Editor’s note: Each week, the Missoulian provides readers with a sampling of news gleaned from weekly newspapers around western Montana.

NOXON – With only a third the number of patient visits necessary each month to pay for itself, the medical clinic that serves the western Sanders County communities of Noxon, Heron and Trout Creek will close.

In its lead story this week, the Sanders County Ledger said Clark Fork Valley Hospital announced the closure of the Bull River Family Medicine Clinic with “deep regret.”

“We have been averaging just over 100 patients per month,” Deb Green, director of the hospital’s clinics, told the Ledger, “and we really needed to be in the 300 range in order to make the operation pay its operating expenses.”

The clinic will remain open through June 30 to allow patients to make other arrangements for their health-care needs.

Green said that while residents used the facility for emergencies and urgent care, many turned to facilities outside of the hospital’s system – ones in Sandpoint, Idaho, and Libby – for scheduled appointments and more advanced treatments.

The clinic employs a full-time physician assistant, a full-time registered nurse, a receptionist and housekeeper, and receives support staffing from the hospital located in Plains.

“The decision to close the clinic was not taken lightly,” hospital CEO Dr. Gregory Hanson told the Ledger. “When our senior leadership team sat down with the governing board, we had to consider our mission and establish a strategic plan as to what service lines were sustainable and what we could continue to support. Unfortunately, the long history of underutilized services in Bull River led us to our decision.”

The clinic, located near the junction of Highways 200 and 56 west of Noxon, offers primary, pediatric, geriatric and walk-in care, immunizations, lab tests, physical exams, women’s health care and physical therapy.

Students earn tepee night by reading

ST. IGNATIUS – There’s nothing like curling up with a good book by a roaring fire.

Unless it’s forcing someone else to do it – and the fire is in a tepee on a cold January night.

The Lake County Leader reported this week that Superintendent Bob Lewandowski and six Mission Elementary teachers made good on a challenge to their K-5 students.

The more books they read, the more of them who would cram into a tepee and spend a January night there.

If the kids averaged two books apiece over a specified time span – including book reports based on their grade level – Mr. Krantz, Mr. Durglo and Mr. Phillips would spend the cold night in the tepee.

If they averaged four, Mrs. Stobie, Mrs. Plant and Mrs. Weaselhead would join them.

And if they averaged six books apiece, the superintendent promised he’d spend the night in the cold, too.

Leader reporter Dylan Kitzan said the kids “went berserk” when, at a student assembly, they learned they’d forced all six into the tepee for the night of Jan. 26.

While third-, fourth- and fifth-graders combined for 498 books and averaged four apiece, kindergartners averaged the necessary six, first-graders went one better and averaged seven.

But the second-graders ensured the fate of the superintendent and all six teachers.

Kitzan reported they read a whopping 1,443 books, an average of nine each.

The educators didn’t take books into the tepee with them, however.

They took the book reports.

“It was fun, kind of like camping,” Stobie told the Leader.

Best of all, she said, students started showing up at the tepee at about 7 the next morning to check on the educators.

Deer Lodge boxer among best in nation

DEER LODGE – She’s not Olympic-bound – yet – but Deer Lodge’s Ariel Beck is among the top female welterweight boxers in the nation.

Beck, who boxes for a Helena club these days, finished third at the USA national championships last June, and returns to the national competition later this month in Colorado Springs, Colo., reports Patrick Duganz of the Silver State Post.

The Powell County High grad took a fitness boxing class while studying at the University of Montana-Western in Dillon, and she got the urge to get in a ring and hit someone.

“That’s how it started. I just thought I could punch and that would get me through some fights,” she told Duganz.

Beck, a southpaw, lost her first three matches, but has gone 12-3 since. She won the Intermountain welterweight title in October against a more experienced fighter from Idaho. Beck doesn’t try to act tough outside the ring, and she says her opponents must be puzzled by the big smile she wears inside it.

“They’re probably thinking, ‘What’s with this girl?’ But I’m just having fun.”

Weeklies Reader is compiled by reporters Vince Devlin, Tristan Scott and Kim Briggeman.