Jussila has final show

By T.J. GILLES For The Outpost

In his final show at Montana State University Billings, retiring art professor Neil Jussila said he happened to be in the right places at the right times.
As a teenager growing up in Butte in the late 1940s, he was lucky to fall in with a group of older painters who would gather to sketch and paint the mountains, pollution-tainted sunsets and gallows frames over mines. Afterwards, they’d meet to discuss whether abstract impressionist Jackson Pollock was one of the greatest ever, along with other philosophical art questions.

By PHIL DRAKE Montana Watchdog

HELENA – Montana’s economy will outperform the U.S. economy in 2012 with projected annual growth for the state of 2 percent to 2 1/2 percent in nonfarm earnings for the next four years, economic forecasters told an overflow crowd Tuesday.
Patrick M. Barkey, director of the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, told several hundred people at the Great Northern Best Western Hotel that economic recovery from the “great recession” has been slow and sometimes on “very thin ice.”
His remarks were reflected in the title of his presentation: “Montana’s Hesitant Recovery.”
The Helena visit was the first in a nine-city tour, which includes Billings on Tuesday. For details, see the Insider Calendar in this week’s issue.
Barkey said this recession, which started in 2008, was different from previous recessions in which the economy bounced back strongly. While the economy is back to where it was in 2007, it has not grown. And he said this recession was different in that it was coupled with a banking crisis.
“We’re doing about as well as you can expect,” he said, adding the United States will avoid another recession, but came “doggone close.”