Local women build on tradition
Flathead Valley women showed their prowess in carpentry last weekend as a band of 75 volunteers went to work on a Habitat for Humanity home in Columbia Falls. What sets this project apart from other Habitat homes is that it will be built entirely by women.
The Women Build is the local link in a national Habitat initiative underwritten by Lowe's to have women build more than a thousand homes by the end of the year. The local project is the only one of its kind in Montana.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer and his wife, Nancy, were on hand for the kickoff on Saturday. The home is being built for a single mother of three children who is putting in 150 "sweat-equity" hours of her own.
As affordable housing continues to be a challenge in the Flathead, we applaud these women for taking the initiative to be part of a worthy cause.
AMONG THE throngs of local women making all kinds of contributions to society is Sandy Mundahl. She recently traveled to Nigeria with Rotary to open blood banks in nine cities. What she learned there motivated her to join "Safe Blood Africa" for the next two and a half years.
About a quarter of Nigeria's patients die because of lack of blood or because of receiving blood tainted with HIV or hepatitis. Hundreds of ill patients die there simply because there's not enough clean blood.
The blood-bank project is one of many important humanitarian missions local Rotary clubs support. They deserve our tip of the hat.
WE'RE GLAD justice and saner minds prevailed in the case of the multimillion-dollar pants.
A Washington, D.C., lawyer and administrative law judge managed to give the legal profession a whopping black eye by suing his neighborhood dry cleaners for $54 million (charitably reduced from the original $67 million) for allegedly losing a pair of suit pants.
Fortunately, this outrageous claim didn't hold up before a Superior Court judge, who belted the case out of court and may make the wayward lawyer pay legal fees incurred by the dry-cleaner defendant.
This whole case gives new meaning to the expression "being taken to the cleaners" and is another grim example of our society's penchant to litigate everything.
According to an Associated Press story, calls have come from around the world for Pearson to lose his position on the bench and be disbarred.
We think the first option is certainly warranted.