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Dear Savannah Guthrie, I’m sorry I fired you. It’s actually true. Your humble history columnist actually did fire (well, “laid off”) the one and only Savannah Guthrie, in what became known as “Black Friday” in Butte: October 30, 1993.

By Jim Harmon I see in the paper that Miss Daisy Dawson hosted the Calamity Whist club at her home in Butte last Tuesday evening and Mrs. George F. Lyman of Anaconda visited Butte friends yesterday. But such social-calendar reporting was rather mundane and unremarkable compared to what I found on page eight of the Butte Daily Inter-Mountain newspaper of February 4, 1899...

Spring allegedly is “just around the corner.” So I’ve been very busy lately going through a treasure trove of old family photos, many of which I don’t remember having ever seen.

Jim Harmon writes, "One photo, which might be of my mother at age one or two (there was nothing to identify it) is absolutely fascinating. It’s what is called a 'tin-type.'"

Jim Harmon writes, "My hope in sharing this story is to encourage all of you to document your family’s stories before those stories are lost to time."

This winter I’ve been digitizing old family documents. I encourage everyone – if you haven’t already done it – to ask your parents and grandparents to share stories from their past because, as my father realized, the accuracy of those memories can diminish with time.

In December 1923, Waldemar Kaempffert, a “noted technical expert,” described the transition from the “the first timid experiments” with radio signals to the birth of the “broadcasting business.” That business created a whole new language and job descriptions. There were terms like “Broadcast Studio,” “Power Room” and “Master Clock,” and job titles like “Director of Broadcasting,” “Power Man” and “Announcer.”

As 1909 dawned in Missoula, a refurbished theater called The Lyric claimed to be “one of the most modern moving picture houses in the West, with seating capacity of approximately 200 (and) first class in every respect.”

Happy New Year! As we all hope 2024 will be a better year than 2023, we look back at similar hopes 100 years ago. The editor of The Madisonian newspaper (Virginia City) at the end of 1923 wrote: “The old year fades away and the God of time ushers in the infant of 1924. The years come, and they go, and are seen no more, but they leave a heritage that even time itself can not efface.”

Tales of Montana Christmases past show years of sadness and struggle, joy and celebration.