Letters to the editor
Polson food pantry says THANKS!
We are so blessed to live in such a beautiful and breathtaking area amid such a caring community.
The Polson Loaves and Fishes Pantry clients, volunteers and the board are especially thankful and appreciative of the wonderful support it receives from local businesses, organizations, churches, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and private citizens. We recognize the public has many opportunities to donate to worthy causes and feel honored and entrusted that you chose to help the Pantry fulfill its mission, i.e., that of providing supplemental and emergency food to those in need.
The Pantry provides monthly emergency food to area residents, seniors, families with children, and individuals in need at the rate of about 330 households or 910 individuals per month — a roughly 50 percent increase over 2009.
The Loaves and Fishes Pantry dispersed in excess of 150,000 pounds of food items locally in the past year. This comes from local food drives, individual donations, the Montana Food Bank Network and about 50 percent from our local super markets, Safeway and Super 1. We owe special thanks to you for helping the Pantry help those in need.
This fall’s annual Town Pump Match program was joined by Mission Mountain Les Schwab Tires to create an overall $6,500 match program on the Polson Food Pantry’s behalf. We are pleased to announce that our generous community (businesses, service organizations, churches, and caring individuals) helped the Pantry exceed its goal. In addition to providing improved food assistance, your pantry board is endeavoring to pay off the construction loan incurred in renovating the new pantry. Any year end donations would be greatly appreciated!
Again many thanks to Polson area businesses, service organizations, schools, the U.S. Postal Service, churches, Salish and Kootenai Tribes and individuals who support Polson Loaves and Fishes Pantry and its mission to help others. Without your help we could not achieve our mission!
The pantry is open for food distribution on Tuesdays and Fridays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and on Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. until noon.
Bryan River
Operations director/board member
Polson Loaves and Fishes Pantry
Merry Christmas
Sixty-eight years ago this week Lake County Superintendant of schools, Mary Louise Graves, penned these lines to show support for those fighting for freedom and to testify of the true meaning of Christmas. Today, this is still worth reading through several times, emphasizing her punctuation. Merry Christmas from the Miracle of America Museum.
There Shall be Candles Still
By Mary Louise Graves
24 Dec, 1942
There shall be candles still
Sending their gleam across a world at war;
On our hearth shall burn the yule log,
And a wreath of holly shall adorn our door.
These things? All these… with him away?
On our quiet hill…
There shall be candles still.
Because he went away
Our candles burn this Christmas night
With brighter gleam, with sacred light,
And ‘midst their glow I breath a prayer
For our son—yours and mine—Somewhere…
“Oh, God, please keep him safe, wherever he be
On land, in air…across the sea,”
On our quiet hill…
There shall be candles still.
As Mary gave the world a son
That Peace on Earth might be,
So we have given, as she gave then,
Our son to right the wrongs
That have been done,
And bring Good Will to Men
On our quiet hill…
There shall be candles still.
Gil and Joanne Mangels
Polson
Christmas spirit?
What happened to Christmas spirit? This past Sunday morning I drove by the Visitor’s Center in Ronan and realized there was only one Christmas tree on the porch. Did the other fall over? No, it was gone! Stolen! These trees were a fundraising project sponsored by our high school Student Council to raise money and buy gifts and food for needy families in our community.
Do you realize that bulbs were purchased to adorn the trees? They were purchased by community members as a memorial to a loved one or to recognize someone in the military.
The trees were purchased from FFA so they in turn can sponsor projects. How could you even think of doing such a heinous act? This is a time of joy and caring for others. Are you proud that “we” provided your “free” tree with the stand and the strings of lights? So many good things happen in our town, this act of stealing just doesn’t happen to be one of them.
Marlena Jensen
Ronan
Wake up response
This letter is in response to Mrs. Wilma Bick’s “Wake up, Montana” editorial dated Dec. 9.
Yes, my office recently sent out letters to property owners who had protested their 2009 taxes. The letters were sent only to those who have had some sort of adjustment or denial of their values from the Montana Department of Revenue. Normally, the money is only held in the protest fund for 90 days before it would be released.
On May 3, I received a letter from the Montana Department of Revenue to decrease Mrs. Bick’s 2009 tax bill in the amount of $19.66. I processed the request on May 7 and mailed her a revised tax bill of which she paid on June 1. The Montana Department of Revenue should have mailed her a revised assessment of the changes and she would have had 30 days to file another appeal if she disagreed with the new values.
There are programs available through the Montana Department of Revenue for Property Tax Assistance and Elderly Homeowner/Renter Credit, but you have to file before their deadlines. I see where Mrs. Bick is the recipient of Property Tax Assistance for the 2010 tax year to where she had a decrease in her taxes of $408.42 from the 2009 tax year.
Unfortunately, my office is the one to take your money, but we do not have anything to do with values. My staff tries to be very accommodating, but when it comes to answering questions about values, we pass that on to the Montana Department of Revenue.
Patti Duford Kugler
Lake County Treasurer
Do they need the Money?
In a previous letter, I wanted to alert people that the Polson Fire Department may start directly billing you and me for responding to traffic “incidents”. A question arises: do they need the money? After all, none of us want to deny adequate funding for our fire and police men and women.
Here are some relevant facts: at the end of the last three fiscal years, the Rural Fire District had money left over. Specifically, in the past year, even after spending over $35,000 on non budgeted items, they still had $35,000 left (note that these surpluses occurred while providing responses to traffic “incidents”).
In July they approved a 2010-2011 budget of $125,875 for operations and $83,600 for truck payments. According to the Lake County Treasurer’s office, they will receive tax revenues of $296,004 – an $85,529 windfall!
Do they need more money? Let your voices be heard.
Tom Eddy
Polson
What is the truth?
There is a darkness looming before us. There is a ‘fly in the ointment’ as the saying goes. There is a form of brainwashing heaped upon ‘we the people’ which the recent WikiLeaks event is exposing.
In a Reuters interview on 12/12, John Pilger, highly respected Australian journalist, writer and film maker said a few things which we should all read with a discerning mind because they point to a rather disturbing thing.
He said: “The mindset that only authority can really determine the truth on the news is a form of embedding that really now has to change.”
And this: “WikiLeaks and the Internet are bringing great pressure for change, no question about it.”
And further: “Journalism has so often failed to do its job. It has great eagerness to believe the ‘official’ version of events.”
Now, we all know that much of our national media are owned and controlled by huge monied interests. What John Pilger is suggesting is that much of what we are bombarded with in major events, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq being perfect examples, is just not the truth.
Is this a form of media brainwashing? I suppose it could be considered so. And suddenly a WikiLeaks event occurs and throws the official communications systems into a great turmoil of fear and consternation.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” we, the people, ask. And the answers we get focus upon killing the messenger, hoping somehow that will kill the message.
“But what about those messages,” we, the people, ask? And the answers we get suggest ‘father knows best’, ‘don’t believe a thing you read or hear being reported on those messages’, and ‘just listen to the authorities and all will be cleared up in due time’.
It might be well, since we do have the great Internet available to us, to look beyond our own borders for news reports, opinions and the views of thoughtful people without ‘official’ constraints. Can’t hurt!
Bob McClellan
Polson
Concerning the horse
Dear concerned citizens,
Someone keeps calling the Sheriff to report that my horse on E. Post Creek has a broken leg. The horse is under veterinary care and has been since he was first injured late this summer. After the vet’s latest visit on Dec. 15, he says that the horse has radial nerve damage and the knee is never going to straighten.
His status will not improve. The vet also says that the horse is not in pain. If you have any further issues about the horse, please contact us directly at 745-4080. We will be more than willing to share information with you. We are not, however, willing to kill a sweet horse because you don’t like the way he looks.
Betsy Murphy
St. Ignatius
An answered prayer
Forty-five years ago, a young hardworking man left home for yet another job digging tunnels. The job kept him away for long periods of time. He returned home to find his wife and 6-month-old baby girl gone. It was a great loss for the young man. He tried for years, never giving up, trying to find his little girl. He went on with his life with a big hole in his heart.
Present day, a young woman goes to her mail box. Inside she finds a Christmas card and it’s from the once young man. He’s hoping this is the little girl he’s tried to find for 45 years. The little girl, now a young woman, cries with joy to at last hear from a part of her she’s been missing. Forty-five years of wondering will at last be brought to light with a star of faith.
God bless and Merry Christmas to all.
Patsy Pulse
Polson
On economic behavior
By beliefs, we mean the totality of judgments, which are either beyond the reach of science or are not proved scientifically. All judgements, which are not scientific, are beliefs, whatever their content may be. These beliefs often assume a pseudo scientific character, which is not easily detected.
Ironically, beliefs appear as factos in human behavior and in the market for real estate, securities and commodities; especially when they are backed by compulsion, and the power of manipulated advice of brokerage houses, real estate firms, advisory services and government behavior, then further reinforced by wish and hope and fantasy.
It is quite important as to whether these beliefs are logical, reasonable and rational, or on the other hand, irrational and absurd. That which affects the market place results from the conclusions drawn. Faith is highly important, however, in the event faith is the child of emotion, it does not care for logic.
The irrationalism of human beings will not disappear. It follows therefore that effective market analysis must follow a course that compromises between the evidence offered by scientific calculations, hope and belief, together with technical trends relative to volume, type of purchase and overall market activity.
The way in which the world is imagined at any particular moment determines to a great extent what people will do at that moment.
The picture we have in our heads, regardless of its accuracy, when compared to the real world, greatly influences our actions.
Needless to say, the pictures in our head may be greatly disfigured by artificial censorships, the limitations of over-exercise of social contact, the comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to governmental behavior, public affairs, newspapers, radio, television and sensible advice.
The result is that conclusions are often fallacious, inadequate, and wrong.
For those reasons, aggregate market behavior is often not rewarding for the individual, the community, the nation and the world.
William R. Ingram
Polson