Letters to the editor March 14

Flower power

John and I had the privilege of delivering flowers for a local florist on Valentine’s Day. We had no idea how times have changed.

The last few years that I taught, we were no longer allowed to have Halloween or Christmas parties. We were allowed one party, Valentine’s Day.

This year John and I decided to help deliver flowers on Valentine’s Day. We had two deliveries to an elementary school. We checked in at the office and were told that they could accept the flowers for the teacher but not the student. The secretary said she would call the student’s mother to come and pick up the flowers and take them home. We asked why the policy and were told that flowers are a disruption in the classroom (really?) and the flowers are too hard to take on the bus. (What about backpacks?) It also makes the other students feel bad. I don’t want anyone to feel bad, but what about someone feeling special? When we shared this with a friend she told us that when she and her sister were growing up their babysitter always sent them flowers because she wanted them to feel special.

When we took flowers for a student at one of the high schools, we took them to the office. They informed us that someone would take a heart-shaped note to the student letting he or she know that flowers were waiting at the office. All those flowers sat in the office until the end of the school day.

Every time I hear about a shooting, I wonder where we are going wrong as a society. I think we have lost those small, important touches. (A reminder that spring is on the way.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone felt special throughout their lives and one of those visual ways could be through a small bouquet of flowers?

— Jan Thon, Kalispell

Last best place

That people would move to Montana for a “quieter place to call home” (“Air access...a big deal for rural Montana”) and still expect to have all the amenities of New York, is puzzling. If you want/need the convenience of an airport then live in a community that will provide it. But don’t move to Montana for a quieter life and then seek to recreate the chaos, the noise, the lights, the population, the concrete, the pollution, the traffic, the clutter, the excessive and unnecessary view-obstructing buildings, in other words, everything people come here to escape.

You really can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t have open spaces, night skies, wildlife and a “quieter life” by building and adding more and more just to make life more convenient.

That “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell” (Edward Abbey) rings true here, too. We need to get our priorities straight before we completely obliterate what makes the “Last Best Place” the last best place.

One may have to drive “an hour” to the nearest airport but your journey is going to be surrounded by incomparable beauty and relatively hassle-free because a million other people aren’t attempting to do the same thing at the same time. Returning from a trip recently, we stopped over in Chicago where it took 10 minutes to get to a hotel, that we declined to stay in, and 30 minutes to return the same distance to the airport because of the traffic. And, rest assured, no matter what you do to make air travel more convenient, the major airlines will find a way to make it more inconvenient, more uncomfortable, more stressful and more expensive. And, if the airlines want to take umbrage with that sentiment, I would relish being proven wrong!

And, hats off to the “Essential Air Service” and the “Cape Air” service for helping to keep people connected in the remote areas of this great land. It shows that people become more creative and innovative when life presents challenges. And, just possibly, people in Glasgow are content to be in the “middle of nowhere!”

Isn’t contentment more about being thankful for what we do have and less about complaining or seeking after what we don’t have? And, if making more money is the driving force in our decision-making it will be the undoing of all that made Montana the “Treasure State” in the first place.

So, while I appreciate the work Mr. Rasker does, when he does become “king”, I hope he, and others, will consider the implications that continual growth is having on a land that was designed to restore peoples’ souls (not their pocketbooks) with a different array of “amenities.”

—Kathryn Berg, Bigfork

Misguided Democrats

As a Jew, I was not surprised when Congresswoman Omar repeatedly voiced anti-Israel and anti-Semitic opinions. She is, after all, closely aligned with anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan and is proud to speak at fundraising events hosted by groups reported to support terrorism, or, at the very least are of the belief that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist. I don’t blame the congresswoman — she is who she is. Were she a private citizen, she could spout whatever radical anti-Semitic hatred she wished. But she is not a private citizen and her words, no matter how misguided, carry more weight coming from the U.S. Congress.

But where are the Jewish voters in this country who repeatedly vote for liberal Democrats including, I am sure, Muslims like Ms. Omar who unabashedly are not only anti-Semitic, but who would vote to abandon the State of Israel if given the chance. Did any of the Jews in her district vote against her or were they afraid of being branded Islamophobic? If a conservative had expressed a belief that Muslims abuse women (an actual fact) or that Iran should be wiped off the face of the earth, would they be sitting on the Foreign Relations Committee? I think not.

We now have a Democrat party in Congress composed of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Muslims, radical Socialists, and a 29-year-old bartender who would do well to read a bit more before opening her mouth and declaring herself the boss, to paraphrase Michelle Obama,

For the first time in my life of 72 years, I truly fear for my country. Russian nuclear power of the Cold War is nothing compared to the destructive power of those now occupying our Congress.

—David Myerowitz, Columbia Falls