Tibetan script. For more, see the story below.

Following are the week's top stories. This digest is updated once a week, by early Friday evening.

Published 8.12.2008

Local resident puts heart, soul into Tibetan cause
By Mark A. York, Enterprise Staff Writer

Livingston resident Jim Petersen is a Tibetan at heart. His Tibetan name is Tenzin Tenkyong, which means supporter and spreader of the Dharma.

So it was a difficult thing for Petersen when, just recently, the Indian government ordered him to leave India, where he and 24 other Westerners were marching with 300 Tibetan refugees to protest the loss of their homeland.

“We marched with them for nearly 700 miles from March until May 23rd, when the Indian government issued a ‘Quit India’ order,” Petersen said during a recent interview at his Callender Street apartment. “It’s totally bogus, but we were told we’d better obey.”

“It was a Gandhian nonviolent march,” he said. “They just want to go home. We’d march along the road toward the border of Nepal, India and Tibet. Eat, pray, sleep, and do it again the next day.”

Petersen, a devout Buddhist, had no intention of joining a protest march.

“I just wanted to immerse myself in the culture,” he said.

Into the Himalayas

Last spring he took his life savings and flew to Delhi, India, with his sights set on Dharamshala, a village in the Himachal Pradesh state in northwest India in the Himalayan foothills, the home in exile of the Dalai Lama.

“I took cooking lessons the first week,” he said. “I hoped to teach English.”

“I was surprised coming from Montana to learn the upper village was called McLeod Ganj,” he said. “I came all that way to be in McLeod. But that is where his Holiness the Dalai Lama is.”

Petersen said many go there for that reason, and stay for a few days, taking some pictures with the Tibetans as if going to some sort of tourist attraction, but he wanted to stay longer. He began to hear the stories from the Tibetan community about fleeing from Chinese-controlled Tibet, which had absorbed the vast region north of the Himalayan Mountains in 1959.

“They’re refugees there,” he said. “They have to register with the Indian government every year. They can’t own land or property. Only those born in that state can. They are not citizens. They can’t travel freely in India.

“I heard of the march in protest and asked to join.”

When a Tibetan marcher asked Petersen why he wanted to subject himself to a 700-mile walk as an American, he told him, “I want to honor Tibet and support your cause.”

Petersen, 55, said, “I grew up watching African-Americans struggle for independence, but didn’t participate.”

March to Tibet

The march was organized to coincide with the start of the Beijing Olympics. Five nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) comprised the effort: Students For Free Tibet; Tibetan Youth Congress; Tibetan Women’s Association; the National Democratic Party of Tibet; and a group of ex-political prisoners in Chinese jails called the Gu-Chu-Sum.

The journey began on on March 10, the anniversary of the takeover in the capital city of Lhasa, Tibet, by the Chinese army in 1959, Petersen said.

“Three days into the march on the 13th, at dawn,” he said, “the Indian Police, who had been following us the whole way, arrested 102 Tibetans and eight Westerners. Three went to a jail cell. I was one.”

The police carried Petersen off, put him into a bus and took him to a detention center in Jawaligi.

“They held us for an hour and released the rest at 7 that night — me, a guy from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and one from Montreal, Canada,” he said.

Not so for the Tibetans, who were sentenced to 14 days, he said. “The press reported the march had been halted, but it hadn’t. I went back to Dharamshala.”

But Petersen isn’t the type to give up. He rejoined the march and continued on.

“We were still being watched by undercover Indian Police,” he said. “Then, on the 23rd of June, a local official approached us and handed me a ‘Quit India’ notice. We Westerners didn’t know what it was, so I asked around and was told it was ‘more serious than deportation — you better do what it says.’”

Petersen resigned himself to leave prematurely. On the last day of the march, they had a meeting. All the Tibetans thanked him and bestowed him with some 300 traditional scarves. He has them in a bundle in his Livingston apartment along with other memorabilia.

In addition to his formal Tibetan name, Tenzin Tenkyong, Petersen’s fellow marchers also bequeathed him with the name Inj Pala, an honorific term. In response, he bowed and said, “I will always work for you, pray for your strength. I will always struggle with you.”

Then he reluctantly returned to Montana.

Back in Livingston

“The (Indian government) notice wasn’t official,” Petersen said. “There was no official stamp on it. They just wanted to remove Western eyes.”

Petersen leaned back in his chair gathering his thoughts.

“They’re waiting for the death of the Dalai Lama,” he said of the Chinese government. “Then the culture will gradually die out. Thousands of Han Chinese migrate to Tibet every year, replacing native Tibetans. The Chinese take everything.”

Petersen rubbed his shaved head.

“China is the fiercest government on Earth,” he said. “And I rank the U.S. up there, too. I love America, if not some of the things we’ve done to countries in the world. We have a Constitution that I’m proud of. It’s a good model for the world.”

Petersen is doing construction work on a remodeling project in town and plans to use the money to return to India. He recently held a one-man protest for Tibetan independence in front of the Livingston Post Office.

“I’d like to teach English to the Tibetan community,” he said. “I want to live with my friends and support their cause. This is my dream.”

New Ninth Street Island bridge will be pricey
By Mark A. York, Enterprise Staff Writer

It could cost up to $5 million to replace the Ninth Street Island bridge, Park County Commission Chairman Larry Lahren said Friday morning.

Lahren made the comments before a meeting at the City-County Complex to gather comments on an ordinance governing the use of the temporary Bailey truss bridge now being used to reach Ninth Street Island.

Lahren said a permanent Ninth Street Island bridge is at least two years down the road.

“We’ll need a $35,000 feasibility study first,” he said.

“The temporary emergency ordinance governing use of the Bailey Bridge will expire October 1, and is good for no more than 90 days,” said Park County Attorney Brett Linnweber before the meeting.

“The emergency ordinance went into effect July 2,” he said, following the erection of the truss bridge after a pylon failed on the Ninth Street Island bridge June 19.

“The new ordinance will take effect 30 days after the second reading, so it will go into effect at the end of September, just as the temporary one expires,” Linnweber said.

Linnweber said the ordinance pertained only to the Bailey Bridge and had no impact concerning any future bridge.

“The permanent ordinance is identical to the emergency ordinance,” Linnweber said at the Friday morning meeting. “That one included public comments.”

Under both the emergency ordinance and the proposed permanent ordinance, use of the bridge is restricted.

“The county encourages public input, attendance at the meetings and can suggest changes and offer any comment,” Linnweber said. “The county’s goal is to have most comments possible in order to make the best decision.”

The commissioners seek additional public comment on the permanent ordinance for the use of the Bailey Bridge to Ninth Street Island.

The next hearing is set for Aug. 28 at 8:30 a.m.

	Slippery swine
	Emily Fochs, 13, of Livingston, grabs a pig during the youth division of pig wrestling at the Park County Fair, Saturday, Aug. 9. Enterprise photo by Angela Schneider

Livingston set to select new fire chief
By Mark A. York, Enterprise Staff Writer

Livingston City Manager Ed Meece has found a candidate, Alan Davis, for the new Livingston fire chief to replace outgoing Chief Jim Mastin.

“I am excited about the professional expertise and personal leadership abilities that Mr. Davis will bring to Livingston Fire and Rescue,” Meece said in a statement. “We conducted a very thorough search process, and he rose to the top of an excellent pool of applicants.”

Davis is a 30-year veteran of the Columbus, Ga., Fire and EMS Department, currently serving as battalion chief. He has a master’s degree in public administration from Columbus State University and a bachelor of science degree in Resource Management from Troy State University.

Meece will ask the City Commission to approve Davis at the Commission’s regularly scheduled meeting Monday evening.

If approved, Davis will take over Livingston Fire and Rescue on Oct. 1.

Two from Livingston’s medical community take health care around the world
By Amy Learn, Enterprise Staff Writer

Livingston Memorial Hospital emergency doctor and a Park Clinic physician assistant put their lives on hold while they traveled to remote areas around the world to offer medical assistance.

Park Clinic physician assistant Julie Anderson recently returned from one of her trips to Alaska. She journeys to Alaska three times a year, and to Ecuador twice a year to practice medicine among villagers.

Stephen Halvorson, an emergency doctor at the Livingston Memorial Hospital, spent three months in the rugged conditions of Nepal.

Anderson’s journeys to Alaskan villages are funded by Norton Sound Health of Nome, Alaska.

“When I’m there, I take care of people from birth to death — the whole circle of life,” Anderson said.

She spent her time in Alaska treating acute illness, offering health awareness and prevention information, and training health aids that are part of a health program designed to educate locals on how to take care of one another.

“(In the villages), there is not so much malnutrition, but there is a tremendous amount of alcoholism,” Anderson said.

Anderson said Alaska, especially in the winter time, can be a tough place to be — dry, cold, windy tundra land.

“The conditions aren’t fun, but it is so rewarding,” she said.

When Anderson isn’t traveling north, she is usually migrating south to Ecuador.

Her Ecuador trips are quite different from her Alaska forays. She funds her own way and works in small mountain villages.

Illnesses dealing with malnutrition, and muscular, skeletal and stomach problems are present among the locals, whereas alcoholism is not present, she said.

“It is completely rewarding — it gives one perspective on what we really have access to, and what we can do without,” she said of her work.

Just as Anderson discovered on her many medical journeys, Halvorson discovered on his trip to Nepal how it feels to be in a remote area, with very little access to medical technology and having to work under rugged conditions.

Halvorson left last September and traveled 20 hours, then walked six days until he reached Pherich Village in Nepal.

At an altitude of 14,400 feet, the clinic where Halvorson worked primarily treated locals and trekkers.

Many of the trekkers came down with altitude illnesses, such as high-altitude pulmonary edema or high-altitude cerebral edema, two medical problems that can be fatal.

He also treated many people from around the world who had acute mountain sickness.

Symptoms of these illnesses include headaches, upset stomach and fatigue. Halvorson treated them with oxygen and various medications, and if needed, he would arrange for them to be evacuated from the village.

“People need to be aware of the symptoms — not ignore them and keep trekking higher,” he said.

The clinic where Halvorson lived and worked was an unheated stone building in the Himalayan Mountains. The locals would come from all around to see the medical staff for a variety of medical issues.

“It’s not uncommon for a woman to walk a mile and a half to receive prenatal care,” Halvorson said.

Electricity for the clinic was powered by solar panels and a windmill. There was a small pharmacy to which travelers from around the world would donate their leftover medications.

“It was fun to figure out what was what, with all the different languages,” Halvorson said.

There was no lab work and no extras in terms of medicine in the clinic. The medical staff had to rely on their “clinical judgment” and use “pure medicine,” Halvorson said.

While neither Halvorson nor Anderson increased their personal wealth practicing remote medicine, they were rewarded with the appreciation of those they treated, they both said.

“It’s a lot more challenging, but it’s so rewarding,” Halvorson said.

Developer produces road permit
By Mark A. York, Enterprise Staff Writer

Disputing a statement made Friday by Park County Commissioner Larry Lahren, the contractor for the Tom Gould LLC development on Eldridge Creek Trail produced a county road permit Tuesday for improving an access road to a Cokedale area development.

Lahren had earlier said the developer had never filed for a permit to improve 1.2 miles of county road for access to the development.

Two other access roads the developers, Gould and Allen Carter, had Mike Adkins — a longtime road builder in Park County — build, aren’t wide enough for legal access. So they began improving the county road to fulfill access requirements.

Adkins produced the permit and approach permits for the two access roads during an interview Tuesday.

Preliminary approval for the county road permit was submitted and signed by Park County Road Supervisor Ed Hillman on June 6, 2007. However, the section for final inspection was never approved or completed because, according to Adkins, Lahren ordered them off the project.

“I approved the preliminary permit and wanted inspection of the subgrade and again for the surface before final approval,” Hillman said Wednesday morning. “The commissioners had me rescind the permit, saying they didn’t know if it was a county road or not.

“I knew it was. This thing is a real mess.”

Lahren had previously said the county commissioners had not rescinded the permit.

“(They) needed the upper road (a third road the developers cut) because neither the approach roads or the Cokedale-Eldridge Creek Trail county road meets the 60-foot right of way requirements for a subdivision,” Adkins said. “You need a 24-foot-wide road for access to a subdivision, and the county road is 14 to 16. That’s not up to county standards. Many county roads aren’t.

“That’s why we were improving the county road,” he said. “The county would have gotten 1.2 miles of free upgrade. I would have widened the road, protected the creek with screening materials and dug a drainage ditch on the uphill side done to code.”

As a result of building the upper road, rocks are falling onto the county road and into the creek onto Carter Boehm’s land.

In an e-mail that included a complete summary of the project, Park County Planner Mike Inman said, “The Gould development was issued four road approach permits by the Park County Road Department — these had to be built to county standards, which is 24 feet. The remainder of the internal roads did not have to be built to County standards due to the condominium loop hole and a district court decision.”

A separate issue is a ditch/berm, which was cut by Carter and Ken Thompson on their own, Adkins said. This ditch cuts into the county right of way and Boehm’s land.

Adkins said he was pulled off the development’s upper road project by Gould and Carter, who finished the road themselves.

In logs for the Park County Sheriff’s Office, a complaint was made Sunday evening accusing Lahren of making threatening statements at a Friday meeting in Cokedale about the road.

The complaint was filed by someone residing at 83 Chicory Road in Pray.

According to the phone book, this is the residence of Mike Adkins.

In a Tuesday interview, Adkins asserted that Lahren “came at him” at the road site meeting.

Hillman, who was at the meeting, said he told the Sheriff’s Office what he saw take place. His statement wasn’t made public.

“(Adkins) started mumbling something,” Lahren said, “and I couldn’t hear what he was saying, so I walked over to be closer so I could hear. This individual has been continually harassing the county commissioners over equipment leases. I told him it was with the county attorney now.”

“There was no recension of the permit by the county commissioners,” Lahren said. “That is hearsay by the road foreman. There is no documentation of rescinding that permit by our office.”

BLM hears comments on resource plan
By Mark A. York, Enterprise Staff Writer and Al Knauber, Yellowstone Newspapers

The development of resource management plans are in the works for the Billings area of the Bureau of Land Management, which includes Park, Sweet Grass and six other counties.

The future direction for about 427,200 acres of federal property and 906,000 acres of subsurface minerals will be affected by the plan, which was last revised in 1984, said BLM officials at Wednesday night’s meeting in the community room of the Carnegie Public Library in Big Timber.

Kim Prill, team leader for the resource management project with the BLM, explained to the roughly dozen people who attended — about the same number as federal land managers who were at the presentation — it will take until spring of 2010 to collect comments and prepare a preliminary assessment of the environmental impacts from options for possible land uses.

“This is the over-arching land use plan that will dictate where oil and gas development will occur and how,” said Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited in an e-mail to local chapters and concerned citizens. “It will cover BLM land, as well as minerals that BLM controls under private lands, and it will help dictate how much will occur on surrounding private and state lands.”

A proposed oil and gas lease sale by the Montana Department of Natural Resources includes the riverbed of the lower Boulder River upstream from Big Timber as well as locations on the Yellowstone River east of Livingston near Sheep Mountain and on the lower Shields River.

At the Wednesday night meeting in Big Timber, Kerry Fee, president of the Joe Brooks Chapter of Trout Unlimited, who is from Livingston, said he is concerned about the potential for oil and gas leases that include streambeds.

“I think (gas leases) could be much more of an impact on our watershed,” he said. “I think they’re trying to get this done before the Bush administration leaves office.

“This worries us a lot more than (state) DNRC,” Fee said.

“Our main goal is can we just make this process more public,” said Sharon Fee, Kerry Fee’s wife and TU member, at the meeting.

“Another goal of ours is for BLM to be able to work with state and federal government agencies and conservation groups,” Kerry Fee said.

“One thing I was disappointed in was that BLM had an official for just about every category (of land use) except for oil and gas,” he said of the meeting. “I found that a little peculiar.”

The BLM officials outnumbered the participants at the meeting and that included the reporter from the Big Timber Pioneer, he said.

Jay Parks, a BLM wildlife biologist, responding to questions from the audience said, “The final result is going to be a compromise of some kind.”

Mary Apple, with BLM’s public affairs unit at the bureau’s Billings office, said she thought at least four years would be needed to complete the resource management plan. Because the plan is being prepared by BLM specialists who will also be handling their daily duties, it will take extra time to complete the plan, she explained.

However, the bureau is soliciting comment to keep the plan’s preparation more open to the public, she added.

Fee said the best thing to do is get on the agency’s Web site and get a comment in. The site is http://www.blm.gov/mt/st/en/fo/billings_field_office/rmp.html

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OBITUARIES
The following obituaries appeared in The Enterprise the week of Aug. 11-15, 2008:

• Clarence Allen Chadbourne, 85, of Livingston, died Saturday evening, Aug. 9, 2008, at Livingston Memorial Hospital.

• Nada Jean Davis, 82, of Livingston, died at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital early Wednesday morning, Aug. 13, 2008.

• Bill D. Ripley Sr., 77, a former Livingston resident, died Aug. 12, 2008.

• Agnes Josephine Rom, 102, died Tuesday morning, Aug. 12, 2008, at Evergreen Livingston Health & Rehabilitation Center.

• Lenore A. Sebastian, 92, formerly of Emigrant, died at St. John’s Lutheran Home in Billings, Friday evening, Aug. 8.

• John Henry Shellenberg, 73, of Livingston, died Monday, Aug. 11, at Evergreen Livingston Health & Rehabilitation Center.