Letters to the editor April 29

Support our students

Recently we were entrusted to select students for scholarships from the Doris Johnston Memorial Scholarship Fund held at Central Christian Church.  

We received applications from Stillwater Christian High, Flathead High, Glacier High and Flathead Valley Community College. We were amazed at the depth of learning opportunities these institutions provide. 

Personal caring between students and faculty was evidenced in letters of recommendation as well the letters from the students that explained their reason for choosing their career path. The students exhibited maturity in how they balanced their community involvement alongside their scholastic endeavors and social activities. 

We feel our schools are doing a great job of educating our students, so please join us and vote yes to fund the levy on May 6. You may be new to our area, if so just know that others will have to educate the loved ones you’ve left behind. 

If you are retired, please don’t reason that you have done enough and it is somebody else’s turn. Everyone is needed.

God bless you for being willing to give up a couple cups of coffee or a lunch out each month to support our students and their schools. 

— Kalispell residents Mike Wood, Carol White, Jeff Foster, Lois Lyford

Humanities cuts

This is an open letter to our congressional delegation. On April 2, the National Endowment for the Humanities sent a letter to NEH grantee Humanities Montana that it was terminating the grant effective that date by the acting chairman. 

The cuts will have a devastating effect on the artists, authors, philosophers, actors, performers and historians in all 56 counties in Montana. The hardest hit will be the rural communities; their museums and libraries. The support of community centers, parks and educational institutions including public, private and homeschool settings will be curtailed. 

For more than 50 years, the United States has invested in humanities initiatives that promote lifelong learning, educate our citizens to think critically, and understand our history, the human experience and our neighbors. These are Montana values. It crosses all cultural, political and age group lines.

There may have been redundancies or over expenditures, but to completely gut a program that has been so successful and far reaching should make you want to strongly object to the gutting of your state’s culture. 

This is in addition to the $2.5 million reduction for food banks in Montana, reductions at Social Security and Border Patrol offices, the U.S. Geological Survey Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, the federal workforce responsible for maintaining safety, access and ecological health across public land, agricultural workers. How does it not benefit the public interest to have clean bathrooms and safe and clear trails and support of fire fighters and law enforcement?

Finding serious ways to save money are in part to renew the 2017 tax cuts that benefited a very small minority of Montanans.

Prudent of you to say locally that you do not support chain-saw reductions. Three of you are up for reelection in 2026.

— Norma Linsky, Kalispell