| July 1, 2010
Editorial
Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to serve you
Berl Tiskus/Valley Journal
Thanks to the Polson Rotary Club, sand in the Riverside Park playground will be removed and replaced with processed wood fiber material.
Editor
It’s been a long, slow goodbye and I apologize for that. But this, I’m sorry to say, is my last editorial at the Valley Journal.
 Jim Blow
Just about six years ago a small group of us were sitting around my porch enjoying a few cold beverages, wondering how we could all collectively jump off the cliff together. I’ve always viewed forming any small business is akin to jumping off a cliff. Once you start, you either figure out how to fly or find the abrupt end of a short trip.
Fortunately, we’ve worked hard to make sure it was long, rising flight. And, boy, has it been a fun ride.
But now that journey has ended for me. As I explained earlier, I’ve decided to leave the Valley Journal, though I anticipate that it will continue to succeed and soar without me. My next job was still a mystery until last week when I accepted the position of editor at the West Yellowstone News, the small weekly newspaper located just outside the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park.
Again, I apologize for stringing out my farewell. I was stopped by a reader just last week who asked hopefully that he interpreted my continuing editorials as evidence that I had changed my mind and decided to stay. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, I explained with a heavy heart.
It might have been easier to wait until the last moment and say goodbye as I was heading out the door, the conversational equivalent to ripping the Band-Aid off with one quick and final thrust. That may have held off the pain of leaving until the last week, but my fear is that you may have wrongly interpreted such a brusque departure.
Worse, you may not have understood how grateful and humbled I am for having served you.
Leaving this job, this wonderful team, is the right thing to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I leave knowing that I’ve been quite fortunate to have such a great job in a diverse community that has valued all the hard work we’ve put into our newspaper. Building a small business is no easy task, but seeing all the hard work of our team come to fruition over the past six years has been, believe it or not, a joyful experience for me.
I’ve never been prouder to work with a group of people than this great crew we’ve got at the Valley Journal. I’ve long said we’re more family than a place to work and it’s especially difficult to leave the family fold. We’ve never been perfect, but we’ve always strived to achieve perfection by continuously improving and building upon our strengths. We’ve always held ourselves to a higher standard, one we collectively have set to represent the deep passion we have for community journalism.
We’ve always felt we owed that commitment to excellence to our readers, our advertisers and ourselves, week in and week out.
This hasn’t been just another job for me. I’ve also always known that I’m lucky to do something I love with a group of people I care deeply about.
That makes leaving all the more difficult. But it’s also not easy to leave the friends and neighbors we’ve built relationships with along the way.
We’re not ready to put our property up for sale just yet. My wife, Deni, is staying here to work another year at K. William Harvey Elementary, while Rita, my lab, will help me through the transition into another community in West Yellowstone. We’ll try the three-day-weekend commute thing back and forth until we figure out whether West Yellowstone is the right place for us to relocate permanently.
So, I’ll keep my foot in the door of the valley that will always hold a piece of my heart.
I apologize for not personally saying goodbye to you. I admit that I’ve been in a bit of denial mode over the past weeks, looking forward to another day as your editor instead of focusing on the approach of the end to that job. But with Friday, July 2 as my last day, I’ve got to face the reality that I won’t be at the Journal next week.
Hopefully, I’ll see you around before I take off. I’ve got a long list of chores to do before I head to West Yellowstone, so we might run into each other at Hanson and Granley’s over the next two or three weeks.
If you’d like to stay in touch, please drop me an email at jimblow@ronan.net. I’d love to hear from you.
But, if I don’t get to see you before I head south, please know that I’ll miss you all very much and have enjoyed being your editor and your neighbor. You’ll never know how much I appreciate your openness and trust, and the many kindnesses you’ve blessed me with along the way. It has truly been an honor and a privilege to have served you.
And who knows what might happen tomorrow. Life does take unexpected turns. We’ve still got roots in the Mission Valley, so maybe we’ll see each other again in the not-too-distant future.
Letters to the editor
Support for animal control appreciated
Editor,
Thank you to the citizens of Ronan. Because of your kindness we were successful in raising almost $300 for the Ronan Animal Control. All contributions are very much appreciated and will surely be put to good use.
Thank you to June Jordan for all of her wonderful food that she contributed and to local businesses that donated to the fundraiser. The fundraiser would have never been the success that it was without your support.
Also a big thank you and much gratitude goes to the Mission Valley Animal Shelter for the donation of dog houses, blankets, pooper scoopers, gloves and toys. I’m very appreciative of what you’ve helped me with and the dogs that I catch and rescue are very happy for everything as well.
I hope to serve this community to the best of my abilities.
Laura Larson-Krahn
Ronan
Why are we still in Afghanistan?
Editor,
Why is it that in this Afghanistan campaign our leaders are so reluctant to accept the fact that the entire operation was built upon faulty knowledge, impossible goals, misreading of Afghan leaders, and military strategies that are so outmoded in defeating the Taliban that we must be the laughing stock of their nefarious members?
And this whole thing about firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal and appointing Gen. David Petraeus being hailed as some sort of genius strategy is ludicrous.
What difference does it make? We should be taking what McChrystal said in that Rolling Stones article as a lucid and accurate assessment of the whole operation in Afghanistan, even thought it came through an interesting medium and with obviously blatant disrespect for authority. McChrystal’s comments were snide, derogatory and contemptuous and certainly unbecoming to a military general.
What the heck is our objective in Afghanistan? Is it to make their nation more like ours? Good luck.
This whole thing is ridiculous and causing many military families untold grief, just as with Iraq. And what have we accomplished in Iraq? We’ve filled hospitals, mental institutions, and home health care providers with very damaged young men and women who obeyed orders from people they trusted and believed knew what they were doing.
Why don’t we learn? Why do we keep making these costly and devastating mistakes? Are we not capable of shifting our thinking, attitudes, objectives and strategies to something better than Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan?
In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, it’s time we began acting like intelligent human beings instead of dashing about thinking we can control the world and have it all fit our agenda.
Bob McClellan
Polson
Congrats to Valley Journal
Editor,
Congratulations to the Valley Journal and staff for your 21 newspaper awards at the Montana Newspaper Association’s annual convention.
Your articles and stunning photographs are consistently well thought out and displayed. I can’t wait for Thursday to get your paper and read about the news.
You make us all so proud that we have such a wonderful paper with reporters and photographers who genuinely care about people and events that are happening in our valley.
You are a class act. Keep up the good work.
Electra Frey
Charlo
Support library, support education
Editor,
The greatest educator begins with a book.
Where would we be without libraries? A library is a building full of knowledge open to all with no regards to wealth, race, education or occupation. A library is a building with an open invitation to come in and learn. Libraries have been on this earth for centuries and have educated people since man could read and write.
We, the people of Lake County, will soon be asked to approve a mill levy to provide funding for a library district that will include the areas of Polson, Valley View, Big Arm, Elmo, Proctor, Dayton, Rollins, and the east shore to Yellow Bay. If approved, this funding will aid in the continuation of library services to all – including our future generations.
A library falls in the category of education. Education is the most vital part of our country and budgets for this should never be cut. It is up to us, the people of this county, to see that our future will strive through education with schools and libraries. Vote yes for the library district levy July 8-27 by mail-in ballot.
I close with this quote, which says it all. “If you think education is expensive, wait till you see what ignorance costs you.”
Karen Bach
Rollins
Vote yes for library district
Editor,
To be sure, the Polson City Library offers a lot of cool, free stuff: wireless Internet access, public computers, scanners, copiers, newspapers, magazines and more.
Though many library users may be familiar with much of this, one under appreciated and often overlooked service that the library provides is its community meeting room. Numerous community organizations and non-profit groups regularly make use of this important gathering place.
The Mission Mountain Audubon Society, for example, has utilized the library’s meeting room on a regular basis for the past 11 years. This club’s monthly educational programs, which are free and open to everyone, inform and entertain hundreds of people each year on a variety of topics including wildlife, conservation, outdoor adventure, scientific research, world cultures and, yes, birds.
And it’s plain to see that we have all benefited from these special programs which would not be possible without the library’s meeting room.
But there’s much more. Perhaps our library’s most important service is its invitation to lifelong learning. By promoting the love of reading – especially to youth – the library introduces everyone to a world of ideas that can only make us better as individuals and as a community.
Vote yes to create the North Lake County Public Library District
Jim Rogers
Polson
Library provides valuable services
Editor,
As a child growing up I was incredibly fortunate, along with my brothers and sisters and cousins, to have an opportunity to spend all summer visiting my grandparents in Yellow Bay. Part of the weekly routine my grandparents had to keep this brood under control was to have my grandfather drive all the older kids to Polson every Tuesday.
We were dropped off at the library where we stocked up on our adventures for the week, and then we made a stop at the Lake City Bakery where we spent our allowance for the day, before heading back to the cabin. My lifelong devotion to reading stems from the wonderful books I was able to check out of the Polson Library.
Starting July 8-27 residents of Polson and north Lake County will have an opportunity to vote, by mail-in ballot, on a proposal to establish a library district, which would provide sustainable operational funding for the Polson Library.
We are fortunate to have a high quality library in Polson that affords the public free access to a wide variety of written materials like the books I read as a child and continue to read as an adult. In addition, the library provides things like free Internet-connected computers, reading programs and services vital to the intellectual health and development of our community.
It’s important to everyone in our community that these services continue benefiting all users. This requires a sustainable, equitable and dedicated source of funding. Without this mill levy we will lose many of our current services. Voters, please join me in by voting yes to provide this funding and support continuation. By the way, it’s not too late to sign yourself or your kids and grandkids up for the summer reading program. The adventures await you.
Additional information on the proposed levy is available on the library website: http://polsonpubliclibrary.org.
Toni Krebsbach Young
Polson
Cops' Corner
Safety makes holiday more enjoyable for all
by Doug Chase
Polson Police Chief
Welcome, summer. I trust all are done praying for rain. At least not the kind we had from May to mid June.
Having been overseas with my wife during May, my appreciation for this country is beyond words. I truly missed the Polsonites, especially those who (in a fun way) love nothing more than to deliver how-to for running the department.
Special things occurred during my absence that I want to comment on. The big shock was noting the departure of Valley Journal Editor Jim Blow. Now there is a classy guy and I join others in wishing him the best as he follows new trails in his life.
I was sad to see Founder and President of SKC Joe McDonald retire. Over the years, he’s led the way as SKC has grown into a beautiful campus thriving with excellent programs, faculty, staff and students. His legacy will long live on.
Election results are in and the outcome has warranted mixed responses. A person who runs for office or holds public office has to have a true wish for the betterment of their community, county, and state. They also need asbestos underwear. We are so fortunate that people are willing and wanting to serve their fellow woman or man. We may not agree with them, but they are following the course they feel is the best. Isn’t that something we all need to do?
I was also pleased to see that girls’ track and boys’ baseball teams brought home the gold. It seemed fitting that the firefighters gave them the ceremonial ride through town to honor their achievements. The tennis boys’ track teams also brought pride to us. Our young people in rodeo competition brought us fine recognition as well. I only need to look to our youth and their parents, grandparents, educators and mentors to realize how special these kids are.
Speaking of educators, did anyone add up the years of the retiring people at the Polson School District. There are some mighty big shoes to fill for those that take over the reins.
I’d like to share some info on law enforcement matters now.
Fireworks season is now upon us. This is a time of the year when a good number of community members begin expressing aggravation and the police and the 911 dispatchers often feel the brunt-end of that. Here are some excerpts from our city ordinance to clear up any confusion:
• Fireworks can only be sold 10 days prior to the 4th of July and one day after.
• Discharging of fireworks after 11:30 p.m. is illegal during these days with the exception July 3 and 4. There are no time limits on those days.
• Aerial displays can’t be discharged within 2,000 feet of the Polson Airport without at least a 24-hour notification to airport personnel.
Each year it’s a struggle to meet funding for the 4th of July fireworks display and this year is no exception. It’s tight times but if you have a dollar to share, please do. Our own City Attorney James Raymond is the pyrotechnic technician for this. I question his sanity.
Of course Fire Chief John Fairchild and his personnel ask that you always remember to practice safety. We’ve had a lot of rain, however warmer times are on the way – bringing heavy dried grasses, which are a real danger for ignition. Emergency Departments at rarely get through this time without seeing victims of ill-timed or ill-placed fireworks.
Have a wonderful holiday weekend. Reflect on why America, even with its flaws, is the best place to live. And remember how blessed we truly are.
|
.jpg)
