Letters to the editor
Kettle drive
We would like to recognize and thank the churches, Safe Harbor, Chamber Ambassadors, Polson High School Key Club and individuals in the Polson community, who stood in front of Super 1 Foods and Wal-Mart and rang the bell during the holiday season.
From the Friday after Thanksgiving to the day before Christmas, volunteers braved the cold and sometimes inclement weather to ring the bell for the Salvation Army Kettle Drive. Proceeds from the Kettle Drive went to the Helping Hands Fund voucher program, Safe Harbor for lodging and to the Polson and Ronan police departments who write vouchers when the Helping Hands Fund office is closed. Ninety percent of the funds raised will stay in Lake County to help provide food, shelter, gas, utilities, medications, bus tickets, lodging, meals and clothing to the needy. In addition, individuals in need are also helped with more long-term resources.
Helping Hands Fund has seen a marked increase since Christmas in the number of individuals requesting help paying for propane, fuel oil, utilities and rent. The office has seen many utility “shut-off” notices and dealt with several homeless situations, as well as evictions.
The 2010 Kettle Drive produced a total of $6,284.76, an increase of 34 percent over the total raised in 2009, the first year volunteers rang the bell. Polson Community Church collected $914.96 and are the winners of the traveling trophy. Thank you to all those who so generously contributed their time to ring the bell and to the Polson community for your generosity in helping to fill the Kettles! God bless all of you.
Carol Lockwood and
Linda Greenwood
Polson
Ring, ring!
“Hello, this is the North Lake County Public Library.”
“Not Polson City Library?”
“Polson City Library’s name has changed. We’re now the North Lake County Public Library.”
Since voters approved the establishment of the new library district last July, transitional changes have been underway at the North Lake County Public Library. But the location and phone number are the same as always. The public will notice a gradual name change on the library building, the Story Shuttle, library handouts, etc.
Among other visible modifications will be a new logo which will better reflect the library’s goals and objectives. The City of Polson and the Board of Trustees for the North Lake County Public Library District have signed an inter-local agreement transferring the library building, contents, land and assets to the new district. Current employees, too, will make the transition in accordance with the agreement.
For now, hours of operation will stay the same. The North Lake County Public Library will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. The library is closed on Sundays and holidays.
NLC Public Library
Polson
Revolution
At Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King gave a speech in which he called for an end to the war in Vietnam and a revolution of values. Most of his words are still relevant today.
“We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, we are headed in the wrong direction. America,” he said, “can lead the way in this revolution of values.”
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth” in our own country and in the rest of the world. “A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war this way of settling differences is not just.
“A nation that continues to year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.”
“This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism” and terrorism.
Suzanne Luepke
Polson
Common sense
Art Wittich (R) MT State Senator District 35, Bozeman, is the proud primary sponsor of two bills for this coming legislative session. SJ 4 calls for a resolution to Congress for a Constitutional Convention on a balanced budget amendment while SJ 5 proposes a resolution to Congress for a Constitutional Convention on US House and Senate term limits. What could this newly elected Montana Senator possibly be thinking and who has influenced his actions?
Understand this, once called, a Constitutional Convention becomes its own authority and it cannot be limited and it could easily become a wildly chaotic free for all, throwing open the doors to all manner of changes to our Constitution. Can you imagine what an opportunity this would provide the Progressives? They would have the one door opened whereby they in effect could openly work to destroy our Republic and catapult our nation headlong into the arms of totalitarianism. We need to enforce the Constitution that we have and not rewrite it.
What is your understanding of a Constitutional Convention? It is safe to say that the general public’s understanding of our Constitution has deteriorated greatly, while dependence on government programs has dramatically escalated since the birth of our nation. Now I ask you, given what you know today, what do you think the outcome of a Constitutional Convention would be?
Go to the library to find a copy of the Constitution of the United States. Read it, study it and understand your Constitution. It sure would have been beneficial if Senator Whittich had done his homework. He would have understood that voters set term limits as provided for in Article 1 Section 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of the Constitution, while Sections 7, 8, 9 take care of a balanced budget provided of course that the members of congress take their oath of office seriously. Forrest Gump says “Stupid is as stupid does.” I, for one, am tired of stupid. Can we not return to good old fashioned common sense?
Robert L. Starks
Saint Ignatius
Violence in America
Date line, January 9, 2011, BBC news headlines: (1) “Niger Captors Kill Hostages.” (2) “Headless Bodies Found in Acapulco.” (3) “Shot US Congresswoman Critical.”
Regarding the first two headlines, can’t you just hear a comment like this from a bunch of us guys sitting around the cafe table having morning coffee and conversation: “Well, you know, what can you expect from these backward countries. These people will never change. They are barbaric! They’ve been at this for years and years.”
And now comes headline No. 3. We have just another tragic killing right here in the good old US of A, a very advanced and learned culture, a nation of freedom and ultimate security with patdowns and body scans, a nation of the people, by the people and for the people. Causes one to stop and think a bit, doesn’t it?
Marty Kaplan of the Huffington Post, on January 8, had an article published in ‘Common Dreams’ with this headline: “The Lock and Load Rhetoric of American Politics isn’t Just a Metaphor.”
This, of course, refers to Sarah Palin’s unfortunate “lock and load” comment that is just the sort of rhetoric like the many, many equally vitriolic comments made during the recent elections which do affect and guide the thinking of many people, especially those who have a tendency to extreme anger, are a bit unbalanced and possibly prone to violence.
And young people hear this stuff over and over again, coming from us learned, sensible, responsible and revered grown ups. What is bound to happen? How about Waco? How about Oklahoma City? Just to name a couple of instances of people being brainwashed through rhetoric, one a whole bunch of people and the other a single individual.
I quote the last paragraph of Marty Kaplan’s article: “If you’re worried that violent video games may make kids prone to bad behavior; if you think that homophobic rap lyrics are dangerous for society; if you believe that a nipple in a Superbowl halftime show is a threat to our moral fabric – than surely you should also fear that the way public and media figures have framed political participation as a shooting gallery imagery is just as potentially lethal.”
Bob McClellan
Polson