Letters to the Editor

Memorial vandalism

After over 16 years of decorating my son "Super Dave" Benson's memorial cross on Highway 209, I am dealing with the frustration of vandalism. In all of the last three months (June, July and August), decorations have been taken off the cross and either thrown on the ground or stolen from the site.

Many members of the Bigfork and Ferndale communities over the years have expressed to me their appreciation and support for the decorating that I do there. Many have said, "It is obvious that whomever does the decorating has a deep and lasting love for the person whose death is represented by the cross." Those people are so very accurate in their statements.

Dave, during his 18 years of life touched many people with his kindness, intelligence, and fun-loving spirit. To have his memory desecrated by some mean and small-minded individual is just so wrong.

I would ask that any of you driving by the cross, please keep an eye open for suspicious activity, especially at night, and take down a license number if you are able.

I deeply appreciate all your support and compassion over the years, and hope it will help put a stop to this activity.

Lindy Benson

"Super Dave's" Mom

Swan Cell thanks

Thank you, Mr. Strickland, for following up on the efforts of the Swan Lake Community Club to obtain cell phone service in the Swan Valley ("Swan Valley still searching for cell service," August 14, 2008).

While it appears there may be light at the end of the tunnel, the Federal Communications Commission's actions may yet defeat not only our efforts but may also exclude other Montana and national rural areas from the available technology of modern emergency communications.

The Swan Lake Community Club would like to thank those businesses that helped us obtain 2,300 signatures in less than eight weeks last summer: Swan Bar and Grill, Swan Lake Trading Post, and Swan Stage Stop (Swan Lake), Kravings and The Jug Tree (Bigfork), Echo Lake Cafe and Echo Lake Store, Ferndale Market, Hungry Bear, Mission Mountain Mercantile, Swan Valley Centre (Condon)

Sue Ellison

Swan Lake

Don't watch / Tropic Thunder

Please join us in a campaign to stop the use of the "R-word." This week, the film "Tropic Thunder" opens in movie theaters across Montana and throughout the country. While intended to be a satire of Hollywood actors and producers, the film contains offensive material that demeans people with intellectual disabilities along with prominent use of the "R-word."

In Montana as elsewhere, stereotypes continue and injustices are a reality for individuals with intellectual disabilities. When theaters across our state open "Tropic Thunder" this week, we urge movie-goers who value dignity to stand up for their family members, friends and neighbors with intellectual disabilities. Words matter. Choose another movie.

Vicki Dunham

Chief Operating Officer

Special Olympics Montana

Enviro mess

Thank you, environmentalists, for working so diligently and so successfully, all the way to the top levels of our government, to tie up and lock up our natural resources including energy sources. You have succeeded in achieving foreign manufacture of the finished goods which we so eagerly purchase on credit, while assuring related jobs for, deserving laborers in other countries. As our industries die, just who do you think will be providing your welfare and unemployment checks, your socialized medicine, education, transportation systems, old age provisions and other services? Congress is capable, not of producing wealth, but issuing higher taxes, phony money and credit which feeds potential foreclosure and economic downfall, leaving citizens prone to the buy-out of our country.

Certainly your enviro friends in Washington D.C. will be increasingly hard-pressed to come up with needed funds, previously usurped from hard-working, middle-class Americans, now depressed, out of work and out on the streets. You are basically quickly achieving your goal of lowering living standards and destroying the economy of our nation to the level of third world countries. We are trading places with them. As you have wished, we can now soon be equally poor, except that many other countries, miraculously, retain a higher level of education with which they may be able to start pulling themselves up to what had been the "Late Great U.S.A" as per the Dr. Jerome Corsi book.

Just whose future generations had you intended to be saving our country, its land and its resources for? Certainly not your kids or mine. I wish you had wondered about this a bit sooner so that we could have all worked together to assist poor nations rise to our income and social levels, instead of performing equalization by dragging us all down to their levels. It will now be an unspeakable struggle to climb up and out of this morass because the earth's great wealth and resources is being virtually gobbled up by greedy, wealthy, all-powerful owners and rulers of the world with the technology to manage and control human masses. Do you think they will give a twit about your future generations, except if lucky, as servants? Well, George Orwell, "1984," we have arrived a bit late. What next?

Clarice Ryan

Bigfork