Montana

No wonder Sen. President Mike Miller couldn't reach Sen. Jim Brochin to give him the bad news. The night before the General Assembly session began, Brochin stuffed his ears with plugs and switched his cell phone off. Not that Brochin could have heard the ringtone anyway, what with all the racket at the Hannah Montana concert. The 43-year-old Towson Democrat spent Tuesday night in a sea of shrieking tweens, among them, Brochin's 9-year-old daughter, Katherine. But don't let the chaperone duty and earplugs fool you. At the risk of alienating the classic rock vote, Brochin said that Montana is better in concert than Bruce Springsteen - at least the aging Bruce.

This was no ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Indoor soccer games were skipped and piano lessons forsaken. Megan Foard of Forest Hill apologized in advance to her pony, A.J., for bowing out of their regular after-school ride. "He was cool with it, though," the 13-year-old said. And why wouldn't he be? Megan and her friends had to-die-for concert tickets - for Hannah Montana, who played at the 1st Mariner Arena last night before a sold-out crowd of screaming tweens. Thousands of lucky girls, and not a few boys, scampered home from school to prepare for the arrival of the 15-year-old singer-cum-actress, whose real name is Miley Cyrus, and who holds the youthful audience in the palm of her pretty hand.

The director of detention for Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services resigned yesterday, saying he did not want news media attention focused on his role in a child abuse case in Montana to detract from the agency's work. Chris Perkins stepped down a day after acknowledging that he is the unnamed "Staff No. 2" mentioned in a redacted report that was issued in January 2006 by the Montana Department of Health and Human Services. The report, unsealed by a Montana court this week at the request of a Montana youth advocate, said that Perkins "directly abused or neglected youth under his care" while running a military-style academy for juvenile offenders.

The recently promoted director of detention in Maryland's Department of Juvenile Services was found to have committed child abuse at a previous post in Montana, unsealed records released last night show. Chris Perkins acknowledged that he is the unnamed "Staff No. 2" in the redacted report issued in January 2006 by the Montana Department of Health and Human Services. The report states that Perkins "directly abused or neglected youth under his care" while running a military-style academy for juvenile offenders.

The superintendent of a Maryland program for juvenile offenders once headed a military-style youth academy in Montana that closed amid findings of child mistreatment, the Department of Juvenile Services acknowledged yesterday. But Secretary Donald W. DeVore said he had full confidence in Chris Perkins -- now superintendent of the Victor Cullen Center in Frederick County -- and pointed out that Montana authorities cleared Perkins of all allegations of child abuse or neglect last December.

First, Karen McVearry spent $30 to join the Hannah Montana fan club and buy presale concert tickets for her 9-year-old daughter Maddie. Too late - they had sold out. The 36-year-old Catonsville mom tried again the day the tickets went on sale to the public. As Maddie played soccer, McVearry stood on the sidelines, a cell phone in each hand, calling Ticketmaster, while a friend also called and tried ordering online. Still too late. The Jan. 8 Hannah Montana show at 1st Mariner Arena sold out in minutes.

Miley Cyrus doesn't look like a mouse. Or a befuddled bear. Or even a princess. But make no mistake, like Mickey, Winnie the Pooh and Snow White before her, she is a Disney franchise. Miley is the star of Hannah Montana, a half-hour Disney Channel sitcom following the travails of Miley Stewart, a young girl living in Malibu, Calif., who also happens to be pop star Hannah Montana. Costarring real-life dad Billy Ray Cyrus and consistently featuring a wish list of co-stars including Dolly Parton and Larry David, Hannah Montana is one of the top-rated kids' shows of all time (in 2006, it was second only to American Idol among kids 6 to 14)

KALISPELL, Mont. -- By her own count, Sarah Knapton has been "married" more than 250 times. So when she recently took her vows before Municipal Judge Heidi Ulbricht, it was just another day for her. "I do," she said, and at that, Ulbricht pronounced her married, by proxy, for the umpteen time to the man by her side, Kyle Kirkland, a former high school classmate. It wasn't an altar; Knapton and Kirkland really weren't married to each other. In fact, Knapton has a steady boyfriend, and Kirkland is happily married to someone else.

Fort Smith, Mont. -- Take a drive down just about any back road in this, the fourth-largest state in the country, and you might come upon a ghost town or a small scattering of abandoned buildings. Some of these suggest an earlier time of prosperity and evidence the precariousness of existence in what can be a harsh place to scratch out a living, leaving unanswered questions: Did the mine play out? Was it disease or some other misfortune? A disaster? Why do some places survive and others don't?

Plentywood, Mont. -- Dave Grimland spent nearly 30 years as a Foreign Service officer -- "telling the U.S. side of the story," he says -- in Bangladesh, India, Cyprus, Turkey and other nations with large Muslim populations. He wrote ambassadors' speeches, arranged cultural gatherings, and more than once hunkered down as angry mobs gathered outside the embassy to protest American policy. Now retired and living in rural Montana, Grimland is once again telling a side of the story -- only this time, in quiet pockets of the Big Sky State, he's trying to tell the Muslim side to non-Muslim Americans.